Farage’s Return And What It Means For The Election

What do Nigel Farage’s plans to run as an MP in Clacton mean for Rishi Sunak? Should Ed Davey tone down his campaign stunts? What comes next for South Africa after disastrous election results for the African National Congress? Joe Biden continues to speak to Israel during their military operation in Rafah – what is the immediate humanitarian cost?

Join Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell as they answer all these questions and more on today’s episode of The Rest Is Politics.

00:00 Intro
01:27 Nigel Farage’s return
12:40 TRIP election poll results
19:00 Are people taking the Conservative’s National Service policy seriously?
23:50 Election memes and fake news
30:00 Why is no one talking about Brexit?
32:45 Is the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey the new Boris and is it working?
49:00 South African election result
01:00:32 Biden’s peace plan for Israel and Palestine
01:12:56 Coming up this week
01:14:32 Outro

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what starma is saying is that he’s going to launch four new fully equipped nuclear submarines not cheap not cheap very expensive you’ve cut the serious military to the Bone are you’re now really suggesting we’re just going to be backed up by a few kind of interns yeah I think that’s the problem with national service that largely the case for it is that it’s good experience for 18y olds not that it’s particularly good for military I was prepare to give him the you know the benefit of the doubt until I discovered reading down that he’d fallen off the thing four times for the cameras then I open my nie paper think the next day and he’s going down a water slide going yay and then next time he’s going down a hill on a bicycle and in every case the basic joke seems to be he’s like a kind of sort of slightly incompetent dad falling off so he’s basically trying to replay Boris Johnson’s I’m stuck on a zipline moment and the reason why it’s it’s so significant is because you know thec essentially that was the the body that led the fight for apartheid the the sort of huge hero of of modern South African history Mandela particularly that’s their political home that’s their political base and I guess what it’s saying is that the massive hopes that people had for South Africa to become what it had the potential to be have not materialized but one of the things that’s most incredible about this welcome to rest’s politics with me Rory Stewart and me Alis Campbell and we’re just coming in recording on Monday evening shortly after the news that Nigel farage is now coming back as the leader of Reform which is the right-wing ex brexit ukit party and he is going to run to be MP in clack now this is at the top of an episode which we recorded on Monday morning so we’re just bringing this in to update you on the latest news to make sure that you’re not out of date now just to put it in context farage has over 21 years been rejected seven times as an MP in six constituencies but this doesn’t seem to have had any impact whatsoever either on his confidence or his sway over a particular chunk of the voting public and clacton on SE is a very particular choice of place it’s a place that voted 70% for brexit in 2016 and it’s a place where when I was in Parliament the conservative MP Douglas Carwell defected to uh Nigel farage’s party and held it for them from 2014 to 2017 and it’s a place place where Aaron Banks who’s the funer of Nigel farage on his own polling thinks that farage has the best chance of taking a seat what’s your reaction aliser well you know when he announced was it just a week ago so now uh that he wasn’t standing and that America was more important to him and so forth and I was in common with lots of other people saying oh come on just admit it you bottled it and his very good friend Andy Wigmore who’s one of the Bad Boys from brexit send me a sort of rather cryptic message I thought at the time he said oh don’t worry you haven’t heard the last of him in this campaign and I wonder whether I could be giving them far too much credit here I wonder whether he sort of thought I’ll announce I’m not standing that way I’ll probably get asked onto loads of programs like question time which I see he mentioned in his statement I’ll be able to sort of do the rounds pick up a few Vibes and what he was trying to do I mean you’ve got to remember with naaj he is the classic populist politician he is somebody that who SE uh you use the word confidence he can he can for Britain he did it on brexit he can say that brexit would have been a great success had it not been for the fact that he wasn’t in charge of it when in fact the same as Johnson he told a Paca Lies Over years and and it’s now being sort of comprehensively rejected by a lot of people but he has that ability as a lot of good populists do to kind of say black is white and I thought even the way he presented the change of mind was kind of you know quite there something very very kind of populist about it so but what I think will will happen now the media will absolutely love this they will be you know they’re basically been running the out this is a really boring campaign you know Labor’s not saying that much and tories are hopeless farage comes along the question is the extent to which is he any more than the media confection that he long has been and I’m not convinced I’m not convinced I also think with clacton by the way do you remember I did that question time in clacton um and the the audience was 100% brexit voters um I don’t doubt there will be some people in that audience who think it’s great we can vote for somebody that we really believe in now but I’m not remotely convinced that all of them will so I think he will get a lot of attention which he loves uh I wonder if he’d actually be quite scared of winning because then he’d have to hang around Parliament for five years when he finds he you know getting his drops off in America um and the question then I guess that first of all for you on what you think this means for the Tories and then maybe I can have a little think about what it might mean for labor yeah so what what does it mean for the Tes the conservative party will be very worried it’s not as simple as saying that uh conservative voters are just going to defect to reform because some of them will vote labor and Li Dem because the conservative part is quite a broad Church there the rightwing of the Tory party and the left wi of the Tory party it’s also not quite a straightforward as to say reform voters will necessarily come back to the Tory party but we we’ve done some good polling on this and in the jail Partners Restless politics poll it turns out that about 34% of Reform voters would otherwise vote conservative and that’s three times as many as would vote for other parties and again nearly a third of conservative voters are considering voting for for reform so what’s that going to mean well it will mean that in a number of seats the likelihood is that the reform even if it doesn’t win the seat will take enough votes away from the conservatives to guarantee that the seat goes to labor how many seats we don’t know I mean one guess is maybe about 30 seats this could be true in could be of course much more if the conservative vote really collapses and labor performing well I mean that’s what we don’t don’t know about these things but certainly from from the point of view of conservative central office two problems number one they think this was going to damage them in the campaign and they were really relying on those reform voters coming over them that’s why we’ve seen increasingly right-wing messaging that’s what the to some extent the national service messaging was about that’s why you can expect a big immigration announcement next week but secondly people like me are very very worried that after the election farage is going to spearhead a group of people trying to drag the conservative party ever more into the right and into the political Wilderness and basically Evacuate the entire centerr of British politics what do you reckon it means for labor well he tried to project this as something he he again classic populist he was basically saying you the media don’t understand the people you all think this is all about destroying the teries but I’m going to take just as many votes from Labor uh because starma to use George Galloway he didn’t say this but if you remember George Galloway talking about sunak and St being you know too cheeks on the same ass I think it was his very colorful expression I think what’s really important for labor is they don’t allow this in any way to push them off their core strategy the strategy has still got to be about reassuring people about on the economy on defense on uh Law and Order and those kind of issues and at the same time giving Hope For Real Change and making sure the public genuinely understand one that populism doesn’t work and secondly that there there are still only two people in this race who could be prime minister what I think the only thing I don’t think label would have been worried by from what Stan was what farage was saying was the was the Vim with which he was saying look let’s just admit it this election’s over starmer is the next prime minister question really is who do you want as the opposition that was the kind of the tenor of it and I think you know labor does have a problem in terms of everybody thinking this is game over because it’s you know you’ve got to get people to vote so what I think it does it disturbs The Narrative uh it throws in a pretty unexpected Firework and fireworks can go off in all sorts of of directions it gives farage the opportunity to now he’s a candidate but has also made himself leader of a party that by the way effectively owns it’s given him the opportunity now to say I can be treated like another figure in the in the election not on the par with sunak and starma but you know as a party leader um and he’ll now be sort of rampaging around doing what he does the question is whether people believe him I my my final point with Visa V labor or and I sent this as a message to a couple of their strategists today say this is one of the many reasons why I’ve always felt not talking about brexit and the disaster it has been for the country as a mistake because farage can now present himself as something new when he is the guy along with Johnson who effectively gave his brexit but he’s not been defined sufficiently as a complete catastrophe for the country for which he is partly to blame yeah which which needs to be around his neck um well I think final thing for me is that as you say this is about populism and it’s about a bet not just from Nigel farage but also from figures like Liz truss suel braan and others on the right of the conservative party that a starma government is going to seem too centerr too technocratic and that that’s going to open up a big space on the pop is right in the way that these governments have in Europe I mean they they look to Europe they look to America they think that combination of the economic problems in Britain social media General lack of confidence in politics gives you an opportunity to whip up this popular sentiment and that’ll be the bet that farage is making and and my my my guess um uh you know my my bet on the show is I think he probably will win clacton we’ll see whether I’m right on that do you think it when Clon um well let’s disagree agreeably um um I don’t know enough about the the makeup of the other parties in that I mean I’m guessing labor would be second to the Tories would the local parties there try to get together to effectively go into a sort of big tactical voting type situation to try and stop farage I don’t know but I’ll tell you one thing about farage I’ve always known this about him with the many conversations I’ve had with him down the years he’s utterly utterly obsessed about media and it was interesting that even within the the the the the the speech that he was making talking about Tik Tok talking about the fact that today program been talking about reform on Tik Tok he this is the guy who was complaining the the big thing that he seemed to think underlined the idea of the country going to the rot going to rot is the fact that not enough children were aware of the meaning of D-Day D-Day which every single year gets massive wall toall coverage across our media a media which he for which he has complete contempt because he thinks the whole world should now be sort of you know cut up into little 10 15 20 second videos as long as they videos that he where his message is the one that’s going out there I think he does make the campaign more interesting I think he does en liven it a bit uh but I’ve said recently I think that we’ve had Pete farage and I’m going to stand by that well there you have it and here’s the rest of our episode from today on the state of the UK election and then what’s going on in South Africa and the latest from the Israel Gaza conflict see you soon see you soon in case you didn’t know we’re in the middle of a general election campaign we shall be talking about that first of all looking at Labor and Tory but then the strategy of some of the smaller parties and given a lot of the rest his politics is about foreign policy we’re also going to be talking about some of the elections that have been going on worldwide we’ve had India we’ve had Mexico but above all we’re talking about South Africa and also a little bit on Israel and Gaza so Rory we have done another rest his politics poll the junk food of Journalism it may be however some interesting stuff in there really interesting stuff so this is with jail partners and the rest’s politics it’s our own own poll that we’re now running every week and there was an interesting developments last week where they were showing that basically the conservatives had lost all voters under 65 and and you know we we maybe just worth explaining that that seems to suggest that the only people really voting for The conservatives in large numbers are people who are not working that anyone who’s actually got an income is facing cost of living challenges and is feeling dis disenchanted but there was a hope last week that the conservatives might be able to squeeze a little bit of the right-wing vote which is this Reform Party that used to be brexit ukip and that was about doing things like pushing for New National service triple locks on pensions or triple lock Plus on pensions but the data this week is a bit different it suggests that in fact they’re not really winning over those right-wing reform voters in fact uh the right-wing reform voters have strengthened and third say they are as it were squeezeable yeah the question is whether even if they were squeeze the Tories that would be enough to get them and and a third would only be 2 3% of the vote wouldn’t it and and then we suddenly see starma really increasing his position with I suppose what’s called young middle-aged voters maybe this is offensive to people who in their mid-40s don’t feel that they’re middle-aged you you’re young middle age I think I’m bit older than that now no I think I think you’ll find oh you are you’ve just gone through young middle age gone through young middle age you’re 50 now yeah you opted out for that one at 49 ancient man but within that group starma has significantly increased his position yeah ninepoint jump so he now takes 61% of that group according to this jail Partners poll I wonder if that’s a counter reaction to the fact that the conservatives have been so open that their strategy has been about saying we’re pitching ourselves to older people I don’t consider I am actually classified as old I was 67 last week um I don’t feel old but I resent I actually resent that sense of a party openly saying we’re going for a particular age group so I think it pisses off the young it pisses off the just out of early middle-aged early old like you um so that was one one quite significant thing I thought the other thing is that the the conservatives the other part of their strategy they’ve really decided that the focus has got to be on riak he’s out there every day doing stuff and fair play to him he’s got energy he always looks up for the fight but it doesn’t seem to be working with people he he is now the most unpopular politician that we pulled he’s taken over from Boris Johnson in that regard um and and Karma is by some margin now the most popular now it’s not we’re not talking Blair ratings in 97 but we’re talking better than any other politician in the country and I guess that’s that’s the point isn’t it so in the big context K’s net popularity is not that impressive if we look at elections in the past and that may be that people in general disenchanted with politics it may be something to do with st but what matters obviously in an election is how you’re doing againsts the opposition and he’s well ahead of anyone else and labor are now well ahead in every socio economic group and again the Tores might have been hopeful of the wealthier people might stay well or even as it happened with with Johnson uh doing better amongst the so-called Dees than than sort of workingclass pro brexit voters in the red wall I thought the other thing interesting because you know we’ve often said on the podcast and I in particular have often said I wish labor were more visible in the debate I wish lab were’re making more of the running but the two people that have been significantly noticed by the general public are this may be of no surprise to people but are sunak and starma right and then a long way behind yeah comes Ed Davy although in fact he has gone up a bit an farage has gone up a bit but it’s very much sunak and starma are out there the Dian abber situation that we talked about last week is was the second most noticed particular story as it were but way behind the national service so this is something that I guess you understand intuitively but is difficult to grasp when one’s being nerdy about elections I mean basically our poll suggests that the general public noticed very very little of all the activity of the last two and a half weeks they find it difficult to really work out they like Kama but they find it difficult to name exactly what his policies are the Dian Abbott St which is the story about it seeming as though she was going to be blocked from running from labor and now she’s running for labor which was all over the front page of the papers led the news for three days and most of the public haven’t noticed the only thing that they’ve really taken on board is this national service thing but even that as we’ll go on to say um many of them have misunderstood uh largely thanks to some amazing Tik Tok campaigns and there was there was a nice piece James Merritt and the times went around the University of Warick good University talking to students and one of the things he picks up is many of them don’t really seem to be following these issues in detail I mean one of the uh students he was interviewing had picked up on the national service thing I think about a week after it had been announced she noticed it was happening so I suppose I was just thinking about this on the way up to see you that if you don’t get the newspaper every morning you don’t watch TV you don’t listen to radio and if your social media feed is an interest in other stuff mhm then I suppose it’s quite possible you could go through many many days not really noticing at all absolutely we said last week that people should be very very aware very very uh cautious when they hear people say and we will fund this out of cracking down on tax avoidance which I no the LI devons have started to play that game I think the thing we should warn people against paying any heed to are politicians who say what I’m hearing on the doorstep or that’s not coming up on the doorstep but I have been talking to a people who are on the doorstep knocking on doors and they they say you won’t be surprised to know most of them labor not all of them but most of them labor and they say that the national service thing has broken through people are aware of it but people are not taking it that seriously they don’t actually see it as a serious policy and the Dian Abbot thing came up a little bit but mainly with what you would identify as left leaning labor voters in other words activists in particular who felt very very angry about it and and that’s that’s interesting thing isn’t it because uh kiss armmer is obviously if you wanted to be provocative to some extent the campaign has tracked the Tories he’s left very little gap between himself and the Tories if you actually go through the last few days they did it deliberately on tax they then did it deliberately on immigration and today we’re recording on Monday they’re doing it very deliberately on defense yeah I me it will be quite an image of him standing up there with I think it’s 12 or 14 Labor candidates who are exit which is which is wonderful Jeremy Corbin would not have stood with 148 soldiers no no no no and and it’s it’s it’s a very interesting thing this so when I was um in Parliament went to Remembrance Day service I think there were 52 conservative MPS who’d been in the military for some period some of them like me for a very very short period um but labor much less Labor’s now building up um it’s an interesting thing I mean in the US people are completely obsessed with getting more veterans into the Senate and Congress and they’re a whole kind of Lobby group and funding groups trying to do that I I’m a little bit skeptical because I I’ve got a lot of admiration for the military but you also want a parliament that’s representative of the general public you don’t want it completely stuffed full of soldiers no that’s that’s fair but or what do they used to call them the right honorable and Gallant that’s right exactly used to pretty Patel used to refer to me as she would say you know the right honorable so let me get this right so what’s a lawyer is the right honorable and learned learned and an ex Soldier is the right honorable yeah so was pry pel the only person she’s the only person who in my memory when I stood up would refer to me as the Gallant member I wonder if these labor MPS L that they will have the right under the rules of the house to be called the right The Honorable and Gallant member for Plymouth wherever it might be Fred Thomas taking on Johnny M military guy which is I suppose good good pairing yeah I think for Plymouth that’s good but what’s interesting you and I have talked about this for months certainly since the the Ukraine invasion about the the wish for defense security foreign policy to be far higher up the political agenda and I guess that is one issue that has come up both parties now say that they are committed to increasing the share of GDP spent on defense both parties warning of inang risk higher risk of of risk than National Security um and it is the the fact that K Stan was out there doing that today I suspect he won’t be the last time either I suspect defense and foreign policy will become part of there there’s two things going on isn’t it there’s the massive crisis which is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine took everybody off balance Europe is very aware that if Trump comes in and withdraws the European armies are not remotely ready to defend against Russian invasion but there’s also the politics of this defense is one of the literally the only last things that the conservatives have a little bit of a lead over labor on and a 22 points to 20 points and sunak seems to be in a position where starm is trying to crush him on everything trying to take him out on every single thing so he’s he’s and the only thing the conservatives will be saying is that Labour hasn’t yet agreed to do this 2.5% commitment but what stama is saying is that he’s going to launch four new fully equipped nuclear submarines so I guess that’s going to be good for British manufacturing not cheap not cheap very expensive and there will be people like me and actually many members of the military who are a bit doubtful about whether the best investment are nuclear submarines because obviously your nuclear deterrent is very much the last thing you use but what you actually need as we found in Ukraine day to-day are tanks missiles artillery yeah and people and people and and and the I think that was the other thing that the why the national service plan although you know he got notied with it I think the other big weakness in it was the fact that serious military people were sort of saying well hold on a minute you’ve cut the serious military to the Bone you’re now really suggesting we’re just going to be backed up by a few kind of interns yeah I think that’s the problem with national service that largely the case for it is that it’s good experience for 18y olds not that it’s particularly good for military it’s the same with um the peace score or voluntary service overseas uh where you send young people abroad it’s it’s good for the young people it’s not necessarily a very efficient way of doing International Development um listen I I wanted to move you onto something that you’ve been looking at and maybe the the roin is to to Tik Tok and social media is through national service because I noticed that there have been a lot of very popular memes on uh Tik Tok which were surprise surprise they went they went for your s black surprise surprise exactly surprise yeah um no but some of them were also about uh sort of basically fake news saying that riak was going to send young people off to Ukraine and Gaza to die and this kind of stuff and so interesting there which is that the people posting it say well obviously this is a joke right it’s a satire you know I’m sort of sending up the horrible Tories by exaggerating that policy but of course the problem is quite a lot of people who don’t know much about it may take it literally so so where’s the line between sat and literal I I I think this stuff’s really really interesting and quite important there’s there’s a woman called Mariana spring at the BBC who I don’t know if you followed this she set up I think it’s 24 fake accounts in different parts of country the country and and they’re fake people fake profiles and she’s tracking all the things that are being sent to them and there is an awful lot of fake stuff just just to explain the idea is that you know you are a 60-year-old the fake account is a 6-year-old female voter in Grimsby yeah and that means that the parties who are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on this will be targeting that voter with particular types of messages and that’s what she’s picking up correct and and a lot of it untrue so for example I’m sure Boris Johnson will be pleased to know that the Smith that he launched on uh k k starm about Jimmy savil is featuring pretty large uh the one that you mentioned about sunac uh you know vot Tory and you’re going to have to go and fight in in Ukraine that’s kind of doing the rounds as well another one saying vote Tor richy saying you know vote Tor I need this because my mates need more money yeah yeah I’ve got to give more more more do to my mates I think stuff like that there’s one there’s one where he’s sort of sort of is hi speaking it’s clearly fake but somebody might be might be fored by it where he’s saying you know vote for me I’ll be proper gutted if you don’t right so it’s like here’s rich I tried to speak like the youth he thinks so so but the the thing is you can I said last week if people could send us the stuff that they’re seeing which they they have very kindly been doing but we’ll put in the in the newsletter you can actually track all of the adverts that the political parties are putting out on Facebook and Instagram not necessarily Tik Tok but you can on Facebook and Instagram so you can see what the strategy is that they’re running so just you sent me a couple of your kind of rather pompous you know messages about you know what on Earth do they think they’re do with this so let if you take some of the the silly looking stuff yeah there’s been these things like for example labor doing this thing with richy sunak diary and this very childish handwriting and uh and also they’ve been doing this thing where they they have Ry sunak sort of with fake B blackboards in the background and so quite silly on one level so I put your point to the labor strategy people and they say well yeah I get that point but what the algorithm then does is pick up that they’ve expressed an interest in this stuff and then send them for example here’s K St on the six steps right which then had far more uh viewing figures and far more likes than they would have got if they had just put it out on its own okay so I think this is a really important when we move on to the lib Dems and Ed Davy who’s uh going around basically behaving like a clown I me he’s hold on we’re g to do that after the break okay but but but I do think the the the idea of how you leverage and we’ll get back to the S Dems after break how we leverage the comic entertaining moment to then deliver the serious message is really good because the um Kissa serious stuff which you can see on Tik Tok which I think has now got a lot of views is really quite good it’s a very short video saying he’s going to build one and a half million more homes and then there’s a picture of him looking quite sort of serious in black and white but with a nice smile on his face and so that is good I mean if you can land that stuff you’re you’re really getting and of course the conservatives are really struggling to land and one of the problems is that Labor’s lead in The Young people’s vote like 18 to 34 is just unbelievable well as long as they register as long as I mean there’s a massive problem of registration so on the surface though 1834 nearly 60% going for labor and something like 15% going for the conservatives so that basically means that very few young people are going to share any conservative messaging because it’s just embarrassing right nobody wants to share conservative messaging but you’re right are they registered and the turnout figures the turnout figures for that group suggest that only about 38% of them are likely to vote well that’s a problem and of course a lot of the Tik Tok stuff is this is not stuff generated by the parties but stuff being generated by people is very very cynical very very takes the piss out the politicians takes P out the campaign doesn’t really give much reason to to be positive about anything but just I’ve just looked at the figures so the S black singing surprise surprise so the the the idea is you’re 0d and S black turns up at your party and richy Su lik there to say hey national service you know first of all we the surprise of July the 4th election now it’s national service so what they tell me is that that got 4 million organic views which is a lot quite a lot 700,000 likes 140,000 shares on WhatsApp okay that’s friend to friend as it were and the WhatsApp thing is almost more important because friend to friend is is more trusted trusted but then linked to that so then on the back of that a video of Labor six steps the six steps set out by laborers K starm as the priorities went on to achieve 3.2 million organic views and 200,000 likes so that they would they would definitely be pleased with that I’ll say one other thing that sorry to B but I’m determined to bang on about this every single week not a single mention yet in either of their social media stuff of the B- word of brexit so if you think of 2019 all of the Tory social media was get brexit done everything and it’s now they’ve done it they’ve done it so you’d think they’d be saying look at us we did what we said we’d do not a single mention that’s fascinating isn’t it because you’re exactly right given that that was what Boris Johnson won on in 2019 given that’s what they were me to be proud of you would expect the next election to be our big achievement is we delivered brexit for you and they’re not talking about it at all and not even I mean I we should probably go to the break now but you know I’ve been reading the mail on Sunday in the mail and very striking that their messaging is not about that at all if you read you know mail on Sunday yesterday Liz trust you know our disastrous 49 day letters prime minister now positioning herself as the next leader of the conservative party by going in the mail on Sunday saying it’s all about tax cuts and then today anun ree smog uh you know failed Conservative candidate sister of sister of in the mail saying the conservatives can win this if they go on small state and tax cuts but none of them are talking about brexit interesting well also Ju Just maybe we should close on this is the so like we had k arm and John Healey the shadow defense guy today out on defense the conservatives their main event for the day is ky bad knck who let’s remember is the Secretary of State for trade and business that is her main job she is also the equalities minister so the news today leading with kemy bad knck talking about and I didn’t even understand what she was saying but she wants to make a change to the equalities act which she then said isn’t really a change it’s just clarifying but what it allows her to do as KY badok is get onto one of the issues I.E trans rights that she thinks plays well in the leadership election to follow I think be pretty also positioning herself in Scotland because she’s saying that this will no longer be a devolved issue so people like JK Rowling or Joanna Cherry who are you know closer to the Nationalist movement but were completely horrified by the snp’s transgender policies the hope is that that may Shore up a bit of the conservative vote in Scotland yeah all we’ll take a break now and then when we come back we’ll we’ll discuss why Rory is so angry with Ed [Music] Davy welcome back to the rest of politics now Rory just come on you’ve got a bit of a beef about the lovely Ed Davey who’s been giving the nation so much to smile about well it’s been astonishing hasn’t it so what you’re open your newspaper last week and you see pictures of him Pratt falling of a uh paddle board in uh C do you think he was doing it deliberately well every time he goes off he waves his hands in the air he pops up and down he puts on a goofy smile but I was prepared to give him the you know the benefit of the doubt until I discovered reading down that he’d fallen off the thing four times for the cameras then I open my newspaper I the next day and he’s going down a water slide going yay and then next time he’s going down a hill on a bicycle and in every case the basic joke seems to be he’s like a kind of sort of slightly incompetent dad falling off so he’s basically trying to replay Boris Johnson’s I’m stuck on a zipline moment and the hope I guess is that he’s going to get the front page of the newspapers the hope is that the times or Telegraph or somebody will show a picture of him falling off his paddle board with a cheeky headline and that’s how he’s going to get noticed now I I I you know I’m getting Cy because I’m sure you’ve got a defense of it but defense and I’ll move on to what really troubles me about it I mean does it work first do you think it’s going to drive him up I think I think there’s a there’s a real problem for the liberal Democrats in this election one well there’s several real problems one is that they have not been the third party in the last Parliament so they’ve not been as visible the SNP has been the third party they’re the ones that get the more questions in Parliament Etc within the media debate because our right-wing media has this obsession with the future of the conservative party reform just have to sort of you know wave their arms and they get coverage for the libdems and the greens it’s much much harder to get any coverage so I I think if you look at what he’s the serious Point behind what he’s trying to do is essentially to say look at us as well okay so I think and I don’t think it’s about the newspapers as much as getting onto the broadcast media and giving them stuff that they can then sort of push out on social Med are they are they getting on they are so for example when he fell off the paddle board I don’t know whether they were I they weren’t covering it live but as soon as they got the pictures in they were there and then what it led to was Tim faren former leader and Ed Davy current leader being interviewed in their wet suits dripping wet talking about sewage talking about sewage and how the conservatives had let let the people down on water and then likewise when he did the whole thing with coming down the slide which I agree was I I got the real Rory of my life my son he got a message say you know at least Ed Davis cheering us all up a bit but I the message then I think they were talking about mental health they was talking about getting mental health support into every school okay so that was that was a setting of sort of play and that kind of thing um he then had a picture the next one I saw he had a sort of a funny chefs out and you mentioned Boris Johnson it’s interesting how when Johnson did all this stuff y nobody batted an eyelid and he was like the leader of one of the two main parties so DAV I think that’s the reason he’s doing it and then I think because that became a bit of a thing Ed Davey that was how he got noticed and by the way on the visibil thing that we talked about in our poll he’s still way down way down on sunak and St but but gone up in terms of visibility let me just finish finish this point and then on Saturday that he posted a picture we talked to him on leading about his his son who’s got very severe uh learning difficulties and other disabilities and he he posted a picture of himself just putting his face into his son’s face you can only see the side of the Sun and said this weekend time off doing the thing that matters to me most now and I think that’s genuine yeah but at the same time I think the fact that Ed Davy’s pictures had become a bit of a thing probably meant that was that got a more sympathetic hearing than it would have done but we’re not really seeing evidence in the polling that this is helping the lib Dems in fact what we what we’re seeing in our own polls labor is squeezing them is that more and more lib Dam voters are thinking of voting labor so this is where I’m going to come back against that dve I think this is a mistake I think that with Boris Johnson these kind of ludicrous stunts were on brand I mean the guy his brand was he was a clown and a buffoon so if you see him stuck on a zipline waving a tiny Union Jack everyone’s like oh Boris and that funny right Ed Davy is not that guy as people will know who’ve listened to our interview on leading if you haven’t I encourage you to do so he’s actually a pretty dry figure he’s not a big Joker so it’s completely sort of it’s it’s it’s unlike Boris it doesn’t represent his personality I’m pleased that you say he’s managing to get some serious messages in behind but boy that isn’t coming through in the print media I mean they’re just showing these photographs with jokes there’s nothing about the story and the reason I think about this is that I I can sympathize with this um you know when I was a politician I was able to use comic mishaps you know my faking a selfie to then get 3 million views for my uh argument for a customs Union I was able to generate one and a half million views for stuff on national service off the back of Comedy My question with Ed Davey is is he really managing to use these moments to cut his policies too and I’m not sure he is well I think they’re probably thinking about this in stages so first stage visibility we we haven’t got the dates yet for the manifestos but the manifestos will be important um obviously the main focus will be labor and tour but the smaller parties will have their moment in the sun with the manifesto that’s when he’ll get a fair hearing across most of the mainstream media certainly the broadcast media about what it is he’s saying and and and then you’re into the the the the last stage of the campaign what I say is I think the biggest handicap they’ve got for them is that unlike the last several elections certainly since 2010 there’s no debate going on about whether we might have a hung Parliament that is the real disadvantage to the lib Dems of Labor’s massive lead and you’re you’re completely right that’s number one number two is they’ve made this bizarre decision not to talk about brexit when the other two parties aren’t talking about and that’s partly because a lot of the seats that they’re going for are Tory held with a still pretty strong anti uh Pro brexit position yeah yeah although actually I mean if we look at things like cheltam where my friend Alex chalk is defending a small majority that big remain voting seat yeah um I think and and this is why I don’t know I mean you know I’m very bad at predicting the future but my guess is that the libdems will do quite badly in National votes that the labor will steal their votes and one of the reasons is I fear that they’re completely failing to produce serious credible National policies so there’s Kama in black and white looking very serious very Prime ministerial and there is Ed Davey falling three times off a paddle board and waving his hands around and I think if you’re looking at that squeezing you know why are 30% of libdem Voters this week going to labor which is nearly the double the number last week I think it’s that you’re beginning to think oh for goodness say you know someone like me for example I’m tempted to vote lib Dam I have voted lib dam in the past right I look at this stuff I’m like for goodness sake I can’t really bear to go in the pins I might actually begin tracking towards a more serious party yeah well the point you make about authentic it because the thing is you can’t imagine K starma standing on a paddle board and falling off without him looking really embarrassed about it he is serious I think the serious stuff’s kind of getting through um and it maybe that’s what people want I hope so I hope that people actually looking for more serious politicians I still think there’s something very Paul Johnson who we should say to people by the way is at the interview this week on the rest is money Paul Johnson The Institute of fisical studies he keeps making the point I think he’s right that even though there’s a lot of FOC there’s a lot of debate going on the debates feel very small compared with the scale of the issues that we’re facing exactly so let’s just run through some of the things that really could be being talked about they could be talking about how we could get closer to Europe do something like a customs Union transform our trade and our security policy they could be talking about adult social care which is a disgusting disgrace in this country they could be talking about a wealth tax which would make a huge difference to the revenue that comes in which Patrick Diamond who was a special adviser with us was in The Observer at the weekend very very strongly advocating he’s now he’s now an academic here’s another one that I would love to see K do and I have no idea why he doesn’t do it I’d love to see him say this is a government that is going to deal with the disgraceful shameful conditions for the most vulnerable our prisons are disgusting filthy violent kind of inhumane homelessness is a disra Grace the very poorest people let’s say you know the bottom 5 8% in our country are living in very very horrible conditions what we will do as labor is we are going to focus on the most vulnerable and I think yeah okay maybe that’s not a big vote Winer with the daily mail but I think it’s on brand it’s compassionate something that people could get behind I have no idea why St is not doing that I I don’t know if you had time to read it I sent I put in our WhatsApp group um an article from the conversation about the black Market that is now operating within food banks within the food industry stolen food now being sure sold into I mean I mean I the extent to which poverty has fallen off the agenda is really alarming and this black market stuff to return to something we often talk about is again an argument for cash I mean one of the problems is that people are in poverty have a lot of different needs and they’re being forced sometimes to sell food to get cash to get some other desperate needs that they have to face housing clothing Etc right access to to healthare so the the the problem is that we have a welfare state that is not working not working in the way that it would in obviously Scandinavia Netherlands Etc and I’d like to see labor say that’s where we’re going and and this isn’t time afraid you know I understand why they’re doing free School meals but it isn’t really about free School meals it’s about saying here are millions of people in our country and and it’s getting away from what labor wants to say which is the problem of the country is the top 1% against the bottom 99 in some ways it’s saying the problem of the country is actually the top 60% who own houses and are reasonably comfortably off and then at the bottom a 5 10% in horrible conditions that labor should really be focusing on now if the libdem struggle to get coverage then we should talk a little about about the greens um and of course one of the things the lids are doing we we’ve about this before they are they have got a pretty targeted strategy on on a relatively small number of seats in the dozens okay whereas the greens although they’ll be Fielding candidates all over the country they essentially are targeting four seats they want to try to get four MPS and I I’ve been which would be huge them you have one before got one which is Karine Lucas and again we should recommend the interview we did with her she she’s in Brighton Pavilion she’s been replaced by Shan Barry uh and she has a very L she’s her majority is almost 20,000 yeah the the the other let me just quick run through the other three because there’s some interesting sort of I’m not quite convinced of the thinking Behind These North herfordshire Bill Wigan well that seems difficult well that’s a massive Tory majority seem difficult so Bill Wigan is a very very traditional Tory MP I think old tonian you know very much into cattle farming I think his father may have been an MP so py ring is he pinky ring definitely of G stalwart he was in Parliament with me very kind of old-fashioned shy as Tor MP that that seems to be a stretch to to get progressive Greens in there right then the next one if if I tell the next two together because it shows the sort of the difficulties they might they may have do you know this thing electoral calculus which is a yeah a site that sort of goes through it’s very interesting again we should put it in the newsletter and they go through you can look at every seat and they’ve got their analysis to where it leans so if you take Bristol Central which is a new constituency sangam deaner Shadow culture secretary who you’ve pointed out as a sort of con level abely cello player sorry and she’s going to be up against for the greens one of their co-leaders Carla Dena now electoral calculus says that Bristol Central is strong left with left-wing economic and socially liberal views high levels of University education internationalist Outlook including strong opposition to brexit uh it is the most pro-immigration constituency in the UK 55% of Voters there want fewer controls and higher numbers in Bristol so that is a that’s if you think about where Labor’s campaigns been coming from you know immigration defense Israel Gaza you can see how thangum Dean might have a yeah have a fight on so your point being that Bristol is so leftwing Progressive that actually starm will seem a bit rightwing for some of the Bristol voters so and also the last local elections all 14 Bristol city council members in that area were greens so that’s that’s a that’s a proper big fight no doubt about it good luck than um wavy sent Central is this this is again is is a very different sort of constituency so wav Central it’s it straddles norol and suff it’s it’s characterized by electoral C calculus as strong right right-wing economic and social views High home ownership levels strong support for for braak and I think probably right alongside Liz truss’s seat isn’t it absolutely and Liz truss has a big majority yeah although I’m hoping people going to vote for the independent I’ve been looking into that Rory I’ve been looking into that the only people who can beat Les Trust of Labor I’m sorry but it’s true it’s true you’ve got to you’ve got to just look at the numbers I suppose if he took people who would never think of voting lab yeah that’s what he’s going to do okay that’s fine so as long as you his pitches he wants to get moderate conservatives voting not he’s trying to swing the lab vot she did a a huge interview with her local paper um and honestly it was nuts basically she was asked how does she feel about the fact that people view her as the worst prime minister there’s ever been and she said I’m not the worst prime minister guess who she said don’t know Tony Blair extraordinary Tony Blair was the worst Bron because he gave us the equalities act the Human Rights Act how very odd it was utterly but I mean I mean I I to be a bit Grim for a moment I honestly do not understand why list truss is standing again for Parliament she was a catastrophic prime minister she was a poor Minister why doesn’t she leave why is she trying to come back in again what else is she going to do what else is she going to do and also she’s she’s part of this sort of fific of politics where it’s about profile it’s about money in America it’s about hanging out with Steve Bannon it’s about being a disruptor and I guess she gets to do that as a member of parliament because some people in America who aren’t following British politics very close you might convince themselves she’s a future Prime Minister or something oh I mean look this is the tragedy of people her and Johnson having been prime minister thankfully because our country is not a total Global joke because we have some enduring strengths to go around the world saying you’re a former prime minister of the United Kingdom is it’s not a bad thing to have on your CV so she just needs to keep herself relevant but honestly I watching her speak at the moment you just feel there’s somebody there who one You definitely say to yourself how on Earth did she ever become Prime Minister and leader of your old party but two what in earth goes on inside her head head it’s terrifying so we’re going to take a break thank you very much and then when we come back we’re going to talk about abroad we’re going to be talking about South Africa and we’re going to be talking about uh Israel and Palestine welcome back to the rest’s politics with me Rory Stewart and me anister Campbell and the story anister that we’re going to get on to now is South Africa where there has been an unbelievable election result and um a big thank you to to to my friend Greg Mills who’s patiently trying to explain and keep me up to date on South African politics and also Joshua not who we’ve talked about before who writes uh the newsletter so the ANC which has been the ruling party in South Africa since the end of aparte and which has regularly pulled over 60% I it’s always got over 50% so it’s dominated the the National Assembly was predicted in some of the polls that it might drop down below 50% but it’s plummeted it’s down 40% it’s a kind of incredible loss it’s lost you know 15% uh in the National polls in places like quaz natal which are really important stat hammered 40% so just to put it in context before we get into the micro details just give us a sense of why thec was so dominant why this drop is so historically significant well just on on the numbers so as you say they’ve won every election with a majority since aarid since Nelson Mandela first became president so 1994 they got 62.5% of the vote 99 went up 66.4 2004 went up even more to 70 that was its highest ever 2009 66 2014 62 and then the last election 57.5 so it’s gone like that and then like that and now it’s gone like that absolutely but but even 57.5 you know by UK standards or anyone crazy because it’s a it’s a proportional representation system abely so normally I mean you look at Israel which is proportional representation you know parties are getting in with 3% 5% 9% of the vote it’s all about coalitions usually right but in this case they’re just blowing it out of the water election after election after election until now and the reason why it’s it’s so significant is because you know thec essentially was the that was the the body that led the fight for apartheid the the sort of huge Heroes of of modern South African history Mandela particularly that’s their political home that’s their political base and I guess what it’s saying is that the massive hopes that people had for South Africa to become what it had the potential to be a great prosperous successful country have not materialized but one of the things that’s most incredible about this result so lots of parties standing ANC 50 parties 51 parties I think in total yeah ANC winning uh Democratic Alliance which is seen as the the the more the party that favors the white population yeah although although it’s a little bit more complicated you’re right I mean it’s got prominent white leaders yeah although I I saw the the the overseas votes I think was something like 75% were for the da which I I think probably means more affluent maybe more affluent people yeah some people frame the these divisions uh in sort of linguistic terms so you you’ve got the big big vote which we’re going to get on to and I’m sure you’re going to explain in a second which is the vote for Jacob Zuma yeah is now predominantly Zulu the vote for the da Democratic Alliance is predominantly English and africant speaking although many of those voters are in fact black yeah correct and then the andc vote a lot of it is kosa vote so there’s a sort of tribal ethnic thing beginning to emerge in South African politics but one so if you go through the reasons why thec was expecting the risk of going below 50% I don’t think any of them expected to go quite as low as they’ve gone a lot of the reasons were economic uh Power Cuts water shortages poverty poor housing Etc and I add to that unemployment which is unbelievable official unemployment figures 37% that’s official I mean underemployment people out of the workforce much higher it’s it’s it’s unimaginable really yeah but the other big thing was corruption and yet the big Gainer out of this election seems to be Jacob Zuma probably the most corrupt of all the presidents that they’ve had when he was president uh with all sorts of Investigations going on to him past present and future and yet he has the potential to be something of a kingmaker although thec are making clear that one of one of his party the MK one of their Central demands is that his successor s Raposa has to go and thec say that is not happening so coming back to the m of the thing in order to be president of South Africa you need the majority of the votes in the National Assembly yes the president is not directly elected you elect the assembly and they they decide who the president is so you need more than 50% um the NC’s dropped down 40% so they’ve got three options they could try to go with the smaller parties uh and that will involve relying on the eff which is Julius MMA walks around the Red Berry kind of protom marxist National ization of Mines confiscation of land this kind of stuff but even that because the efff actually didn’t perform very well they they they were hit by MK as well yeah so they got down to maybe 9% so it’s still not quite enough they only 49% so they’d have to bring in some other small parties as well or they can try to reform the oldc Coalition which means bringing in the eff and bringing in Jacob Zuma and Jacob Zumer got uh 15% of the votes so big big vote coming in behind and that would push from above third option which of course is the one more appealing to people like me who are more sort of on the center rights and who want more kind of technocratic economic policies would be the Coalition yeah oh and get together with the Democratic Alliance and that again because Democratic Alliance got 22% of the vote would put them comfortably into a majority but would really alienate a lot of thec Base who perceive the da as being a white party too much of a right-wing party so all to play for people like me massive economic optimism if they make a coalition with the da worst case scenario Coalition with Jacob Zumer because Zumer is a really as you say not just very corrupt you know people have heard about the Gupta Scandal maybe where incredible astonishing deals being put together well is literally called State capture it’s been it’s been identified as state capture and this is this was a an Indian business family that with billions to play just sort of taking over whole bits of Government Contracting procurement but he’s also somebody who’s uh a classic populist he is rejecting the election result claims he actually got 2third of the vote and that the 15% he he’s even saying that it was rigged in the in those areas where he won by a mile uh was so no and he’s got he’s got there are certain trumpian elements not just to sort of calling out the the result but also some of the scandals he’s involved in the past where he says he’s case has been rigged against him and we’re seeing a a pattern here I looked at some of the South African media yesterday I think it was the Sunday Times there headline was beaten ANC pushes for gnu government of national Unity um now of course that wouldn’t be the first time because if you go back to the very start there was a a government of national Unity put together with Mandela and de clerk uh and it was one of the reasons why they got a Nobel Peace Prize that they LED this new South Africa together they later D clerk later left and thec then governed on its own so it’s it’s not impossible I think you’re right that the International Community is probably thinking come on go for it but domestically that’s very very difficult for the NC and I think just before we finish just stepping back for a moment um in the context of what is really a year of Elections a year of fighting country by country basically a fight between Progressive liberals and populists Sou Africa is a really important Bell weather largest economy in Africa housing millions of refugees the probably the most educated population in Africa the most technologically advanced country you one of one of the bricks along with Brazil Russia India China and this is happening at the same time when it looks like Narendra Modi the populace in India is about a win so this is really important really important not just for South Africa but for the whole of Africa and actually for geopolitics in general yeah just to give on the trumpan theme just to give you a few things that went on so a bit like Trump he’s been involved in all sorts of legal issues uh convicted of contempt of court he’s got corruption charges still outstanding all sorts of Investigations going on to him cleared of rape but allegations of weapons dealing still around I mean not not a great sort of CV it’s beyond aaging yeah yeah and he can’t sit in the National Assembly no so so he’s you know he’s LED his party to a pretty impressive Rive electoral yeah feat um and one of the things he’s done um maybe just something to close on he’s basically collapsed uh the ifp which was mangut balesi Zulu party which was quite an important I think they were part of that firstan politics um because he’s taken the Zulu vote away and so I think the ifp now down at about three and a half% of the vote may be an important part of a coalition if you brought the the uh the Dan this more uh sort of center right party because it would give a bit more of a flavor of a coalition but it ceased to be a major political force because this election yeah one final point for me is turnout and this is something we’re going to see and I fear could happen in our election as well I hope not but turn out very a lot lower than it had been which again reflecting not just the decline but a decline in the belief in polit that politics can do stuff at all and I must say I think I think you know I hate the old cliche turning in the grave but I’d love to be able to know what Mandela would think about what’s going on because when you think about the hope that he represented to the world I have to say there’s only two famous people with whom I’ve been photographed where I have those pictures on my wall in my office one is Mandela and the other is yeah yeah the other is that Argentinian footballer correct correct Diego Bara so they both begin with every end to day but he would be I think pretty heartbroken by um this even though I guess for most political parties 40% in a general election you’d say that was I mean you know if K starm gets 40% he’s going to be quite happy be pretty pleased yeah um but I think that for thec given the the way that the history of that country could have gone um this is pretty it’s very sad and of course it it raises the the fear of course amongst many South Africans that just the structural problems are so deep you know people hoped that getting rid of Zuma last time bringing in s Rosa would turn this all around it hasn’t turned it all around and people go pretty gloomy I guess okay we’re getting on now to the subject of Israel Gaza and we’re going to start with Biden’s peace plan so Biden’s peace plan I just quick quick summary for you uh three parts first part is supposed to be a full and complete ceasefire for 6 weeks Israel withdrawing troops from density populated areas and Hamas releasing elderly hostages and women second stage is release of all remaining hostages including Soldiers with a total withdrawal from Israel third phase return of Hostage remains and money going into reconstructing Gaza this was brought together in Paris negotiation between Bill Burns who’s the head of the CIA uh David Baner who’s the head of Mossad and the Cy foreign minister who we both know shik Muhammad who discussed this this is not very very different actually from the deal that was supposed to be put together in Cairo a couple of months ago it seemed as though because the head of mosad was there that Israel had approved this plan but rather curiously although it was meant to be an Israeli Peace plan it was not announced by Israel it was announced by Joe Biden I mean there have been so many uh not just in this recent um episode of the Israel Gaza story but over decades there have been so many attempts new Dawns false starts but it was I think significant that Joe Biden felt able to go out and do that address that he did and say that it was an Israeli plan and say that it was an Israeli plan I cannot believe that he would have done that without the Israelis knowing seeing every word that he was intending to say he didn’t take any questions so it was very much this is a script um but you’re right that my my immediate thought was well what’s going to count here is the reaction of the Israelis and Hamas right um and the Israeli reaction has been ambiguous to say the least um you’ve had nothing clear and specific you’ve certainly had no acceptance you’ve had you haven’t had from netanyahu’s mouth this is an Israeli plan so I think what’s happened is that he’s seeing how the reaction is El elsewhere which has been interesting so you’ve got the the problem he has as everybody knows this by now I’m sure is that he’s got this coalition government in which an awful lot of power rests with the Finance Minister smotrich and the national security minister itamar Ben gavier these are two different parties but but similar Outlook and they would be defined as extreme they are extreme and when uh Netanyahu says that the war aim is to destroy Hamas which a lot of his own people have said that’s an ere exaggerated uh objective to set that is what these two are saying has to happen the quote from smartd is that there are to be no half measures in his quot is the total and utter destruction not of hammmer but of Rafa yeah total and utter destruction ra which is now so into that mix you have we have the issue of Benny gance that we talked about before member of the war cabinet who has been making noises about walking away that would be less politically significant than smotrich and Ben gav because Benny gance is a member of the war cabinet not necessarily the governing Coalition but you’ve now got opposition leader y lapid essentially saying if they do do that we will support you on this plan so in the end this is going to be a political judgment as much as a security judgment it it it seems as though uh Netanyahu initially rejected the plan then the majority of his cabinet pushed him to to accept it and then when it’s come out I mean he used the word in his reaction he he and he’s a very obviously incredibly experienced politician he managed to produce the word a nonstarter so I think there’s also I mean I don’t sort of make this too uncomfortable but is this not a bit of a kind of slap in the face for Biden I mean it doesn’t make him look very strong to come out make it’s a big announcement I think it was in this kind of huge Room in the White House this is my big peace plan for the Middle East and remember it’s not a peace plan really it was it was also the point giz it was happening whilst America was utterly consumed with the Fallout from Trump’s trial right so he’s coming out as serious big issues leader of the Free World as it were big Statesman thing but it’s actually quite modest I mean this isn’t the two-state solution this isn’t the future for how Israel deals with pales this is just get the hostages back stop the bombing put a bit of reconstruction money in so shouldn’t be that controversial he he lines it up it seems with Israel he announces it and then suddenly Netanyahu comes out and says it’s a nonstarter where did did did he say that himself or was that he yeah the phrase nonstarter isn’t part of Net’s response yeah right and then and then and so that of course gets picked up by the Press but just I mean the other thing of course which you know we’ve talked about a little bit in the background is that Biden said that a red line was Israel going into ruer ruer is the area where they’re now conducting military operations and so the White House has been falling over backwards to say well when we said that we meant not going into population centers then Israel went into population centers then they’re like oh well we meant no major operations and population centers meanwhile the operations and the result is that Israel has been dropping American bombs including a bomb that sparked this fire uh basically in a in a refugee camp and Biden now looks as though he sets a red line says you won’t go into Raa Israel goes into Raa he says here’s the peace plan we’ve agreed and Israel basically humiliates him and rejects peace plan and and somebody I was talking to on the ground said that for many Palestinians and people in the region they’re beginning to feel that these operations in Rafa almost have nothing to do with Palestinians or Hamas it’s some game between Israel and the United States or some game just to do with propping out netanyahu’s coalition by sounding as though he can be aggressive towards Biden but it can’t I suppose what I was trying to get to is it can’t make Biden look strong this no because um I suppose it makes him it shows that he’s just not giving up at trying to get this thing in the right place it shows that he’s prepared to take risks um he will know better than anybody that dealing with Netanyahu is a very very tricky thing to do is not Beyond Netanyahu to say one thing to his face and then say something else I think you know we’ve had experience of that um I think the other thing that’s that’s been interesting has been the the extent to which the issue of the hostages has not gone away isn’t going away there was actually a big March in London yesterday uh and there was a big March in Washington uh with the same slogan bring them home now and I think there is a feeling that Netanyahu isn’t really as focused on that as he should be because he’s so concerned about keeping this Coalition together with the right the hard right being in such an extreme position um I actually we know somebody who’s who’s got a relative who’s who’s involved in the hostage situation and who said that at a meeting that Netanyahu and others had with the some of the families of the hostages one of them came out saying God it’s like we’re the problem uh it was always like they were saying you know why are you making our lives so difficult when we’re trying to destroy Hamas and you know I think there’s there’s the the the extent to which this is now driven by the politics and the political survival of Netanyahu is not to be underestimated stepping back again for a moment to remind people about what’s what’s happening in Gaza itself so you know well over 30,000 people have now been killed um people will be aware that the operations moved down to Rua that the Israelis took over the strip uh that divides Gaza from Egypt and the humanitarian crisis has shifted again so another million people have been displaced I was talking uh early this morning to somebody who’s working on the humanitarian convoys it’s a very nasty picture there was a there have been changes I mean there have been moments of improvement moments of getting worse moments improving again I don’t want to go through all the details the last few weeks sometimes more trucks get through the crossings sometimes fewer The Crossings have to change but the basic story is that it’s in incredibly difficult for humanitarian agencies to deliver basic support people much more difficult than I’m used to um in other situations you know I I was a Difford Minister I was in Somalia South Sudan DRC in these countries broadly speaking the aid agencies can get stuff across borders but these borders are completely controlled by the Israeli army with the exception of this American floating Pier which has been damaged by storms so it’s all to do with who Israel will let through and you know is and the Egyptians the Egyptians got a role in this and the Egyptians also got a role in this but primarily it’s Israeli Security checks and this means that we are in a situation in which everything is going wrong in different ways so you know sometimes the trucks get through but then you can’t get the fuel through you can’t get the generators through or you get your humanitarian staff on the ground but then the security risk means they have to withdraw or you don’t have to cash or you can’t get the road access to get in so there’s all these moving Parts happening again and again and currently there are about 3,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition uh of children under five the majority of them are going days without eating we’ve had situations of babies under one dying from lack of food we’ve had um children their early teens ding FL I mean this is stuff where you know I I’m used to in Somalia you know I’ve seen mothers in Somalia walking in with babies on their chests and that infant dying because they can’t get plumpy nut but for this to happen in a middle-income country on the margins of one of the wealthiest countries on Earth is beyond imagining yeah and Al and also it’s hard for us I mean it’s you know you can it’s great you can talk to some of the people there and we can we can have conversations and the media can do a job up to a point but it’s impossible genuinely to know what’s happen on the ground because there’s no free access to International media at all maybe we we we should we should close on this I’ve just I’ve just looked up the the reactions of benir and smotrich so smotrich said as soon as the plan was announced he would not be part of a government that agrees to the proposed outline and ends the war without destroying Hamas uh benav said this deal means the end of the war and the abandonment of the goal to destroy Hamas it is reckless which it constitutes a victory for terrorism and a security threat to the state of Israel and said he would dissolve the government rather than agree to the proposal so that’s the that’s the choice that n in our in other words smartr and benab will not accept any ceasefire because any ceasefire involves accepting that their strategy which I believe makes absolutely no sense this fantasy that somehow through military operations you can eliminate Hamas just doesn’t stack up I mean there’s no military example anywhere in the world that this kind of stuff allows you to eliminate a terrorist group but they are continuing this strategy without an end because Hamas will never be crippled through these kind of operations and of course they’re continuing it with the full support of American Hardware American weapons American money so whatever Biden is saying in effects America is agreeing with the Israeli claim that it’s somehow there is a military solution to Hamas okay okay Ro well that’s it for this week uh I suspect we’ll be having another busy week we’re we’re recording this Monday to it’s going to be out Tuesday tomorrow evening we’ll be watching the TV debate between Richi sunak and K star but then doing an instant podcast live uh I also want to point our listeners to listen to the interview we’ve done with David blancet which I know you great yeah I I love that I thought he was a real star real you wish he was still involved in standing I do I was impressed by D he’s great yes we’ll doing that and also don’t forget if you haven’t caught up already with our American colleagues and partners and Friends Anthony scaramucci and Katy k the rest is politics us so all that and more coming this week it’s going to be busy week I hope everyone’s going to set aside some time because it matters it’s the election that’s why we’re doing so much it does and also this is on top of Rory’s paperback book tour so all that and more to come and before we go little plug uh this is the week where the paperback edition of my book uh Politics on the edge is published part part of a four-part series now with the other books that I’ve published and I’m doing a paperback tour so going to be doing London padium traveling to Bath traveling to Edinburgh traveling to Oxford traveling to Cambridge come along please hear me live talk about the elections and please if you get a chance buy a copy of the paperback edition okay and if we’re going if we’re in plugging mode Ro I’m leaving the studio shortly to go and record the audio of my next two books out shortly where I should be more positive about politics than your paperback that’s right I’m I’m more about the Grim reality when you vote and you’re more about the the positive populist fantasy all right R see you soon see you soon bye