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As kids, we were always learning and growing, but at some point as adults, we tend to lose that sense of curiosity and excitement. Therapy can help you continue that journey, because you're back to school, air can come at any age, and BetterHelp makes it easy to get started. With affordable online therapy, you can do from anywhere. Rediscover Possibility with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHELP.com. Every day, Sinta service reps help businesses get ready for the workday. They provide freshly-londered workware delivered every week. Maths, mops, restroom and cleaning supplies. First aid and safety products to help your employees stay safe. They even test and inspect fire extinguishers and emergency lights. Sinta's helps keep your business running smoothly. See what Sinta's can do for you. Visit Sinta's.com. Oh, I'm ready! And get ready for the workday. Welcome to the rest of us for this question time with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. So Rory, let's start with Caitlyn Parker. What are your views on Michel Barnier's appointment as Prime Minister of France? Is he up to the job? So you know this guy really well. Can I just sort of act as the questioner and the listener here? What we notice here is that Michel Barnier was associated with the right. I mean, what used to be called the go-list parties. He was like a parliamentary aid for various right-wing ministers. He served in various right-wing governments. So presumably, if you're from the French left who got the most votes, most seats and the parliament out of the last election. He must be completely furious that Macron's rejected the candidate that you've produced from the left, and has instead brought in somebody which would be a bit like, I don't know, the Labour Party's views if after they got most seats and parliament suddenly somebody appointed on a Jeremy Hunt as the prime minister. Is there a dodgy analogy? Look, what's happened is that we've talked a lot about the snap election and we've gone through the results, which essentially have ended up with this left alliance having the most seats, but not enough to form a majority and no alliance with which to form a majority. And then the sort of out on the far right, the pen's party, although not doing as well as they expect to do after the first round, having a pretty sizable chunk in there. And Macron has to appoint a prime minister. That prime minister has to form a government and has to try to get a budget through very, very soon. And went through all sorts of processes, all sorts of people, and has come up with the one that he thinks might be able to command a majority. The problem, and the reason why the left are, as you rightly say, very, very angry about it, is because what they think he has done in appointing Michel Barnier is deliberately appointing somebody that he hopes Le Pen will not pull the plug on. The problem is Le Pen now, although she didn't quote, win the election, this has given her enormous power because the truth is she can pull the plug. Yeah, because the left's not going to vote for Monier. So the only way he can really operate his prime minister is with tacit support from the far right deciding not to vote against him. So presumably Macron had two choices. He could either put his centrist block with the left, or he could make his centrist block depend on the vote, the far right. Why did he decide to make his centrist block depend on the vote from the far right rather than making his centrist block go into coalition with the left? Well, the name that the left put up, Lucie Casté, there was no way he was going to have her, simply because she is her entire shtick was about undermining the basic reforms that he's been taking through, added to which this is his attempt, I hesitate to use Theresa May's strong and stable formulation, it's an attempt to get some sort of stability. And he would argue, I think, that any of the other groupings would not have worked. But the reason why the left up in arms about it is because, as you say, they don't think this reflects sufficiently the outcome of the election. Now what Barney has to do and what he'll try and do in the next few days, he is a very, very skillful political figure. And I do think actually his role having held 27 European governments together whilst up against this never-endingly changing group of people and policies on the Brexit side negotiations, he did a pretty good job at holding those 27 together. He's a good listener, he's a detailed person, he has had some pretty choice things to say about Macron in the past, but he's somebody who I suspect will spend an awful lot of time sitting down for a long time with people who wouldn't necessarily consider him to be a political ally. His job is now to try to form a government. Key appointment is going to be the finance minister, don't know who that's going to be, and again, will he go left, will he go right, probably go try and go somewhere in the middle. But then he has to form a government, they have to get a budget through parliament, it's going to be very, very, very fraught. I would argue he's got one of the most difficult jobs in the world right now. And then get the budget through the EU and deal with the fact that France has got a budget deficit much bigger than the EU allows and its rules and sort of stuff. Exactly. So, tell us a little bit about Michel Bonnier. He ran, didn't he, at one point to be president, where he sounded like he was going quite right wing. He was making some quite sort of tough statements about immigration and obviously he came from a right wing party initially. Remember we interviewed him for leading? You were abroad. I was virtual and you were with him, but we were both there. Yeah, I've got to know him reasonably well, in fact, Fiona and I had a bit of time with him. He was housed in France last summer and he's, look, he is pretty right wing. I think that stands for immigration that he took. I think it was twofold. I think one that was him as he was trying to get the nomination for his party, signaling he was going to be tough on immigration. I think it may be one of the factors that Macron weighed up in deciding to call him in. He didn't really feature much in the runners and riders. He's somebody who, I remember when we were at his house, he's got a very, very nice wife who's pretty glamorous, but very, very down to earth. He was somebody who, because you do, when you saw him in the Brexit negotiation, you saw somebody who was very protocol, very quite austere. He looks very smart, doesn't he? He's got smart white hair cut, very well dressed, but very, very polite, even when he was dealing with the shambles of some of the circumstances that he had to deal with on Brexit, very, very polite, very measured. The time I saw him really expressing a bit of passion was when he was showing him around his office and all these sort of pictures on the wall and what have you, and the ones that he really, really, really clearly got emotional about were about when he won the Olympics for Albertville, which is the town in the Alps where he was born in the Alps. He was put in charge of getting the Olympics. Yeah. So it was quite nice. If you watched the Paralympic closing ceremony, Rory, I expect you were busy, but Macron, who got booed slightly at this thing, but there, right behind him in the shop was Barnier, who was suddenly gone from essentially being, you know, somewhat in retirement, to now being the prime minister. I think, look, I think it's going to be a very, very tough job. I think who ever got that job, it was going to be difficult to do it for the long term. But I think the more I thought about it, when he appointed him, I think he's got as good a chance as anyone of making it work, because of the skills he's developed over a lifetime. Two quick things. I mean, obviously you're going to have to get us Gabriela Tal now to be in Feudan leading, so that's your task for the month. Second thing is, I don't get why marrying the pen would vote for him. I would have thought if you were marrying the pen on the far right in France, all your interests, because what you care about is being president next time round, is staying as far away from the shambles of the government as you possibly can. You don't want to be in the position of the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg of being a minority voting to support a government and then taking the blame for what they do. Well, look, what the pen has always done is sort of play the long game quietly. She's not been making a big fuss through this whole thing. The Elise gave the impression that she'd sort of signaled, yeah, we'll go with Barnier. She's denied having had any conversation about that at all. I think she'll enjoy the sense of being very, very powerful without actually having to do very much and watch whilst the Macron government tries to form, tries to get a budget through, and then she'll be sitting there hoping that it's a complete mess. It's interesting you mentioned Atal. Atal, I am sure now we'll go away and start to think about how he might make a pitch for the presidency at the next election, because he has actually, he is widely considered to have done a pretty good job and is actually in the polling in France and they're obsessed with polls in France. But he's doing pretty well. He may end up coming out reasonably well from this, but we'll see. Now, Tova Wang, what are the implications of Dick Cheney backing Kamala Harris? Well, I don't think Dick Cheney backing Kamala Harris, what surprising though it is, is going to make very much difference to anyone really. I don't think Dick Cheney has a big natural constituency left. His daughter, Liz Cheney, on the other hand, I think has been a courageous outspoken appealing voice to the Republican right. I'm more worried by Elon Musk endorsing Trump, because despite our views on Elon Musk, what of course you pick up very quickly on Twitter is he has a massive fan base, particularly of young men who believe that because he's the richest man in the world, he's the smartest man in the world, and like nothing more than sharing weird fake handwritten slides of seven leadership lessons from Elon Musk, and Musk now saying he's going to reform government efficiency, potentially gives permission for some of these kind of business types to be like, well, I don't not sure I really like Trump, but if he's bringing in Musk to sort out the efficiency of government, so I am a bit worried about that. Yeah, there's no doubt he's got a massive following. As we said last week, he sort of bombards Twitter with his own views. He can get attention for anything that he says or does. He posted a truly ridiculous picture of himself with these huge letters, D-O-G-E Department of Government Efficiency. I think that you're probably right about Cheney, I don't know if you've seen that the latest campaign ad that the Harris campaigners has put out is a collection of comments from, it's got Mike Pence, it's got Millie, the former head of the military, it's got the guy, the former defense secretary who's done it into your CNN, saying that the nation's security is at risk with Trump, it's got John Bolton, Trump's security adviser, they're running on this line, the caption is, take it from the people who work for him, Donald Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, our democracy, the shooting must be, it's not that long ago, historically, that Bush and Cheney were in charge and had very, very big support. I mean, Cheney was the original neoconservative, he's like one of the guys on the staging from kind of Reaganism to Trump, so he can't be, surely he's not completely irrelevant. Yeah, I suppose that's right, it's just, I mean, I suppose the question is really all comes down to these key swing voters, I've been talking to democratic organisers here in the States over the last few days, and my goodness, we're getting into funny, funny games, the amount of money going into targeting just 100, 150,000 people who could decide this election. Well, thank God for that. So little of it though seems to be about policy, the basic belief in US politics at the moment is that it's all about peer pressure, so in America, unlike in Britain, the inflation on whether or not you voted as public, so a lot of the communication now is about reaching out to people who you think are sympathetic towards you, and obviously avoiding the people you think might vote the other way, and it's trying to guilt trip them, you know, your neighbours voted, your friends voted, why haven't you voted yet? And they can do that in the primaries, they can do that in postal votes, and obviously they'll do that on the final day. Just before we leave America, we did have a question from somebody asking about how the electoral college works, this is Gillian Booth, still can't get my head around how the American electoral college works, seems such a strange system compared to the Australian electoral system. Can you do a for our lesson form list, this explanation, illuminate this for an old Aussie. So in 48 of the States plus the District of Columbia, there's a winner takes all system, which means that if you first pass the post in a state, you get all the electors from that state coming in behind you, and the number of electors that each state has is roughly proportional to its population, but it favours the smaller states because you get a minimum number of electors in the smaller states. And the reason that this is absolutely vital and the reason the entire US election is coming down to seven or probably more likely three or even one state is that if you can narrowly squeak through with even 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania, you can swing the whole thing. And the final thing to understand about electoral college is in the very unlikely situation that you have, although not completely unlikely given where we are in the polls that you have a tie in the electoral college, it then goes through to Congress to determine who becomes president, which is where it will really matter who's got the votes and the House of Representatives. Just to let people know that the numbers and the states that we'll all be talking about on the night, Pennsylvania is the one that everybody talks about as being the most key. That's got 19 Wisconsin 10, Michigan 15, North Carolina 16, Georgia 16, Nevada 6, Arizona 11. But I think Pennsylvania is going to be absolutely key. They are spending on both sides, spending an absolute fortune, as you say, of all the money. This is out fund raising by a factor of almost three to one at the moment. I'm pleased if they're saying to you that they're putting all that money into small numbers of people and targets advertising because they have to do these big nationwide stuff. But ultimately, there are so many places where everybody knows that what the result is going to be as we talk to Frank Luntz about that on leading recently where you know who's going to win California, you know who's going to win Alabama, and the rest. That's where you fight. That's a question for you. Alex Cromson. Why is it that there is often such a large divergence between polls and betting markets? What does each tell us? For example, right now, many polls have Harris is pulling ahead, but the betting markets have Trump as the favorite 53 to 46. Any thoughts on this? Maybe explain a bit to listeners how these betting markets work. I'm not big better, but I think that the betting markets are often more a reflection of where money is being placed. So that might be the fact that somebody might want to manipulate the betting markets to get the odds changed, but also there may well be a lot of kind of people who bet on politics who just, you know, who want Trump to win. The big betters, they are absolutely fixated upon the outcome. We interviewed Nate Silver recently, and that'll be out on leading soon. And he was making the point that in this election, it's going to be so close. He's not sure. Actually, he's going to bet on it, but where the big betters go, they will be putting huge sums of money on, often at very, very, very, very small odds. Okay. But what I think the betting markets here have been driven by probably is a combination of the chatter, the polls, and where the bets are going. People don't necessarily bet according to what the polls are saying. Does that make sense? Got you. Here's a question that came to you from some of that you actually met. We met a few weeks ago, we had a lovely chat about Timson, so that's James Timson, the President's Minister, who instantly just wrung me an hour ago, and who's looking forward to coming on the podcast. He's the man that ran this amazing business that employs XFenders, who's now the Minister of State for Justice. Corbin in the NHS. And everything in between. My question is, would you be in support of some potentially means tested fee for missed hospital appointments? It's disgraceful, particularly when the NHS is on its knees. Over 120 million appointments are missed every year. So let's say, Alster, why wouldn't you support people being charged, I don't know, five or 10 pounds for a missed appointment? I remember meeting this gentleman, and I also remember the chat. And that same day, the doctor that I was seeing was complaining to me about how many missed appointments they are having to deal with. I was actually, because I would try everything not to miss an appointment. And I was saying, actually, I found it incredible that I get a letter, I get an email, I get a text message, and I get a message on an app to remind me about my appointment. And quite often, I've been getting phone calls to remind me of an appointment. And I kept saying to people, "Isn't this a huge waste of money to have all these different ways to remind people they've got an appointment?" And they were saying, "Well, it's because we've got so many missed appointments at the moment." So if you charge 10 pounds per appointment, we'd be able to generate 1.2 billion pounds a year off these missed appointments. So why not? How much do these systems cost to chase down 10 pounds at an appointment? I don't know. Some countries, obviously, charge a minimal amount for an appointment of any sort in the first place, whether you miss it or not. And the idea, I suppose, is that if you charge people a little bit, they're more likely to value the appointment, and they may be more likely to turn up. So even if it was a notional sum, like, I don't know, 5 pounds or something. I notice you're slightly avoiding this. Is this because you feel this is a massive political bomb, and that if you supported any form of charging... Well, I know, by the way, if you necessarily indicate anything about what a labour would do, I did notice Kia Stalmer emphasizing the importance of reform. Look, at some point, they may have to look at all sorts of different funding issues. I don't know. I, as a human being, who basically supports the NHS and thinks that our doctors and nurses do an incredibly difficult job on the massive stress facing, often, quite a lot of sort of angry people. I just think that people should, if they have an appointment and they've agreed to that appointment, I'd like it to be easier to change the appointment. I quite often find it a real struggle to change the appointment. You get the text messages, you get the letter, then trying to change it can be quite tricky. But I think on balance, I would, but I'd love to know how much it would cost and whether we'd have a system that would do it without actually end the up costing as even more. Now, Rory, this question is from somebody called Anthony Save the NHS. If you were going to get questions from people who directed at me, this was very much for you. When Rory is on Radio 4, he uses a perfect received pronunciation accent. When he does the rest his politics podcast, he reverts to a mid-Atlantic twang, dropping end consonants. Is this him trying to appeal to make this? I don't notice that, but I hadn't noticed that when you're on Radio 4, you will say party. But when you're, I notice this in Chicago, you will say party. Maybe it's just I'm a weird sort of mimic of the other person. Well, I'm not obviously mimicking you, but maybe my mid-Atlantic twang is some sort of weird attempt to adjust to Alistair. I don't know. Do you recognise Anthony Save the NHS's point? I've been mocked for this for a long time. Have you? It is also true I'm married to an American, and it's also true that my kids can literally change from a complete American accent to a complete British accent, depending on who they're talking to. But do you think when you're on the BBC, because he specifically mentioned Radio 4, do you think when you're on the BBC, it sort of speaks to something very British within you and you have to speak like a true Brit? Yeah, it could be that. All right, right, quick break, and then we'll come back with more questions. As an hour before boarding, there's only one place to go, the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the Club. There, you can recharge before the big adventure. Or enjoy a locally inspired dish. You can recline in a comfy chair to catch up on your favourite show. Or order a craft cocktail at the bar. Whatever you're in the mood for, find the detail that moves you with curated touches at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the Club. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at Chase.com/SafireReserve. It's issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.M. member, FTSC, subject to credit approval. So, dahir, hey, Rory and Alastair, have you been following the recent tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia? What do you think about Egypt's involvement in the crisis? What are your thoughts, over the years? Well, this is another one that is sort of massively important, but doesn't seem to be getting that much attention at all. So, essentially what's happened is that Ethiopia landlocked since Eritrea moved off after a pretty brutal war that I covered back in the '80s, I think it was, becomes landlocked. Once access to the sea does a deal with Somali land, does a 50-year lease on a naval base, but of course, Somali land is a breakaway territory from Somalia. The deal, in quotes, unspoken, partly spoken, is in exchange for getting the access to the sea and the ability to build a port. They're basically releasing 12 miles of coastline from Somalia land that they will recognize Somalia land. Somalia, therefore, very, very, very unhappy. Take out the ambassador, shut down their consulates, and meanwhile, now Egypt, big power, big country, has decided to give them support, so thereby, it's all getting a little bit tense. It gets even more complicated because all these other players, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, to name three, also back different provinces within Somalia. And Somali land itself, I visited Somalia land in many ways, has been a success story, be much more peaceful than the rest of Somalia, has done better in terms of its administration, in terms of holding elections, in terms of economic development. A lot of very prominent British Somalis are from Somali land and are very sympathetic towards Britain recognizing Somali lands independence, which the world has tended to hold off from doing because they're very worried that Somali is going to disintegrate further. And this question of these policies around ports and roads, all the way down on Horn of Africa, is vital because you've got China investing in ports, you've got UAE investing in ports, you've got other Gulf countries investing in ports, and as you say, Ethiopia, all of them trying to get access to that coastline. Now, in the case of Djibouti, I think they've managed to sell part of their port to the French, part of the Americans, part of the Chinese, and part of the UAE. Djibouti is the only place outside China where China now has a military base. Right, it's certainly got a Chinese military base, along with everybody else's military base as well. Yeah. So Egypt has now sent a couple of C-130 military airplanes to Mogadishu, they're planning to send 5,000 soldiers in the short term to support an African Union force. Somalia and Ethiopia, constant war of words about this, but it's, you know, I'd say it's quite tense, and Turkey, interesting how often Turkey sort of pops on these things, Turkey has been the one that's been trying to sort of broker some kind of calm down agreement. Well, definitely worth keeping an eye on Somalia. Okay. Karina Marches. Can you please speak about the recent situation of Venezuela, and what the realistic chances are of the opposition between Edmondo Gonzales and Maria Corinna-McHado, restoring democracy, especially since Gonzales has now taken asylum in Spain? Well, I fear that you've answered your own question there, Corinna. Yeah. It's been a real blow. People were hopeful. Just to remind people, we covered the Venezuelan election in quite a lot of detail, but it's pretty clear that the opposition won the election, and that Maduro effectively stole it. And there was hope coming off this, that there would be a negotiated settlement particularly led by people like Brazil, Lula and Brazil, slightly more sympathetic towards Maduro, seen as a negotiator who might be able to get some sort of deal or coalition going between Maduro's government and the opposition. But this flight after Gonzales had taken refuge in the Argentine embassy, with him now going to Spain, feels to people as though that's sadly the opposition giving up on that process and effectively Maduro being, at least for the time being, reinforced in power. So we assume, we see you there, talk about Lula, and we'll talk about the American reaction, the European Union reaction, or whatever it might be. But she now talks about this as being like a network of countries where when an autocrat does something as brazen as this, comprehensively lose an election, refuse to release the data of the results, but just say that you've won it. But then support comes in all sorts of ways from the other autocrats and autocratic regimes of the world. It must be unbelievably heart-rending, frustrating to live in a country where you've, like Gonzales, helped by Machado, you won an election, and the end result is that you're being hunted down by the police security forces are going to do whatever they do to, and you have to get on the plane and go and take asylum in Spain. It's absolutely horrific. No, very sad. Final question from me, Georgie may not. Paralympics GB have demonstrated overcoming challenges and achieving huge success in Paris. How have they achieved this notable success? And who, person party organisation, needs to learn the most from the team and their approach? Well, I have been following the Paralympics quite closely. My son Callum makes films about Paralympics, and they won an Emmy last year for the first one, The Rising Phoenix, and they're in the middle of making another one now. And I've absolutely loved the Paralympics. GB have got, they came second in the medals table behind China, China will weigh ahead of everybody. But to come second is pretty remarkable, 49 gold medals. I think 2012, London 2012, I think was a key moment. I think that was the first Paralympics where people saw full stadiums, they saw amazing achievement the whole country got stuck in. I think we've got to give a big shout out to John Major's government, I can't remember exactly what year it was in 1993 when the National Lottery was formed, and the National Lottery has been a huge funder. And I'll tell you what's been amazing, virtually every medal winner who's done an interview has mentioned the National Lottery. Now, that's great. Well, when we talk about learning things Roy, that says to me, there is a spin doctor working for the Paralympics GB who will say to the before they do, everybody make sure you mention the lottery. And I'll tell you where I think government can learn from this. Just think about it, investing in the long term in good people to deliver clearly set objectives by giving them the support that they need. That is the lesson of the Paralympics, and I think it's been absolutely brilliant to be applied to the UK water sector. And indeed to all sorts of other major challenges that we face. Let me ask you a final question. You've told us about your ketchup fear, but we've had a question coming in asking whether you have any particular phobias or fears. So apart from your famous fear of ketchup, are there any other things that you are rationally anxious about? Well, I think my ketchup here is entirely rational. I have a pathological fear of being late. I have recurring dreams about being stuck on escalators. So sometimes if I go on an escalator, I just get a little sort of sense of this escalator is going to stop and it's going to become a symbol of a stopped life. But apart from that, no, I'm very, very normal. Yes, it could be totally normal. Great. I don't think I have really weird fears. The only time I've been aware of something powerful like that is when I was a 10 or 11, I went to stay with my friend Thomas Gretchen, whose father worked in Strasbourg for the European Court of Human Rights, and I went on to the roof of the cathedral at Strasbourg. And I felt that I was being dragged to the edge. It's incredibly powerful sense in the center that I was being sort of pulled off the edge of the cathedral roof. Yeah. So that was vertigo. And I haven't really had it since. And when I went back as a minister to Strasbourg, I went up onto the roof to see if it was still there. And it wasn't. I was able to stand on the roof fine. But as a child, that was my really powerful experience of vertigo, that sense that a magnet was dragging me off the edge of the roof. Oh, no. That one would be very nice. There we go. So me, it's catch up in you. It's vertigo. We're both very normal. Very good. All right. Have a great weekend, Alice. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hi. It's Katty here from the rest of his Politics US, Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about this great new series we've done on how Donald Trump won the White House in 2016. We're going to take you right back in time and explain just how Donald Trump went from being that extraordinary, apprentice reality TV star and real estate developer in New York City to being president of the United States in just 18 months. We're going to start right from the moment he descended the escalator to November the 8th. I was with him at 6 p.m. on November the 8th election night. And we're going to regal you with stories related to the campaign, why he has so much loyal support, what he does in debate preparation in 2016, all of the different entry that went on in the campaign and some of the things that we were battling internally while we were also fighting the Clinton campaign. There's no doubt that 2016 was this extraordinary historic moment it changed American politics. It hangs over the country, it hangs over the world still today. So come join us. The rest is Politics US, wherever you get your podcasts, it's a four-part mini series. Find out how Trump won the White House in 2016 and it'll tell you a lot about where we are in 2024. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
