357. Political New Year's resolutions, Elon Musk, and what happens next in Taiwan?

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Welcome to the rest of this politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell, 1st of 2025, Rory. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Scottish Hogman A happening. Absolutely, absolutely. No place on earth like Scotland at any time of the year, but especially around about now. Well, Alistair, happy, happy New Year. And we're going to follow a plan that you've brought together where we're going to talk through New Year resolutions, but we're going to talk about

what future plans the British should have, Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems, but also what the future might hold for Donald Trump, for Elon Musk. And what things might happen in 2025 that nobody has yet really thought about? What could this year hold? But before that, can I just quickly, cheekily ask, are you somebody who does New Year resolutions? Yeah. Yeah. But are they secret? Do you tell us what they are?

I saw, I kind of do do news resolutions, but I don't really hang on them for very long. Very good. They last about three days for that. Yeah, maybe a week. What are yours? I don't do them. I don't do them. I should start. Here we are. My new year of resolution for the year is I'm going to get going writing a serious book this year.

OK, not long ago, you were talking about writing a novel. Has that gone off the boil? It's no good, my novel. Unlike you, I don't think I'm able to write a novel. You've actually written a novel successfully. I've decided I'm no good at the dialogue. Oh, don't give up. No, that should be a New Year's resolution. It needs to be per civilian about your novel. I actually, very, very rarely, actually, that I will have a New Year's resolution. This is the first time I can remember and about

15 years where I haven't got a book actually on the go. I've always had a book on the go. And often I've had two or three books on the go. And at the moment, I literally don't have a book. I wonder what it is because the podcast is taking a lot of money. I know it is consuming a lot of mental energy, isn't it? Time and mental energy. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I mean, yeah. So let's start with New Year's Resolutions then. So how about some political New Year's resolutions? I'm going to start with you. What should Labor's New Year resolution be?

Oh, right. Okay. Labour's new year resolution should be. I think pick fights with the right people and the right causes. I think one of the reasons why the Labour government is sort of had a very short honeymoon and is just sort of surrounded by this sense of negativity. Partly media. The media has gone absolutely back into kind of traditional anti-labor mode. But I think in part is because Labour have been picking lots of fights with

They're all people. And so you mean pensioners ever went to fuel, farmers now waspie women, just to remind people that don't know about waspie women, that's about women who get caught on a cliff edge on when their pensions were going to kick in. Another one in Keir Starmer's research speech, just before Christmas,

Through his sort of picking a fight with the civil service, which wasn't necessary, this sort of, you know, sitting in the tepid bath of complacency, whatever. Managed decline, yeah. Yeah. You know, I think some good fights. I think one of Tony Blair's best speeches as Labour leader, best conference speech, and actually he didn't agree that it was one of his best and he retreated from it. But I would recommend that Labour go and read Tony Blair's forces of conservatism speech.

where the fights that we wanted to take were the fights against the people who were holding the country back. I think you could have a very good, and some of these are about thematic fights. I've been really alarmed the extent to which the kind of the fight against poverty and the fight against inequality and the fights against injustice have sort of, you know, slightly gone off the radar.

I think they should pick a fight properly, probably with Elon Musk. I know that's a dangerous thing to do, but this guy is a pretty dangerous force right now. Pick a fight. I know you think that the super rich attacks enough already, but the super rich who do not contribute.

taxes, who try to spend all the time avoiding taxes. I think there's a good fight to be had there. I think there is a good fight to be had with people who are trying to take the country back to sorry to echo Kamala Harris, but on some of what the right defineers woke issues, which are proper campaigns of social justice. Just tactically, would you be picking a fight with Nigel Farage?

Am Kemi Badenok, or one of the two particularly on his risk of putting the spotlight on Faraj? How would you think about that? Listen, the spotlight is on Faraj, whether they like it or not, because the Faraj is very good at getting the spotlight set upon him. I think they are both Kemi Badenok and Nigel Faraj are both absolutely forces of conservatism.

They are people who are on the right of politics, and I think they have to be taken on. One of the reasons Nigel Farage, and he was your politician of the year, and the reason for that is because he's exploited his arrival in parliament and his addition to the strength of his political platform, he's exploited it very, very well. That's something at the point that you were making. So you can't ignore him. You have to take him on in argument all the time.

So, I'm not saying you make him the big figure of your attacks, but he is a big part of why the country is moving to the right, and Labour's got to drag it back to the centre. Having done so very, very well in the election campaign, having won that election, but since then, I just feel they've been picking fights for all people.

Yeah, that's a really, really, really good observation. I mean, I'll give my penny worth, but I think actually what you've just said is more interesting. I mean, my sense of where labor's gone wrong is that they've done a lot of small things which appeal to the UK treachery.

sort of sensible small technocratic decisions. The treasury has always wanted to get rid of the wind of fuel allowance, has always supported raising the pension age on waspy women, has never liked the exemptions for farmers in inheritance tax.

And Rachel Reeves, I think, is the heart of this problem. I think she is thinking too much still like a civil servant, as though she's a sort of bank of economist still. So she's doing these things which have presented to every minister. George Osborne makes jokes about this. This is basically the entire shopping list that every chance has been prevented with for 14 years. Most of them have had the political now s not to make those their first moves. And the problem is that they don't add up to enough.

Going back, I mean, you know, you often are quite self-deprecating, interestingly, about your early stage labor. But I think that it is true that almost everything you did felt like it was about modernization or it was about social justice or about economic dynamism. There was a kind of sense that everything tied into this.

And they almost had this with the word growth. And I think it's a terrible, terrible decision to give up on a target of growth and talk instead about this sort of slightly tepid thing that everybody basically has achieved since the 1950s of GDP per capita and rising living standards, because that would then allow them to do quite radical things instead of short-term things.

And so anyway, that's the enemy. And I think my final thought on that as whenever I reflect back to my own time in government.

is it is partly about Kiyosama really working out what he thinks. It took me nearly six months, I remember, as a prison minister, before I really worked out what the one big thing was. And for me, that was violence and prisons. And once I got it, I could then tie everything back into it. So I could explain that because the prisons were unsafe, people weren't getting educated, because the prisons were unsafe, there was reoffending, because the prisons were unsafe, drugs were getting in, et cetera.

And I remember resisting it a bit like here is a moment saying well you know it's very complicated there are many things we have to do it's not about a slogan but actually it was really helpful when i finally got to that boiled it down to the big insight and i think that should be growth.

Well, that goes back to something we discussed a few weeks ago, when I, this was before Kirst how did his research speech, when I said I thought this should sort of, you know, take a deep breath, analyze the last few months, weeks and months and then come back in the new year with the plan for growth. Here is the plan for growth, almost like a big

set piece event now it's difficult to do that now because it will it will look like what the media will call another relaunch but i still think if growth is the big thing. Going through every and presumably should be should be well it should be for two reasons one because the economy is in a bit of a mess and to because they said it was going to be.

And even though, as we said, at the time of the budget, they were specific about taxes, they were definitely not going to raise and quiet about the others. But the impression has been created and landed that they said they weren't going to put up taxes and they have.

Um, they said everything was funded, but now it seems that it's black hole and you know, therefore went to fuel payment, et cetera. So, but I think actually it is still important that they come back in the new year. And this is the plan for growth. Here are the big chapters of the plan for growth. Here is where we're, you know, we're, we're addressing industrial strategy. Here's where we're doing skills. Here's where we're doing, you know, Europe. Here's where we're doing all these different things that relate to growth and give themselves a kind of big root map.

that takes them through the next 12 months. I was speaking to a minister a couple of days ago who was saying, and actually said, look, you're sounding to get a bit grungy on the podcast. I said, well, yeah, I am getting a bit grungy. And he said, look, just relax a bit. We've got four years. And I said, listen, you haven't got four years.

This is the period at which, yes, you can, this is the period where there's pre-delivery. You know, we used to talk about in 1997, Tony had this phrase, post euphoria, pre-delivery. And it got, and it did get very kind of negative in terms of the overall mood. And you have, during that period, that's when an awful lot of opinions are being formed that are very hard to shift once they get, once they set. So the second half of the Parliament,

is when you can begin to think about the next election. Right now should be absolutely focused on this idea of a root map. Where are we going? Month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year. How are we building the economy? How are we getting the health services set up properly?

I think they're doing parts of it well, and I know Keir doesn't like this idea of what I call the narrative arc of a parliament, but you need one. Why doesn't he? It seems to me completely central. Even someone like me who can be a bit too verbose and a bit technocratic, I really concluded that my big lesson is narrative

has to be tied to action, that there's simply no point. And there's a reason for that. The point that I'd try to make to him is that it's not as he might be tempted to think just a question of sort of cheap spend to the media. It's totally essential for leading and managing the government itself. That narrative is almost more important internally than externally. It's the thing that makes everybody at their desk understand this is what we're aiming for. This is where we're going.

Yeah, and I think why not? I think because he feels that the way that he's done the job so far, he's done it by being this, you know, hardworking, serious, sensible, steadfast. These are all good qualities, by the way, don't get me wrong, they're good qualities. And I think he thinks that

possibly thinks that people are trying to make him something that he's not they say well you know that's what tony blader that's what bill clinton did that's what macaron was doing he's not that style of politician but i i think for the government as a whole you're absolutely right it's in this is for internal communications as well as external public communications.

You have to have this sense of that everybody inside the government knows what the whole of government is about and trying to do. And I still feel they're struggling to get to that. Now, the one big advantage, Rory, is that they've still got a main opposition party that seems to be struggling to find its feet as well. So what's your new year resolution for the Conservative Party? Well, the Conservatives are in crisis. And I was with senior Tories yesterday.

Hold on a row, before you go on, my definition of a crisis is an event or series of events that essentially comes together to form an existential threat. So when you say crisis, do you think that is an existential threat?

I think it's close to a threat to its existence because the crisis is about whether they essentially merge with reform. And what's happening is that a lot of their major funders are holding the money back. They don't feel there's anywhere for their money to go. And the most live debate is what to do about Frage. It's this extraordinary situation where Frage with five MPs.

appears to have more momentum, more clarity than the Conservatives with well over 100. And it's a situation where despite the fact that the Conservatives lost far more seats than Lib Dems and Labour than they did to reform, they're totally obsessed with reform. And Kemi Badenock

has really got to find that oxygen. So she has to find a way of making sure that Faraj seems irrelevant and that she's the leader of the opposition, not him. And how does she do that? I think she's firstly got to get out of her comfort zone. So instead of doing interviews with the spectators, she should be doing an interview with the rest of the politics.

Secondly, I think that there is an absolutely golden opportunity to nail Labour now on growth in the economy. If Labour doesn't manage to do what you're talking about in the beginning of next year, there's a really good story for the Conservatives to tell that this Labour government is failing to make the investments, failing to reform, putting money into wages and unions.

And I think there's also a gaping hole in defence, international security, foreign policy, where again, there's a good conservative message about investing in the armed forces, Britain playing a bigger role in the world. So she should take that opportunity and I can't see her yet taking it. What do you think she should do?

Well, this relates to what I was going to say that I think the New Year's resolution should be, which is to be serious. I don't find them very serious at the moment about the sort of things that you're saying. So I'll give you away your point about, I think at the moment, I think on defence and foreign policy, actually the Labour government's been pretty good. I think John Healy's very effective as defence minister. I think he's saying and doing the right things. I think that David Lamy's actually been pretty good.

And I think they both come across in the jobs that they're doing as being serious. Whereas I don't get that sense from as a whole from the shadow cabinet, notwithstanding that our friend Audrey Mitchell is very good. But I'll tell you what I think in relation to what you've just said. So I'll give you an example of what I think she should say and do.

that there's no way that they can sort of turn around and say, ah, but we would invest more in defense because even though it irritates the public that labor keep banging on about the inheritance that they got from the conservatives, it's true. They left a complete mess. And if I were Kenny Badenock, I would own that.

I would own that. I would say, look, I'm not going to deny we left an absolute mess on so many fronts. And we all have to take responsibility for that. But now the challenge that I face as the new leader of the Conservative Party is what would I do now? How would I rebuild the economy now? And here's a new set of ideas. How would I shape a new foreign policy now? And here's a different approach to the one that we did before.

But I think while she, this has been her weakness in Prime Minister's question so far. It's almost as if the last government never happened and the world started six months ago when the Labour government was elected. And I just don't think that can be effective. So she should own this place and can't be intuitive, but she should own

the perceived and real failings of the last government, and use that as her lever for change. She did more of that in Rob generic, didn't she? Because I remember her speech began with apologies. You're absolutely right. I mean, however unfair it is to labor, technically, it's inevitable. She's got to say, I'm really sorry. We fucked up. And this is the way that I'm going to turn it around.

and I inherited a dismal situation. But here's the new plan, and this is the way in which we're going. And it's that that we're not yet feeling, and she's got to work out what on earth she's doing with reform, because I think that's the thing to just keep watching, because it's going to feel increasingly as she struggles.

Reform is now in opinion polls ahead of both Tories and Labour. Well, in some. But that's almost more of a problem internally within the Conservative Party than it is for Labour. Labour doesn't really have the option of being reformed. But the Conservatives have that dangerous temptation. Last one on the UK before we move on to some good international stuff.

How do you think the lib Dems get more traction and i'm going to let you talk about that because i've got absolutely no idea what to do about a day but he was your runner up in polish the year he was your he was he was beaten only by.

by Nigel Farage in your eyes. This is not going to surprise you, but it'll probably go down like a bag of sick with them. As you said, the Tories were more under threat from the Lib Dems than reform when we're talking, looking at the last election and where the reason he fought the campaign, he did. I'm not talking about the silly, funny stuff, but on the policy and the messaging was much more focused at soft Tories, as it were.

I think the Lib Dems need to properly lead the debate on the impact of Brexit. I just don't understand why they've gone quite on it. They say the old thing, but really they've let it go.

The fact that you and I, how many events have you and I done between us this year, dozens of them. I was in, I didn't invent the other day with a law firm. And it was a mixture of adults. It was a sort of bring your kids thing. It was adults, kids. And I did my usual thing. How many people here think breaks it's been a success? Zero. Zero. And that's the same wherever you go, North and South.

Can I just interrupt for a second? This law firm, for their family Christmas party instead of getting Santa Claus, got used to talk about Brexit, were the toddlers not a little bit disappointed when they were telling them that? Well, the youngest was a young boy, he's only about six, but some of them were mainly

I don't know what my kids would think if they turned up for the company christmas party and instead of getting a whole lot of the alistair talking to them about the single market. You constantly drag your kids off to see exhibitions Tibetan carpets and the like I mean you know.

I think so, kettle black pot, etc. I honestly, anyway, this was a law firm that was bringing, they were also inviting schools in. I'm going to give them a shout out. It was Vincent Mason's and they have relationships with local schools, so the kids gave me from the schools as well. Anyway, my point is,

Every single one of them thought Brexit was going badly and it was a bad thing and yet you have just last week here starmer rightly setting up some sort of unit in government talk about how do we get close relationship with the trade.

with on trade with the european union and break down some of these barriers that have been set up and you have the idiot johnson out saying you know this is a we've got a fight fight fight to stop the Brexit sellout. I'll tell you what the other reason why i think it'd be good thing to do.

Because one of the things that the growing influence of reform in the debate, reform being a classic populist party that doesn't really have serious thought through policy positions, it has positionings which it exploits for politics. And that has sort of, you know, to sort of negativize the debate in terms of how that debate is conducted. Actually, the Lib Dems saying, can we stop focusing on this debate on a set of myths

And can we actually focus on fact and reality and i think that would give them traction. And the technical problem presumably is that they ran a campaign which was all about focusing on very much door step local issues and it was try triumphantly successful. They got a lower percentage that they got under net clag but enormous numbers of seats.

And they deliberately didn't really have big national policy issues. It was all about, you know, cleaning up the waterways here, working with this community hospital. So the question is, is Ed Davies a leader going to be able to transition, having had this enormous success following one strategy? Is he going to be able to become a national leader? Now, I would say that is their opportunity with the conservatives this week. This could be an enormous and labor week could be an enormous opportunity for a really dynamic Lipton leader.

to really do a kind of macro and establish themselves properly in the centre ground and roar into the next election, dominating the airwaves. Let's say it was Brexit or it could be net zero or it could be devolution. It could be to take a big issue and basically say, I'm sick to death of living in a political system where the debate that we have

is really not focused on what is actually happening. But on these political myths created by these charlatans like Varaj and Johnson, I'm going to tell you the facts about this and I'm going to hammer them. Because as an opposition party, you need campaigns. Now, what are the Lib Dems right now campaigning on? I don't know. And I'm afraid you need to stop at this point appearing in Santa hats. I mean, enough already. We've got the point. He's funny. He does bungee jumps. He does the stuff.

He needs to now start positioning himself as a potential man in government in four years time. And that involves getting rid of that stuff. Well, you can't have watched it because otherwise you raised it. I presume you didn't see him on Have I Got News for you? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Right. OK, let's let's go from Have I Got News for you to another celebrity politician in the form of Donald Trump. How worried should we be

after January the 20th when Donald Trump becomes president? Well, the answer is very, very worried because America really matters to the world and because he's coming into a world which is much more dangerous and unstable than it was in 2016-17 when he took over last time. So the whole post-war system

believed that the way that you stop wars, stop the First World War, Second World War, was based on four things. One of them was making sure that there was open trade, so economies were interlinked. And the great example there, obviously, is Germany, France, where they decided that the way to avoid going to war again was to get into this European Union.

The second thing that people decided is that you needed generous international assistance to rebuild economies and that was the marshal plan, that was rebuilding Germany and Japan after the war. The third thing was the setting up of this rule based international order which was.

the International Court of Justice and eventually the International Criminal Court and the UN and all these attempts to try to create an international system with rules, and those rules were around respecting borders. So Putin not invading curate, the Ukraine, but also respecting human rights, which doesn't matter if you're a Western ally or not, you should be held accountable if you commit war crimes. And the final thing was American hegemony that put this whole thing together.

And I think the problem with Trump is he hits every single one of those four things. He replaces open trade with protectionism. He replaces a rule-based international order with cozying up to tyrants. He replaces development and support for other countries with cutting development age in America first. And he puts America into an isolated position that's undercutting the world over you.

Yeah, look, I think it's potentially horrific. I guess, and maybe this is wishful thinking, I was sort of, I was talking to somebody who was trying to explain to me. And somebody who is not naturally Republican, but did vote for Trump, who was trying to explain to me why he thought that he is not going to be as bad as we thought this time. That last time, he wasn't very well prepared.

and it was all totally chaotic. This time he's much better prepared and he's doing what classic art of the deal negotiation of staking a very, very tough position or all sorts of difficult issues. And then he's going to wind his neck in a fair bit. I don't know if that's right or wrong. I do think on Ukraine, the one interesting thing I took out of that interview he did not long after the election,

Did a big TV interview that he was definitely signaling a kind of change of tone in Ukraine Either to the one that he was pursuing the election or that the ones that the real kind of you know the JD Vance's who say have nothing to do with it was saying so it may be that he'll be.

he'll be different. I think his economic stuff, if he goes ahead with the sort of, you know, tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language line that he had during the campaign, I think that could be a disaster for the world economy. But again, is that sort of part of a, you know, I'm the tough guy, get used to dealing with me approach to things I don't know. But no, I think it's alarming, but the fact is that

We're going to have to live with it before years. Well, predicting the American economy is a mug's game and people predicted, people I admire immensely, like Larry Summers predicted recessions and inflation that didn't happen. But it is true that he's taking over an American economy that's very different from 2017 because there's higher inflation and interest rates are higher.

So if he decides to push ahead with tariff barriers, which will drive up the cost of goods, say 110% import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles or 60% general tariffs on Chinese, Chinese goods, if he does that, if he throws out 11 million undocumented migrants, illegal immigrants, that will create a labor shortage crunch.

If he begins spending like Billio through on defense and cutting taxes very dramatically, that'll roar up the deficit. So the worst case scenario you could see is that you end up with inflation taking off, the cost of servicing the debt taking off, and America finding itself in stagflation, finding itself in a situation where it's got inflation and recession at the same time. We're not really

Factoring that in, and I don't know what percentage chance you put on that is that 20, 30% chance. But my guts is that too many of the kind of people that we meet working in the markets have been so excited by the fact that the stock markets responded positively to Trump and that they see him as a business guy.

and they're focusing too much on the appointment of the Treasury Secretary who reassures him because he's a hedge funder. And not enough on the Thomas Hohmann, Stephen Miller stuff that's going on, which is the appointment of these much more right-wing anti-immigrant, pro-tariff, more aggressive figures within the administration. And that will change a lot of things because we're in a conversation in Europe where we've gone from five years ago thinking we all need to be like Germany, to thinking we all need to be like the US. Now that will cease if the US economy begins to falter.

Yeah, yeah. What about Musk? How worried did you think we should be about Musk? I mean, again, we're back to talking about Farage again, I'm afraid, because of course, just before Christmas, one of the things that happened was Farage, and there's billionaire property developer Nick Candy, Elon Musk in Mar-a-Lago.

I'm Anthony Scaramucci, who I like a great deal and we love his podcast with Cassie Kay, but he did get something very, very badly wrong in the past because he told me absolutely, hand on heart is not going to happen. Donald Trump will never ever be present again.

Now he's saying to us, and on heart, Trump and Musk, it's done, it's finished. Musk is, you know, he's just pandering now. I'm not convinced about that. I get the sense that Musk is really, really locked in there and is very, very powerful within it. And one of my favorite tweets towards the end of the year from our friend Tommy Vita at Podsave America, I personally think having a ketamine adult billionaire oligarch deciding which bills get passed by Congress is a great way to run the government.

Now, and I think that the, you know, what's really weird about these right-wing people, and I know social media is not a great place for ironies, not great, but you know, when

Tice and Faraj and Rupert Lowe and these people will say absolutely nothing wrong. If Elon Musk wants to give a hundred million dollars. Just for listeners, these are all the reform MPs. The reform guys. Yeah. Yeah. You know, why are we getting so excited? These are the same people who used to sort of invent conspiracy theories about George Soros buying elections around the world. And this was terrible. So in response to this, I did this, I did a tweet, breaking news.

French billionaire Jean-Louis Louriche and German industrialist Hans-Dietrich Geltmann have decided to donate 200 million euros to a new campaign to get Britain back into the European Union after the disaster breaks it. I'm happy to announce I will be campaign director.

I'm sure that Nigel Farage will see nothing wrong with this at all, common sense in it. You would not believe how many people took that seriously. One of them actually said, your podcast should be called the rest is hypocrisy. Why is it wrong for Musk?

to do this, but it's okay for this French and German couple to do. The principle is that is the principle. If it is okay for Elon Musk to give money to reform, then it's okay for French people, Chinese people, Russian people. Before we get on to the sort of figures, you must campaign finance reform in the United Kingdom. Oh, got to work backwards. Absolutely necessary. If it is even theoretically possible,

for somebody to give 100 million to any party. It should be stopped at once. Well, for an American citizen to do it, it should be stopped for £5. Our elections at the moment go at about £10, £20 million. £100 million coming in is completely insane. It would be like, you know, aged 18 sitting down to the poker table.

and suddenly realizing that one of the people sitting down to the poker table was able to put £10,000 on the table when you're all betting a fiver. I mean, it's mad and we need to change rules to prevent that from happening. I think mask is more of a threat than Trump. I think he's a genuine fascist.

I think that he is somebody who loves the idea of being connected to stirring up a massive political movement. He loves the propaganda tool, and he's showing the power of social media. X is a small platform with a few members, but he's doing something that nobody's tried to do with social media before. We saw with Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring that it was dangerous.

But in those days, it was still just about pretending to play by the rules. If you put a weapon like that in the hands of somebody who actually wants to promote tweets from far-right groups in Germany, Austria, troll the British Prime Minister, fan of vision.

of anti-immigration, anti-climate, anti-development aid. You're doing something which is extraordinary. It's like the 100 million pounds coming into the British election. And I think nobody should underestimate Musk. I think he's incredibly clever. He's very, very ruthless. Look what he just did in backing Californian policies.

He barked a Californian policy on restricting his rivals so that he could then boost his business in Texas. And he's been like that ever since he was at PayPal. So I think he'll stick with Trump because he's actually a pragmatic businessman and a very ruthless businessman. And he thinks being close to Trump is going to allow him to get away with this crazy fantasy.

And does Trump stick with him? I mean, the moot is convinced that Trump has already decided he's outlived himself. And I saw that guy, Adam Kinziger, the former Republican who sort of turned against Trump. He has started to call Musk president Musk and vice president Trump. That's how he defines them, which is a clever way of undermining both Trump and JD Vance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I think that's right. I think the more you lean into the idea that Elon Musk is the first husband, the more you can begin to irritate both Musk and Trump. But just on the funding thing, you see, and I think this again is part of the start at 100 million. They're probably going to end up where they say, well, why, if we can't give 100 million, why can't we give 50? Why can't we give 20 or heavier? But the fact is, when Kamala Harris was up against Donald Trump, I had so many people saying to me, why can't we donate?

This is an election that matters to us as well, but you cannot, as a British citizen, you cannot donate to an American politician. Two principles, isn't it? It should be a British citizen. The second is, even if it's a British citizen, nobody should be able to give a hundred million, even if they wanted to. It's completely grotesque.

totally grotesque, and we need to stop a conservative party being funded by hedge funds, oligarchs, and a Labour Party being funded by trade unions, and all of them being in hoc, and we need to move, I think, to something that everybody hates, which is state-funding of political parties, or very, very strict restrictions on how much you do. Yeah, and I don't know whether

the Labour government is yet really focused on the potential danger and damage that this can do. Look, and the thing that we're worried about as well as if they do bring in campaign reform, funding reform, which they should have done anyway, the idea that it's going to be seen just as a way to try and stop Farage, which then again allows him to play the sort of, I'm the little guy up against the establishment. They're all trying to stop me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, Anastar, halfway through, rest of 2025 to come after a break.

Now, what about Europe, Rory? Here's a start of a 10. Who do you think will be the German Chancellor after February the 23rd? Well, we know the answer to that, because you've told us the answer to that. And you're presumably 99% on that. So tell us who will be the next German Chancellor. Well, probably Friedrich Mouts, who's the leader of the Union, the Christian Democrats and CSU, the Bavaria Party. And the great survivor, Alistair, as we picked up in the Angela Merkel and a few, because he was currently rival back in the day 20 years ago.

Yeah, when Stuybert was the chancellor candidate hovering in the background, you had Angela Merkel and Friedrich Merz, and they didn't really get on that well. Merz is to the right of, he's probably more of a conservative than

Then Angela Merkel, there's a part of most that I like worry which is, I know how obsessed you are with politicians and their hair, but you may know that I really don't like this bit of my hair. This will mean nothing to you, but this sort of Steve Claridge thing that comes down the front of my forehead. But Metz, if you look at him, he's got this isolation.

from the rest of his hair. So he's sort of bald, but with his little sliver at the front. But I think he's going to win. I think it's well ahead in the polls. But listen, we are living in such volatile times.

that you can't rule anything out. Scholz really does look like a man who thinks he can do something in this campaign. He can look a bit from a distance like a kind of Biden figure. He's almost 70. He's got there by just hanging around and never giving up on the way that Biden did, who kept losing his chance. Who is Scholz?

So Biden obviously ran for the presidency many times, beginning in the 1980s, never really worked out, just kept plugging along and eventually came through. And nuts is an older guy who you get a bit of that sense as somebody who's just stuck with it, been in the system, made it through. Or am I underestimating him? Has he got more of an edge to him than Biden had? Yeah, I think so. I think also he's getting on towards 70. He's got a lot of energy. He's definitely got energy. He's pretty strong in Ukraine.

I think what both of them have, but of course, it's a better thing about incumbency. It's much easier for the person out of government than the person in government. Neither of them are really articulating a strategy that says that the German economy, which we all used to think was kind of humming away nicely, is going to get back on track. But I'll tell you the other thing that's really been interesting in the election so far, much, much, much more robust campaigning.

more aggressive campaign in the Germans, maybe I used to. And I wonder again whether that's the influence of the alternative for Deutschland and the way that they campaign. Presumably one of the things that we may see and to look at as we go into this is what happens to the AFD on the right and what happens to the far left, the Wagner Connect Party.

Yeah. Well, listen, it's a totally different voting system. Whoever wins in quotes will have to form some sort of coalition with other parties. I think it's possible that you end up with a grand coalition between the CDU and the STP, but that's why the nature of the campaign is maybe interesting. But look, it's going to be one of the most important elections in 2025.

I could be wrong, but I think Matt's will be the next chancellor. Now, what about France-Rouille? Berou at the time of recording is the Prime Minister. They had four in 2024, but can you see that last thing? Yes, I can't, I'm afraid, but it may be that I'm just becoming a French bear. I mean, it's true that, you know, they have had this thing called cohabitation in the past, occasionally, but it's a very unstable situation, that constitution

De Gaulle's constitution basically creates this super powerful president and assumes that they're going to be able to work with the Parliament, with the Prime Minister, and Macron, by triggering this election, has created this situation where I can't see how you keep things going, if fundamentally, either the far right under Le Pen or the far left under M'lochon, can pull the rug out from under you almost whenever they want.

or rather they can together if they decide to do it together. I guess he's trying again, but I can't really see why you would be more optimistic about this than you would be about bunny who only managed to last a few weeks. This is what happens with elections and maybe particularly snap elections.

the way the numbers fall, that's what the politicians then have to pick up. And the numbers just don't work. The difference with co-abitacion was having a president of, I remember Shira Kanjospan, a president of one party, a government headed by the other. What Mackerel seems to be doing is trying to get Prime Ministers that essentially, he wants them to be pretty much in his political space, Barney A to the right,

Beru in the centre, but maybe leaning a little bit more towards the on-mentant category of politics. But France is going to be so interesting this year because Macron certainly doesn't strike me as the sort of guy who's going to throw in the towel early. He's got the whole of this year and fair bit of the next before he has to go to

you know, leave office. So can you keep having sort of changes the prime minister? Does it become a bit like, you know, Italy used to be a laughing stock, changing its prime minister the whole time? We were laughing stock, changing the prime minister the whole time. Yeah. But people point out that actually the problem is that it's more of a problem in France because France is so heavily centralized on Paris. Yeah. Belgium, you pointed out, I think the podcast has had a lot of primers and frequent moments where it doesn't have government.

But I then got caught by a Belgian friend who said, yes, but in Belgium, there's a much, much stronger decentralized, devolved state system going on. It matters much less. Whereas France, everything is drawn into the center. Everything's drawn into Paris. And if they can't get a functioning relationship between Prime Minister, Parliament and the President, France is in much more trouble than these other countries. And of course, the French President matters much more for Europe than the Italian Prime Minister or the Belgian Prime Minister.

Have you heard of Patrice de MacMahon who sounds like he ought to be a Scott MacMahon, but in fact his family going way back descended from a former high king of Ireland. But Patrice de MacMahon was president of France and in 1879 he resigned after a similarly ill-advised decision to have a snap election, although ironically he was doing it because he wanted Parliament to have more power

Then they then had these are the powers of the president very good. You know we're responsible for the whole thing because it was actually john law who was a scott who managed to bankrupt the oncio regime and basically set the seeds of the revolution with his amazingly cunning financial speculation.

Patrice Demacman. He was president. He resigned after losing support, but we'll see whether my friend Emmanuel Macron will do the same. I think this time last year, or was it this time two years ago, but you were sort of

pretty sure that China Taiwan was going to kick off. I think what I've said is, I think consistently, but people can call me up, is that there is a very big chance of it kicking off. So I keep trying to say 30%, 40%, which is a way of saying, I'm not saying it's certain that it's going to do it. That's probably less than 50%, but people are underestimating the risk that as the Chinese economy struggles,

A siegingping looks to try to regain popularity with his working-class base. Nationalism becomes quite appealing.

A lot of that, I think, will depend on his calculation of whether the Chinese military is ready and his view on how the world is going to respond. And if he thinks the world is in a relatively soft place where people aren't going to want to get into a cycle of sanctions and counter sanctions with China, then there's no doubt in my mind that he sees part of his legacy being reincorporating Taiwan to China, although he'd prefer to do it non-militarily.

And do we think that Trump's arrival makes China more or less likely to think that going after Taiwan is feasible? I think you're getting into this very strange question of mindset of very isolated leaders. So Xi Jinping is now in for life.

already part of a Politburo and he will be guessing on the basis of pretty uncertain intelligence how Trump will respond. I mean, after all, you and I don't really know how Trump would respond because he's got two competing instincts in his mind. He hates being humiliated, which might mean that he wants to show strength.

But he's got another very, very strong isolationist view, which is this is none of our business. And let me put it in really blunt terms. The only way of deterring China from going into Taiwan is with the US, and that means US aircraft carriers.

A U.S. aircraft carrier turns up. It's sunk by Chinese drone attacks, 3,800. U.S. servicemen die instantly. Is Trump the Trump that saw the Iraq and Afghan wars as terrible wastes of time and energy? Going to want to explain to the American people why he's just lost nearly 4,000 lives, defending an island?

that will feel a very long way away from the United States. So I tend to the view that Trump will bark, but in the end, he's not going to want to deploy America militarily against China. Middle East, more or less optimistic than 2024 New Year about the possibility ever of a peaceful two-state solution.

I think very unlikely to see, sadly, immediately a two-state solution might happen, but it would be a miracle. Because Netanyahu, smart rich in Benghavir, have no interest in a two-state solution. Trump's new ambassador, Huckabee, has no interest in a two-state solution. I don't understand why Israel is continuing to bomb Gaza. I can't see what the strategic importance of that is, apart from some strange internal negotiation with the right wing of.

Netanyahu's government. I think Trump will want the violence to cease and he'll try to put together some kind of version of his Abraham Accords. But I think it's very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is going to play ball because the vast majority of the Saudi population is unbelievably angry and alienated by what they've seen in Gaza. And I think they're very unlikely to feel that they want to make peace with Israel at this moment. So I can't see a two state solution coming.

But let me throw something else back. I mean, one of the problems is this sort of crazy unknown unknowns. We've just seen in Syria how a situation that seems static for seven years changed in a week. It's perfectly conceivable that we could see stuff that nobody's talking about. We could see the Iranian regime collapse and the Iranian regime could collapse in two directions could collapse in a positive direction. It could collapse in a negative direction.

It's also perfectly possible that we could see things spreading. The sort of movement that we're seeing in Syria could spill over towards Iraq or Lebanon. We could see Turkey re-emerge as a player. I mean, this is in some ways a Turkish success. So a Trump world where America withdraws more

could be a world next year of middle powers, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, playing not just in the Middle East, but in the Sahel, in the Horn of Africa. Yeah. Anyway, over to you. Well, I think another unknown, unknown. It sort of feels very bubbly, this kind of American economy vibe at the moment. I wonder whether that's going to hold and I don't understand. I can't pretend to be great on the stand of the whole crypto world.

but it feels very, very fragile to me. So I wonder whether there won't be quite something of a crash in the US this year. Now, let's finally worry on Ukraine. Will Ukraine be the same Ukraine territorially at the end of 2025 that it is now?

I think that depends on whether you think Europe or bits of Europe are going to step up. So a lot depends on whether Poland, Nordic, Baltic countries, and the UK step up. Yeah, signs on that are pretty good, I'd say. Yeah, but interesting. I mean, is it significant that Kia Stalmer hasn't visited Ukraine when Johnson and Rishi Cinek were perpetually going? Well, John Healy, the Defense Secretary, was there shortly before Christmas and announcing a whole new package of support.

I think Poland is really interesting in this regard. I think Poland has really stepped up in terms of his commitment. The whole sort of talk is that Trump will offer some kind of, you know, a bit of land, a bit of non-NATO commitment, whatever it might be. But I'm not convinced. I think there's a chance that provided Europe does hold firm. There's a chance that Ukraine will be the same.

There's a very interesting thing at the center of the Labour government that we don't talk about very much, which is that John Healy, as you say, has been a great defense secretary. And we've got a leading interview coming up with Ben Wallace, who pays tribute to him. But one of the appointments that maybe people who aren't being geeky haven't focused on very much is Alastecans, who's a junior defense minister. And Alastecans is extraordinary and is a very, very unusual politician.

He is an amazing fighting raw marine. He's a real operations guy who played a very, very central role in what the United Kingdom was doing in Ukraine.

which he doesn't talk about. But he's probably the most serious operational fighting soldier that's been in the British Parliament, almost since the Second World War. And he's right there in the MOD. Now, he's not been given a big operational role. He's been given a veteran's role, which is a bit eccentric for somebody who's like an absolute kind of warrior. But that's a very interesting addition to the team and maybe a sign that I don't maybe reading too much into it.

that Britain may lean in more operation into Ukraine. Okay, Roy, final, final, final, final thing for 2025. Reasons to be cheerful. Okay. Let me just, before I go cheerful, I'm going to go really gloomy and then I'm going to go cheerful.

So really gloomy, sometimes we should talk about the significant risk of a dirty nuclear bomb going off in one of our cities, and we should talk about North Korea flinging nukes around. But reasons to be optimistic. I think if Europe sees Trump's retreat as

a reason to step up, and it begins to actually take more responsibility for defense and security, and the new German Chancellor comes in with a bit of momentum behind him, it's likely to be him, and forms a good alliance with Kierstammer, you've got two big European economies,

that could begin to frame something not within European Union but maybe with Poland with Donald Tusk and we've got the presidential election coming in in Poland next year. Things could begin to come together where actually this could be the beginning of Europe standing up a little bit more doing a bit more in the world and that probably would be a good thing. Okay well my reason to be cheerful Israel things can only get better. Great!

Well listen, have a lovely new year. I'll no doubt be seeing lots and lots of you through the year. Thank you to everybody who listened and watched last year and will listen and watch this year. Have a very happy new year, everybody. Bye-bye.