This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘‘America is now an adversary’’
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Lucy Fisher
Hello, I’m Lucy Fisher, and this is Political Fix from the Financial Times. Welcome. Coming up: Keir Starmer is set to head to the White House next week. But is he the man to save 80 years of Pax Americana? Plus, exporting the spirit of Maga.
Jordan Peterson voice clip
You’re the men and women, individuals made in the image of God who stumble eternally uphill towards the Jerusalem on the hill, the shining city on the hill.
Lucy Fisher
The rightwing psychologist Jordan Peterson there, speaking at the Arc conference in London this week. It was part megachurch, part political rally promoting American-style Christian values in the UK. But will it catch on this side of the pond? It’s been another dramatic week of world-shaking interventions from Donald Trump, who, lest we forget, has only been in office a month so far. To dissect the latest and throw ahead to the important period of diplomacy in coming weeks, I’m joined by Political Fix regular Robert Shrimsley. Hi, Robert.
Robert Shrimsley
Hi, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And the FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman. Hi, Gideon.
Gideon Rachman
Hello, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
Plus, the FT’s defence editor John Paul Rathbone. Hi, JP.
John Paul Rathbone
Hello, Lucy.
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Lucy Fisher
So Gideon, take us through the big moments of the week. Trump has called Zelenskyy a dictator. He’s claimed Ukraine started the war and he’s kicked off US-Russia talks about the future of Ukraine without Kyiv being present.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it all started actually at the Munich Security Conference with the speech by Vice-President Vance saying that European governments were more of a threat to democracy in Europe than Russia. And it’s all kind of gone steadily downhill from there.
And I think that’s what’s dawning on Europeans at different rates and at Brits at different rates is that in significant ways, America is now an adversary. It’s not just an unreliable ally. It’s actually trying to undermine democracy in Europe.
The Trump administration, I have to say, feels closer to Putin’s Russia than it does to the EU. I’m afraid that is the situation. And that’s my interpretation. Not everybody buys that. And one of the things that I find really fascinating is trying to figure out what does actually the British government think. I mean, I picked up from some people kind of in official positions. The adversary word was first used to me by someone who is kind of inner circle. So there are people who think like that. Whether that goes all the way up to the cabinet, all the way to Keir Starmer, they would deny, deny, deny in public. I think in private they’re beginning to think it.
Lucy Fisher
Well, that is really striking. I mean, Robert, is that your take?
Robert Shrimsley
Broadly, I mean, the phrase I hear consistently is amoral, that they’re not used to having to deal with a president they regard as completely amoral on the major issues of freedom and democracy. And it is something they are deeply shocked about. And what was it? They thought they’d prepared for the worst with Trump and that looks even worse. I mean, after the JD Vance I was talking to somebody who was at the Munich conference who described JD Vance’s gaslighting speech, described it as like watching a, if you’ll excuse the language, a pissed Rangers fan goading Celtic supporters. And they were really shocked about it. And yet, on the other hand, there are people on the right in Britain who picked this up, as we may discuss.
I think the government is deeply unsure how to deal with Trump. It had this notion of we can navigate, we can weave between Europe and the US. And every day now there is something that somebody in the British government is looking at and thinking, I don’t know if we can sustain this.
Lucy Fisher
JP, you’ve obviously monitored the shockwaves this has sent through European capitals about what it means for the potential removal or unreliability of the US security guarantee. Tell us a bit about what is being planned across Europe if the US can no longer be relied on.
John Paul Rathbone
So it’s all been a kick in the gender-neutral cojones, right? And it’s been really interesting to see Europe I think it’s fair to say spring into action or wake up. This past week we had meetings in Paris thinking about what to do about Ukraine. There’s more of the same. There seems to be a nascent plan cooked up by France and the UK about how to approach Ukraine should the US seal a deal with Russia. And that’s interesting how they’re thinking about that. And then also this week you had Denmark all of a sudden boosting its defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP. So there is reaction across a lot of Europe. Not all of it. Southern Europe is in a different place, but it’s definitely the snooze button hasn’t been pressed on the alarm clock this time.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. No. And I think that, you know, again, the interesting conversations at Munich with Europeans, as most Brits who are thinking about this; some of the most influential ones I spoke to I think can see the direction of travel very clearly. But they’re playing for time because they know that rupture with the US, an open rupture now, may be unavoidable, but if it was like, to happen tomorrow or next week, you know, Article 5 is obviously no longer applicable or America pulls its troops out, we’re very underprepared. You know, we don’t have the stuff we can put in place. I say we, I’m talking about Europe, to replace American troops and also equipment, heavy lift, etc, all of that stuff. So ideally we need like five years. We may not get five years, but we’re getting to prepare for that date. And they’re hoping just as like, delay that the evil moment.
Robert Shrimsley
And can I just ask, one of the things that was put to me by somebody trying to analyse what Trump’s been doing in the last week is that actually he arrives, he thinks he’s going to deliver peace really quickly. There’s a Nobel Peace Prize out there with his name on it. He comes up with a plan, and he’s actually a bit shocked to find the degree of rebuff both from Ukraine and from parts of Europe. And what you’re seeing is less a sort of a co-ordinated, strategic way of thinking towards Russia and that actually just this has gone the wrong way and I’m lashing out at the people who are sabotaging. You don’t buy this or you do?
Gideon Rachman
No, I don’t. I mean, I think he’s basically sympathetic to Russia. I mean, and I think that, you know, everybody saw the way this was going. I mean, in the sense that the game that both the Russians and the Ukrainians and the Europeans are playing is he’s a narcissist. Don’t say anything bad about him. And the Ukrainians were hoping that it would be the Russians who would first kind of pissed him off. So they didn’t, like, walk into this. But at a certain point, when he calls your leader (inaudible), there’s not much you can do, really.
I mean, I think probably the Russians played him very well. I mean, JP, you cover the intelligence world, but I remember an intelligence person once said to me that the easiest person to manipulate and bring over to your side is a narcissist, because you know what to say. You say things like people underestimate you. You don’t get the credit you deserve. Let’s do this thing together. We can break the rules. And they’ve got a whole playbook when they encounter a narcissist. And Putin is a former intelligence officer and they’re playing it by the numbers. I mean, right down to saying you won the 2020 election. I mean, you know.
Lucy Fisher
Well, it’s certainly striking, isn’t it, that Trump is explicitly repeating Russian talking points in the way he’s describing Ukraine. Gideon, the initial fear among European allies was that Trump would withdraw material support from Ukraine. Is your assessment we should now view it as him flipping sides to almost back Russia in this?
Gideon Rachman
Well, I mean it’s got a little way to go, but I mean, it’s certainly, as you say, he’s adopted Russia’s talking points pretty much wholesale. And I think that I don’t know what will happen next because Trump is so deeply unpredictable. But I think we can say where his instincts lie. I don’t think there’ll be any more aid to Ukraine, and that could mean that they’re in some trouble on the battlefield and financially quite quickly.
Lucy Fisher
So Robert, Starmer jets out to the White House next week. His team are still talking up this idea of him being this great bridge between Washington and the rest of Europe. I speak to some in government who think that this is a great opportunity for him to sort of seize where there’s a vacuum of leadership in Europe with the likes of Schultz on the way out, Macron on the way out, and he can kind of step into that role. What do you make of that?
Robert Shrimsley
I don’t . . . I find this quite hard to understand, assuming, first of all, that they want a bridge to the EU. I mean, I would have thought that if you were looking for somebody within the European firmament to play that role, that someone like Giorgia Meloni was a better bet personally, as someone who’d be much more agreeable to Trump. I just don’t think that America’s looking for that intermediary role, it’s quite capable of speaking for itself.
I think there are things that Britain can and should be doing, and there is clearly a role within Europe, a leadership role to be taken in terms of thinking about the defence of Europe. Clearly, the UK’s placed itself outside the European Union doesn’t help. You have a number of weak leaders, as you say, although by next week we will understand who’s leading Germany and that will change the calculation.
But I think everybody . . . I mean, I was at a sort of think-tank on Monday, a policy exchange, a sort of Tory-leaning think-tank where HR McMaster, who I think had a year as Trump’s national security adviser last time, was speaking. And even he, when I look back at what he said only on Monday, has clearly been shocked by the way things have turned out, because he was talking about an axis of aggression of Russia and China and Iran together and you can’t take your foot off Russia’s throat too much and Trump will come to understand this. So I think even people within America’s foreign policy firmament are being completely shocked by the way things are evolving.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. I mean, I think just one way of understanding it, a friend of mine in Washington put it is that Trump’s main project is the destruction of liberalism in America. And in that sense, he regards the EU as part of that liberal firmament that he’s trying to take on and destroy. They espouse the same values. The personal connections are deep, the institutional connections are deep. So in that sense, it’s not that surprising that they want to take on the EU because it’s part of the opposition.
Robert Shrimsley
I mean, just to come back to your original question about the role that Britain can play. I mean, there is something up for grabs. You know, one should be pretty sceptical whether it’s there. But, you know, if Starmer can go to the US and comes away with Trump taking a slightly different position towards Ukraine, taking something much more towards the classic position that Europe would like, well, then he’s come away with something substantial. If the fact that he offered troops when others didn’t gets him a more favourable hearing. I mean, there is the potential that I just think one has to be sceptical about how far you can go with this, but there is something to play for at least.
Lucy Fisher
JP, I’m also interested that, you know, Starmer, as Robert pointed out, has been very forthright in saying he is ready and willing to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine. That’s been kind of walked back a bit by defence insiders who are trying to sort of emphasise, you know, our superiority as a country in air power. The suggestion by western officials that we might be looking at something more like a reassurance force of far fewer troops, about 30,000-odd troops in Ukraine away from the front line, rather than 100,000-odd lining that line of contact. Tell us about that.
John Paul Rathbone
So first, on the Starmer coming out saying we want to put boots on the ground, which was a very unequivocal statement from someone who is patently cautious, made me think perhaps there’s something that he has already begun to discuss with the United States that, I don’t know, open question mark.
Second, on the way they’re thinking about a force in Ukraine, a peacekeeping force that would monitor or rather enforce the ceasefire, the initial thought was 100,000 troops, or is that actually 50,000 troops, which would just be a drop in the ocean in a country as big as Ukraine with a 1,000km front line.
And the one area where the west has an edge and that Putin is afraid of is air power, and that includes the air forces of France and the UK. But, you know, it’s the US that is the big gorilla with all those F-35s. And then, of course, there’s a tricky question which occurs to me now is about permissioning. What if the US says, hmm, all that US kit in Europe, well, actually we’ve decided you can’t use it in Ukraine. I don’t know how far that goes and how much that toggle switches on, off. There might be degrees.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. It’s a really interesting debate because I think as Europe begins to take this new view of America, Trump is gonna be demanding we buy more American weaponry to close the trade deficit. But it begins to look like a security risk if you can’t rely on the Americans. I mean, so the Danes, in the hypothetical thing that they were in a fight over Greenland, that all their planes are F-35s and they happen to think, well, could America somehow, is there an off switch somewhere in there? Is there a back door that it could be in operation?
Lucy Fisher
And it’s a question mark for the UK’s nuclear deterrent as well, isn’t it, which is operationally independent but relies very much on the US for ongoing maintenance of the warheads?
John Paul Rathbone
Exactly. So, you know, it’s how long it is that before you need to maintain a nuclear missile? Yeah. But I’d have thought it’d be a very bad deal if, you know, tens, hundreds of billions of future defence contracts, suddenly Europe says, actually, no, thanks very much.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah, sure. But that implies that, yeah, that the Americans have thought it through. You know, I think that they’re so confident, they’re so hubristic at the moment. I don’t think it even occurs to them that we might do that. In fact, it was interesting I bumped into an American friend who’s now become an arms dealer for one of the American manufacturers in Munich, and I set up a parley because I was pissed off at the time both at the Vance speech; said, you know, you should prepare yourself that Europeans are gonna not buy your stuff if you’re going like this. And she sort of laughed, you know. They don’t believe it.
Lucy Fisher
Robert, what about UK defence spending, because the backdrop against, you know, Starmer’s quite hawkish talk is still that they haven’t sort of publicly signed off when they’re going to get to 2.5 per cent of GDP. We know that the military chiefs marched into Downing Street — admittedly, invited by the prime minister last week, I should add (laughter) — to ask for it to go up to 2.65 per cent of GDP; you know, got a comprehensive spending review going on where departments are having to make or identify least cuts. It’s not easy to square the circle.
Robert Shrimsley
It isn’t easy to square the circle under the current fiscal rules and the tax constraints that Labour has signed up to. I mean, I think it was very telling that it’s often the case that the first breach between the prime minister and the chancellor is over defence because the Treasury never wants to spend money on defence. And it’s one of those areas where the military can go straight to the prime minister and talk them round. And so it’s interesting that we’re hearing talk about this again. I mean, I don’t think even 2.65 is going to cut it, but . . . And the government doesn’t have any money so it’s gonna have to find ways . . .
Lucy Fisher
What’s it gonna . . . What do you think they’ll do?
Robert Shrimsley
Well, I mean the answer is I don’t know. I’ve heard talk of extending the freeze on tax thresholds right through to the end of the parliament, which also buys Rachel Reeves a little bit of fiscal wiggle room on her rules.
My own view has been for a while that the logical responses to these significantly changed circumstances is to say we’re going to have a defence levy, rather, as Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson tried to do with health and social care. Say, look, we’re in a different world. We have to able to defend ourselves. We didn’t expect to have to put this tax on, but we’re going to do it.
And I think by far and away the best thing in these circumstances as a political figure, is to level with the public rather than try to pretend that you’re not doing it or find sneaky ways or breach explicit manifesto commitments just to ‘fess up and say, look, the world has changed. We need to be able to defend ourselves against this threat. We’re going to raise this levy. Do I think they’ll do it? I don’t know. It strikes me as a bit too brave, but it feels like the right way to go.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah. I’m inclined to agree, but I mean, JP, that would require a feat of storytelling that is not Starmer or his main allies in the cabinet’s strength. And it’s a huge leap in the narrative that the government has told the public heretofore about our defences papering over all the cracks for many, many years now.
John Paul Rathbone
Well, two things: you can either say we’re gonna stick to our fiscal rules or you can say, well, we’re actually gonna have to cut our armed forces at a time when Europe is more under threat than ever. And I wonder which story is better or least bad, because capabilities would have to be cut at 2.3 per cent. And you can say, well, actually we’re going to have nukes and but we’re gonna have to cut X, Y, Z. And enough politicians have been saying for a long time how hollowed out the British forces are. I don’t think it will come as any surprise.
And second of all, I’m surprised how little political capital, how it hasn’t become a political issue. There’s $300bn worth of Russian assets sitting inside Europe. And I think a chunk of that is inside the UK. And everyone in Europe is saying there’s no money, but there is. And of course, this has profound implications for Euroclear and all of that.
Lucy Fisher Euroclear being . . .
John Paul Rathbone
The Belgium clearing office where a lot of this money is. But I think some of it is also in the UK and that money is just sitting there. If we really are at war with Russia, why not?
Lucy Fisher
Go ahead and seize it? What are the key arguments against that, Gideon? People say it goes against sort of property rights. It could have a chill effect on inward investment to the UK and wider EU.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah, all of that and yeah, that we rely on the rule of law and that other countries that think that they might one day be it have a — ‘cause we’re not actually at war with Russia.
John Paul Rathbone
That’s debatable.
Gideon Rachman
. . . have a conflict with us would be worried about putting their money into Britain and the City’s really important. I mean, China, for example, might hesitate.
Robert Shrimsley
It’s a strong argument as well.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah.
Lucy Fisher
But JP, what you say is interesting. You know, it’s debatable whether the UK is at war because you and I speak to people in the MoD, you far more than me, who do view the UK at war with Russia in a kind of hybrid or grey zone sense.
John Paul Rathbone
So Russia is doing warlike things to the UK. It is below the so-called threshold of war but, you know, there are assassination attempts, there is sabotage, there are bombs on DHL planes that fortunately haven’t gone off. There are spies doing all sorts of nefarious stuff. So in the Russian view, you know, war is a spectrum. It’s not an on/off switch. It’s not black and white. It’s shades of grey. And there’s definitely stuff that Russia is doing that counts as warlike — not enough to trigger Article 5 . . .
Gideon Rachman
Of course they would, I mean . . .
John Paul Rathbone
It’s all deniable, of course.
Gideon Rachman
And also they would say we’re doing the same because we’ve given Ukraine missiles that have been hitting them. I mean, I’m not justifying their actions, but that’s how wars start, I guess.
Lucy Fisher
So to wrap up, I mean, the fact we’re sitting here talking about the US as a potential adversary to the UK, to the rest of Europe, I mean, this is a strategic shock on a par with what, Suez?
Gideon Rachman
Oh, far bigger than that.
Lucy Fisher
Far bigger than that. 9/11.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s the biggest . . . Look, I hope I look back on this podcast in a year’s time and think, oh, I really lost the plot, completely hysterical. (Lucy laughs) And it was like, not as bad. But if you had to ask me what I honestly think, I think we’re witnessing the breakdown of the postwar order that goes all the way back to the foundation of Nato in ‘49. Whether Nato is formally dead or not, I don’t know, but I think that the transatlantic alliance is collapsing fast.
And is this a permanent thing? I think as long as Trump’s around, it’s permanent. I retain the hope that Trump will implode and a more normal America will reappear. But even then, it’s gonna be a job for them to regain the lost confidence from what’s just happening right now.
Lucy Fisher
Robert.
Robert Shrimsley
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a deeply uncomfortable and frightening period for Europe in which the good scenario is that American commitment is only weakened rather than removed. It is genuinely very alarming.
The only things one could say in terms of trying to keep your head about this is things change in the world. Diplomatic scenarios change. America’s attitude towards its erstwhile allies could change again because things move on.
Equally, one has to keep some sense of perspective about Russia. It is not strong at the moment, militarily. It’s gonna take Russia a while to rebuild from what’s happened in Ukraine as well. So I don’t . . . I mean, I’d be certainly very frightened if I lived in Estonia, but I think if you live in Britain, there are reasons not to lose your head entirely. But it is tell . . . This is the clear point that Europe has got to learn to fend for itself. And it’s really, really got to pay attention to this now.
Lucy Fisher
JP, final word to you.
John Paul Rathbone
I’m sort of anti-catastrophising and the sense of American withdrawal from Europe has been here for a while and European defence types were talking about it under Biden. But this just definitely seems to be like a hammer taken to the edifice. But there is time, as Robert said. You know, Russia had, at best, would take five years to reconstitute its military.
Lucy Fisher
We’ll have to get you back on as events develop. JP, thanks for joining.
John Paul Rathbone
Thank you.
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Lucy Fisher
Trump’s return to the white House is having not only major geopolitical ramifications, but a seismic cultural impact. The Maga movement is thriving and that’s created tailwinds for some right-leaning and alt-right figures in the wider west. This week, a major three-day conference dubbed “the rightwing Davos” took place in London. To discuss it, Robert and Gideon are still with us, but we’re now joined as well in the studio by Daniel Thomas, the FT’s global media editor. Hi, Dan.
Dan Thomas
Hi.
Lucy Fisher
So, Dan, you, Robert and me are all schlepped down to the Excel Centre in east London to take in the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event, or so-called Arc conference, this week. This sounds like a straightforward question, but I think it’s less so than on the face of it. Can you explain what Arc is?
Dan Thomas
An incredibly good question and as you say, quite difficult to summarise. So yeah, the three-day conference encapsulated so many different themes, right? We had Christian morality right to the front. You had all these ideas around the family and the idea that families should have more babies. And the pro-birthers were there, very much so. The net zero was heavily to the fore as well. So there were all these different sort of like neoconservative, almost like verging on fringe conservative, rightwing thinking coming through there, which is fascinating. But at the same time there’s some overlays there, particularly on the Christian side, which I was so surprised about.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah. And so Robert, we had politicians from the American right. We had Trump’s new energy secretary, Chris Wright. We had the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson; on the UK side, Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, and all sorts of cultural figures like the controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson, who’s one of the founders. We’ll get on to some of the politics of it. But just tell me what your impressions were of it.
Robert Shrimsley
I thought it was a very strange sort of event, because I’ve been to Reform party rallies. I’ve been to lots of what you’d call rightwing events in Britain. This was something I thought very different, because the faith infusion was so central to it. It was like sort of this double cult. You had the rightwing politics part and you had the faith part, and the faith part is really right in front of you. I don’t mean mostly, it’s not like evangelical preachers. This wasn’t some Billy Graham stuff. But it’s just absolutely central, like the writing in a stick of rock, to what was going on.
And everywhere, it was all about Judeo-Christian values this and Judeo-Christian values that. And it was an attempt to say, we’ve got to reformulate our thinking and our thinking in the west. And one of the people actually said, going back to, you know, the original manual, which is the Bible, and that is the sort of the rock on which we build it forward.
And the other thing I was very struck by through it all is this sense of crisis which infuses all of the conversations, you know, from Douglas Murray and Niall Ferguson and Jordan Peterson, who was much more of a crisis-monger than I’d ever really understood, I think, before; talking about the climate scam and the dangers of homosexuality. It was quite a thing.
And I thought this sense of crisis is one of the things that is really happening in the right and particularly the Magafied right. Look at the issues that they talk about, you know — the falling birth rate, questions around free speech, some of the issues around net zero, around mass immigration.
So yeah, these are all issues. These are all things you’ve to think about. But are these actually the great terminal moral crisis which you are portraying them as being? And I think it’s that doominess that makes this such a strange gathering.
Lucy Fisher
Yes, you’re right. This idea of a civilisation, western civilisation, being at a tipping point . . .
Robert Shrimsley
Well, they called it a civilisational moment.
Lucy Fisher
They do. We’ll talk more about the conference, but Gideon, from your perspective, I mean, this was very much an Anglosphere conference. They were proud that they’d got a thousand people from the US, 300-odd from Australia and New Zealand, some from Europe, Africa, and that it’s grown from 1,500 people in its first year to 4,000 people this year. Is this kind of rise of sort of rightwing kind of cultural, political movement? Are we seeing that across the rest of Europe?
Gideon Rachman
Well, I think that’s certainly what Vance’s speech was, in a sense. That was the audience for Vance’s speech that we were talking about earlier. They believe that Europe’s lost its way and that the true Europe is represented by parties like the AfD in Germany or Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, etc. And that in a way, the completion of their American Maga revolution is, I mean, people like Musk talk about saving the west.
So it’s not like they’re . . . You know, in some sense they do care about Europe, but they look at Europe I think in a very distorted way, but with horror and say, you know, it’s got to get back and embrace all these things — Christianity, natalism, mass immigration and you know, that’s got to end and are they flirting with expelling people? I think they are.
So those kinds of ideas are basically a Maga-isation of Europe and Orbán, when he was president of the European Council for a while, adopted the slogan Make Europe Great Again. So it’s an attempt to kind of say Trump has shown the way and this is the way that Europe should move.
Robert Shrimsley
And what made Arc unusual, I thought, I don’t know what you’d guess. I mean, it was this strange combination of lots of the usual Maga crowd and the usual rightwing characters and Douglas Murray’s, but also some genuinely quite thoughtful people. Admittedly thoughtful people from a particular faith-based perspective, but thoughtful, interesting, trying to set out different positions. Paul Marshall, who owns The Spectator and is, I think, a man of faith talking about energy policy and describing net zero policies like unilateral disarmament. Why is Britain the only country pursuing this energy unilateral disarmament?
So interesting ideas being kicked around as well and somehow, that sort of always leavened at times the other parts of it. But what I’m really struck by above everything else is that all of the political energy in British and much of western policy is on the right. And in the end, I think energy often tells, but this is where all the noise, energy, excitement, debate is taking people.
Gideon Rachman
But one of the things that really interests me is I think they might be split by Ukraine. I hope so. (Overlapping speech) terribly fond of them.
Dan Thomas
This is pretty . . .
Robert Shrimsley
And it wasn’t much and strikingly, it was not talked about that much.
Gideon Rachman
No. But the really interesting thing, I saw Niall Ferguson — you know, I should say, Sir Niall Ferguson — the historian of a conservative bent, spoke at the conference. I mean, I know privately, as you know, spoken about Ukraine as a kind of the moral issue of our times.
And I would say, it’s sort of saying to myself, Niall, like, when are you gonna speak up? Because you can see the direction that Trump’s going. And he finally did. He tweeted yesterday and repudiated everything that Trump had said about Ukraine, and was rewarded with a personal rebuke on Twitter by JD Vance.
Dan Thomas
It wouldn’t have gone down well in the crowd either. There was one New York-based journalist who dared to raise his voice and said, actually, you know, I don’t think Trump, I don’t think Musk adheres to Christian faith. He doesn’t look after the poor, he doesn’t look after the weak. He got booed and hissed as the one dissenting voice and that was striking. That was the one thing which the crowd didn’t like. (Overlapping speech).
Robert Shrimsley
But the other point is, I mean, there’s almost a wilful blindness to the humbug of what this . . . But, I mean, if you take the Vance speech, this is a man who was vice-president to a US president who tried to cancel an election, lecturing Europe about maintaining faith in democracy. This is a man whose White House, or his boss’s White House, is expelling journalists who won’t use Trump-approved language, lecturing about free speech. This is a government that is busy carving up Ukraine, lecturing Europe about the defence of liberty. And yet all the people who supposedly hold these ideals so dear, I just thought, oh, did he? Its looking the other way.
Lucy Fisher
It’s the same hypocrisy we heard from Kemi Badenoch on the stage, I think you could say, because she was talking in the same breath about the importance of free speech, but then also saying that universities were responsible for poisoning minds and the culture in the UK, and actively said, without fleshing it out, that something needed to be done about that, that it needed to be tackled.
Robert Shrimsley
I thought Kemi Badenoch’s speech was very strange. I understood the positioning she was placing, of placing the Conservatives in the thick of this culture war, which she does sort of believe in herself. But I found myself thinking one of the great crises of Britain is an economic crisis, that we just have no growth. You’ve got to get that’s at the root of so much. We’re not maintaining our living standards. We can’t afford to defend ourselves, can’t afford the public spending.
And she’s standing there attacking one of the few sectors, higher education, in which Britain has some kind of global competitive advantage. (Laughter) (inaudible) because some students are leftwing. Well, really, you know, God, it wasn’t like that in my day. (Laughter) They were all conservatives when I was at uni. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s ridiculous.
Dan Thomas
That was the irony, wasn’t it? They talked about the heterodox approach to the conference and to UnHerd, which is Paul Marshall’s online media group. They talked about, you know, having a debate, bringing in different points of view.
Robert Shrimsley
They don’t believe in it at all.
Dan Thomas
Incredibly one point of view. I mean, everyone there had a very similar point of view, actually. There are a few people who were perhaps in the auditorium who were sort of raising questions, was it? But broadly speaking, we’re talking about everyone on one side here. You know, this wasn’t a multiplicity of like, different opinions in that room.
Lucy Fisher
And Dan, just weave together for listeners who aren’t familiar with Paul Marshall, kind of who he is and his role in this conference and the wider media empire and his interest in politics.
Dan Thomas
Well, first of all, he’s a very rich man. He runs Marshall Wace, which is a large hedge fund. And through that, he’s got lots of money to spend into different areas. And he’s become actually UK’s probably most prominent media baron of recent time because he’s bought The Spectator, the conservative magazine Unherd, which is this online media group which publishes works by people like Jordan Peterson.
Lucy Fisher
And GB News.
Dan Thomas
And obviously owns GB News, which were at the conference and broadcasting from the conference as well.
So through that, he has a very large centre-right leaning media empire and it’s growing all the time. So he’s got a great deal of influence and you can see him exerting that power behind the scenes to some degree. And this conference is really part of that, in my view, at least. I know that he in an interview with you, Lucy, he sort of denied that these two things were connected. But you can see that this is a sort of wider, influential sort of . . .
Robert Shrimsley
He’s also moved ’cause I think he was, you know, once upon a time a Liberal.
Lucy Fisher
He was a Lib Dem candidate.
Robert Shrimsley
And I think one of the things that changed him was his son, who was in the pop group Mumford & Sons. So losing his place in that band and the sort of cancel culture, right?
Dan Thomas
Yeah, Winston Marshall.
Robert Shrimsley
Yeah. Which changed his view significantly.
Lucy Fisher
One sort of dose of scepticism I’d sort of place on this idea that there’s all this energy on the rise is that it felt to me still that this was very much a fringe event.
And speaking to Luke Tryl there, the executive director of the More In Common think-tank, who had a stall at the conference, was watching a lot of it unfold. You know, he also made this point that it felt very online, a lot of the cultural talking points that they were picking up and also very, what he called, US-coded, red-pilled. And in some ways that is a bit of a cul-de-sac, isn’t it, for the vast majority of voters, Robert, who care about, you know, education, healthcare, the economy, cost of living.
Robert Shrimsley
Well, it may be. I mean, online has been shown to matter. So it’s pertinent. And also, I mean, this was partly fringe because I think it was very expensive to attend this conference, which is a fact. I mean, hilariously, Douglas Murray was also on stage complaining about it being in the Docklands. How if you come to London instead, there’s lots of nice things to see. Clearly got offended having to go so far east.
But I think the fundamental point of this: can the right craft a grand theory about what is wrong with British society as is happening elsewhere? Can you spin this whole story around extreme progressive views which have wrecked society, destroyed the economy, committed the country to an energy policy that’s disastrous, undermining the core values, mass immigration? If you can start spinning that all together and tie it up with a ribbon, which I can certainly see how they could, then you’ve got quite a potent force. And I think to disregard it, because as yet, it’s not getting 50 per cent in the polls, I think is dangerous.
Lucy Fisher
To play devil’s advocate. I mean, I asked a senior Labour official this week whether they were worried about this cultural vibe shift on the right or whether they were cock-a-hoop at the right going down what might be something of a cul-de-sac electorally. And they sort of dismissed it. They said . . .
Robert Shrimsley
But they’re copying it. Why can’t they (inaudible).
Lucy Fisher
I mean, this particular person made the point that they thought that Farage and Badenoch were they’re talking up family values and so forth in order to pitch to donors who were there. There was a very wealthy subset of the attendees, and they think that it’s not a kind of a full-time shift for either party. It’s a . . .
Dan Thomas
(Overlapping speech) Place the international (inaudible) of the far right place the Washington as well. You know, Farage is in Washington, as we know, all too often, but probably come from various constituents.
Robert Shrimsley
I accept all of your caveats. I accept all of the reasons why this could be wrong, but I just put it back to you: what is actually happening in British politics when we have a Labour government, which is completely resiling from deeper engagement with Europe, which is now posting videos of the people it’s deporting, which is apparently shelving its gender recognition plans, which is increasingly running scared with the very agenda that these people are putting through.
So even if they don’t win, they’re winning some of these arguments in terms of the political realm. So the idea that Labour is not taking them seriously I just don’t think stands up, particularly if you look at some things that are coming out of their political cabinet a week ago. They’re very scared.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And maybe they looked at what happened to the Democrats in America and thought they lost that election partly on woke and we’re not gonna make the same mistake here.
Dan Thomas
The one thing I thought at the conference itself, which was perhaps it wouldn’t play well with the broader voters, was the Christian theme. And I spoke to several people, and it was the end of day two, who were pretty consistently saying, how much do people care in this country . . .
Robert Shrimsley
Judeo-Christian are happy with it. (Overlapping speech) (Laughter)
Dan Thomas
Indeed. But how does that play with the voters? I mean, how people vote on faith — I know that’s the question which I couldn’t quite get to . . .
Gideon Rachman
Alastair Campbell said, “We don’t do God.” (Laughter)
Robert Shrimsley
But again, it’s about constructing a dragon to slay. And you’re clearly right that, you know, Britain does not welcome, you know, one-nation-under-God-dery in terms of its politics. It doesn’t mean that people who are overly evangelists.
But if you can say all of the cultures and all of the values that you just take for granted are under threat, that’s a different argument and that’s . . . It’s a much more powerful one which can pull in people. You must all find this, I’m constantly struck by now how often I come across people who will tell me they think they’re gonna vote Reform, and I don’t think it’s just my dinner circle crowd.
Lucy Fisher
(Laughter) That could be, Robert.
Robert Shrimsley
That wouldn’t have happened five or six years ago. People are openly talking about how they like Farage and are ready to vote Reform — people you wouldn’t expect to be saying that, so . . .
Lucy Fisher
I must just pick up. There was a rather amusing moment at the conference where Jordan Peterson was in conversation with Nigel Farage. I don’t think he was entirely read up on his private life and said, you know, Nigel, don’t you agree that the most important organisational principle for society is the committed, stable, heterosexual, monogamous, child-centred marriage? And you could see Farage (sound of clearing throat) sort of . . .
Gideon Rachman
Well, he made a joke about it.
Lucy Fisher
He swallows, and I may not be the best person to comment on that.
Nigel Farage in audio clip
Well, I may not necessarily be the best advocate for monogamous heterosexuality or stable marriage, having been having been divorced twice.
Robert Shrimsley
Watching Nigel Farage’s face — I was in the hall for that interview session — and Nigel Farage looking to . . . What have I wandered into? (Laughter)
Dan Thomas
He was the most normal person there. That’s extraordinary.
Lucy Fisher
There were some pretty controversial people on the line-up as well as kind of very mainstream politicians. And one that struck me was Konstantin Kisin, who was a headliner just a day after a controversy erupted over his suggestion that Rishi Sunak, the British ex-prime minister born and bred in Southampton, could not be considered English because he is, and I quote, a brown Hindu. I mean, Gideon, that’s just quite straightforward ethno-nationalism, no?
Gideon Rachman
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think . . . I didn’t see the full clip. Of course, that didn’t stop me immediately thinking about it. But Kisin’s defence was that he was making this old distinction between British, which is a non-ethnic sort of portfolio term, and English, etc. But I think the trouble . . .
Lucy Fisher
Do you buy that?
Gideon Rachman
Not really, no. Well, maybe in his own mind — I don’t know what’s in his mind — but I think the trouble is that if you pair it with the fact that this is a guy who bangs on about the dangers of mass immigration all the time, it stops being a sort of interesting debate about is there a distinction between English and British. And he is saying this prime minister of Britain is not English, who was born and raised in England.
Robert Shrimsley
He waited to meet Kemi Badenoch.
Gideon Rachman
Well, absolutely. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, there’s no other way of seeing it other than as a form of ethno-nationalism.
And I think that is kind of threatening to a lot of us, you know, that . . . I was just back from Germany, and I’d been talking to a prominent German diplomat, and he was saying that, you know, in his family when he grew up, because of the Nazi era, people really didn’t want to talk about, like, where were your origins? Where were you born? Because, as he pointed out you couldn’t join the SS unless you proved that you had German-Aryan ancestry going back seven generations.
Now, Kisin is some way from that, but he’s introducing those sorts of things. Well, who’s English, who isn’t? And it really it’s about blood isn’t it? It’s about ethnicity. And that, I think, is it’s not a debate that we’ve had in England and I’m glad we haven’t.
Lucy Fisher
It is turning a corner, Robert, from most of the campaigners on the right against mass migration who say the issue here is a failure of multiculturalism or of people who have migrated to the UK to integrate, rather than that they don’t have the right ethnic make-up.
Robert Shrimsley
Although, I mean, I speak cause my grandparents migrated to this country. So I listen to this and find myself thinking, well, what am I? Am I British? Once upon a time, the argument with immigration was you came to this country, you adopted the values, your children are British. British, English, whatever.
But I mean, I think that what we’re seeing, we see it increasingly, is people in the spectrum of the right to the Conservative party and Reform, you’ll hear them talking about white British, the percentage of white British in London, or the percentage of white Christian in London ’cause actually, Christianity is hanging on, not least because of all the immigrants from Africa in terms of percentage of observant people.
And you find you’re thinking, well, why the focus on white British? You know, are the descendants of the Windrush generation not British in your mind? What are you telling us here? That only people, you know, who can find their names in the Domesday Book have a right to this full respect?
Gideon Rachman
Sure. And that reminds me, I for my sins go to England football matches. And I remember talking to a far-right guy who said — we’re talking about an England-Brazil game and England won 2-0 — so we only really won 1-0, because John Barnes scored one of the goals and he’s black.
Lucy Fisher
Oh my God.
Gideon Rachman
And that’s the route we’re going down. He’s not really English. Yeah.
Dan Thomas
It’s not so long ago, is it, really, if you think about it.
Robert Shrimsley
I mean, there is . . . Just to be slightly fair to Konstantin Kisin, I’ve known him quite a long time. There is an interesting argument, and one I’ve had about myself, which is if England doesn’t exist as a legal legislative entity, there is no parliament for England. Then if your identity, your citizenship is British, until England exists as a legal and legislative identity, then English is an ethnicity.
And I know plenty of people who are immigrants or immigrant descent who consider themselves English, and plenty people who go, no, I’m British. And the only time you really feel, no, I’m English, is perhaps when you go to Scotland. (Laughter)
Gideon Rachman
Or indeed, watch the England football team, which is probably one of the few sort of unifying English things.
Lucy Fisher
Dan, final word to you on this, obviously you cover all things media around the world, but where do you see this kind of rightwing movement going?
Dan Thomas
Well, it’s fascinating, isn’t it, because you can see, particularly in the US clearly, because as Robert was saying, you know, Trump is in many ways influencing a great deal of influence over what the US media now covers. And the ones that are fighting back are finding their lives more and more difficult.
So you can see that world is becoming more and more testing, I think, for independent and normalised media. So you can see the shift towards the right over there. It’s difficult to say.
I mean, like, you know, some of those things that were coming out in the conference around DEI policies, for example. People really didn’t like the idea about DEI. Lots of people were saying that there’s a good thing that Trump was taking these, dogeing these, you know, these policies over in the US.
You can see those things are actually becoming now more acceptable to say. And because of that, you’ll find the press as well reflecting these things more and more. So I think, you know, I think the Trump aspects of those are increasingly influential in how the press is covering.
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Lucy Fisher
We’ve just got time left for Political Fix stock picks. Robert, who are you buying or selling this week?
Robert Shrimsley
OK. With some trepidation and no originality whatsoever, I’m actually going to buy Keir Starmer, because I think one of the potential makings of a prime minister is a crisis. When things happen that shocks from outside, which allow you to reset a narrative, which allow you to say I’m on top of this and I look like a prime minister, don’t I, voters? That’s an opportunity.
Now, for the reasons we discussed earlier, there are all kinds of ways it could still go badly wrong for him, but it’s an opportunity for him to stamp himself on the country and say, I’m standing up for what we’re about and I’m right and don’t you agree with me? So even though it could all go wrong, I’m gonna buy Starmer.
Lucy Fisher
Gideon?
Gideon Rachman
So I’m gonna buy somebody I met for the first time this week. It was a young Lib Dem MP, guy called Mike Martin, who I think won Tunbridge Wells for the first time in a century from when the Tories didn’t hold it. And he’s a smart person and I could see him having a good future in British politics if the Lib Dems have a future. He’s ex-army officer, understands national security, youngish, quite good looking, articulate. And so yeah, I think he could do well.
Robert Shrimsley
What about you, Lucy?
Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ve been discussing the Spectator, so I’m buying its new-ish editor, Michael Gove, the former Tory cabinet minister. As we’ve reported, he’s on Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list, so he might also be going to the House of Lords soon too.
But I’ve been interested in how he’s using the magazine, and in particular this week has launched a big initiative pointing out frivolous funding by the government. And often, it must be said, during the time in which he was in the cabinet and serving in the UK administration. But he’s very good at seizing the agenda, and I think there is a wider push on the right foot to sort of call for a UK-style Doge unit or movement.
Dan, how about you?
Dan Thomas
I will, just because we saw him this week, I’ll go with Nigel Farage. I’m sure you’ve had before, but only because I thought he handled the question from Jordan Peterson over his own family incredibly well. Like I said, he came across as very human, very normal on the stage or in a crowd, which sometimes could be the other way. So I think he had a pretty good weekend.
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Lucy Fisher
Great. Well, that’s all we’ve got time for. Robert Shrimsley, Dan Thomas and Gideon Rachman, thanks for joining.
Gideon Rachman
Thank you, Lucy.
Robert Shrimsley
Cheers, Lucy.
Dan Thomas
Thanks so much.
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Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles that we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, please do leave a review or a star rating if you have time. It really helps us spread the word.
Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Lulu Smyth. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald are the broadcast engineers. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio.
We’ll meet again here next week.
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