REBUILD EUROPE

“I think people are sick of these gotcha interviews. I just I watched one the other day. It was Lewis Goodall doing an interview with Darren Jones, Keir Starmer's chief secretary. It was unwatchable after a few minutes. It's this whole gotcha thing. You're a bad person. I'm a good person. I'm speaking on behalf of the public. It actually is populist. It's playing into the idea as opposed to with Vucic, you're an interesting person. You're a very complicated person, and we're gonna try and find out a little bit more about who you are.”

“So why does Donald Trump constantly say constantly say that he's cut drug prices by variously 300%, 400%, 500%, and 1200%? And why is that not covered anywhere in the world's media? Kennedy didn't answer the question, but he said he said this, president Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There are two ways of calculating percentages. He then says he says this. Wait a minute. Ways that my nine year old does that. Daddy, there are two ways of doing the maths problem. There's my way and everyone else.”

“One of the leaders, it's claimed by somebody who knows a lot, gave $20,000,000 to somebody who'd been part of Trump's first administration, believing the guy would get him into the Trump second administration, and feels cheated and ripped off because the individual got a job in a different part of the Trump administration, didn't help him. Another one of the leaders has apparently handed over all the mines in the territory that he controls and in return gets to swagger around in Mar A Lago.”

“We're like, I sometimes think we're sort of potentially, the whole world is locked in a kind of abusive marriage where, essentially, the Trump administration is saying to everybody else, you can't afford to leave me. You know? Yeah. Okay. You might complain, and I might humiliate you and beat you up, but the fact is you'd never be able to make it on your own. Too expensive, too complicated.”

“There are two types of problem, aren't there? It's very, very difficult, to be honest, for an outsider coming in to Spain or Serbia to ever have the full detailed stuff that a Spanish opposition politician or Serbian opposition politician would have to construct these arguments. But the second thing is we have to make a choice, which is not an easy choice. If you go in in order to use it to prosecute the case that this guy is an authoritarian ruler, then it's a show where you and I are just telling our audience that we disapprove of Vucic. The second choice is to try to let these people speak for themselves and trust that the audience can take on board the fact that we don't approve of this guy.”

“And the question now is, is it broken? The threats on Greenland, the tariffs, the continual humiliations and insults from Trump, does this mean that Britain now needs to think about a radically Yeah. And also it wasn't just the fact of the special relationship. The other pillar was our leadership role in Europe. So the problem is that over the last decade, we've there's a risk that we lose both.”

“Trump then followed up saying that the US was going to block these Straits of Hormuz, put a naval blockade in place, later clarified as a blockade on any vessels touching Iranian ports. And that's where we currently are. Global oil prices are now rising. Global economies are already feeling the shock because, in effect, what this means is that vessels that were not favoured by Iran, previously were very reluctant to go through the Straits, but vessels with an Iranian stamp could go through.”

“Now, the oil price has actually dipped just below $100 a barrel this morning, I think. But we're still talking about it going from $60 at the start of March to $70 fairly recently. So it's a 70% increase whichever way you look at it. Nurse Avondelayan, president of the European Commission, she's outlined that the European Union's bill for fossil fuel imports since the war began has risen by more than $22 billion.”

“Well, I was looking at a recent model. I mean, these are difficult things to predict, and it's maybe an exaggeration, but capital economics, which is a reputable think tank, predicts that Qatar's economy will contract by 13% this year, that UAE's may contract by 8%. To put that in context, under normal growth conditions, that would be seven years it would need to get back the growth.”

“His story, which I thought was very interesting, is that what could happen is Europe could transform its security architecture if it took in the UK, Norway, Ukraine, and Turkey. Effectively, what he's saying is if you actually want Europe to guarantee that it can defend itself against Russia, those are the countries you need to bolt on. It's not just a statement about values, not just a statement about European extension, it's a solution to America withdrawing.”

“It's that we don't really know how to think about having a nuclear deterrent which isn't basically being covered by the Americans. We don't really remotely know how we could build up our own large language model like a ChatGBT or Claude. We've no idea, really, what we would do without American cloud computing or the dollar or five eyes. In other words, we've spent eight years becoming completely dependent.”

“I worry, as you know, as you call him my friend Emmanuel Macron, but I do worry that he doesn't necessarily share this vision. I worry that actually Macron is the one who is most reluctant on enlargement. France is now the only independent nuclear deterrent in Europe, that gives them an extra strength. I think he sees that as a strength that should be exploited. But I think this is about politics. I think they're genuinely worried about their politics and the impact of enlargement.”

“This is classic Trump. I've got a ceasefire, I'm going to send JD Vance, and it's all going to be done. And they give up because Iran didn't fold on day one. And meanwhile, just to underline how utterly unserious they are, Trump and Rubio, who seems to me these days just to be kind of glorified bad carrier, they're at a UFC fight.”

“Potentially, the whole world is locked in a kind of abusive marriage where, essentially, the Trump administration is saying to everybody else, you can't afford to leave me. You know? Yeah. Okay. You might complain, and I might humiliate you and beat you up, but the fact is you'd never be able to make it on your own.”

“The main story that seems to have appeared in surf media was when he said to me, some of us are principals, Alastair, which was seen as a sort of direct hit. We had an interesting series of meetings with bits of staff, and they were very much insisting that he doesn't control the media. My goodness, the coverage demonstrates just how much influence he has over certain really key bits of media. One of them actually said, you know, Belgrade welcomes the return of the NATO bomber, right, which I thought was a bit off.”

“So why does Donald Trump constantly say constantly say that he's cut drug prices by variously 300%, 400%, 500%, and 1200%. And why is that not covered anywhere in the world's media? Kennedy didn't answer the question, but he said he said this, president Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There are two ways of calculating percentages. He then says, if you have a $600 drug and it goes to $10, that's a 600% reduction. So why have we got somebody so stupid as president, and why do we treat them as normal?”

“And by the way, can you see people I think people are sick of these gotcha interviews. I just I watched one the other day. It was Lewis Goodall. I think it's really good, but he was doing an interview with Darren Jones, Keir Starmer's chief secretary. It was unwatchable after a few minutes. But it's this whole gotcha thing. You're a bad person. I'm a good person. I'm speaking on behalf of the public. It actually is populist.”

“The reason why I think Der Spiegel calls Charles a wonder weapon is because Trump's vanity and narcissism is such that he doesn't really see Kierstheimer as his opposite number because he sees himself as the king. He wants to be an emperor. He wants to be a, unelected monarch. He behaves like one. He surrounds himself by sycophants in the way that- A medieval monarch would.”

“Trump's vanity and narcissism is such that he doesn't really see Kierstheimer as his opposite number because he sees himself as the king. He wants to be an emperor. He wants to be a unelected monarch. He behaves like one. He surrounds himself by sycophants in the way that A medieval monarch would.”

“Option two for Britain I'm trying to think about British options here. Can they be can Britain behave like a Gulf country or a Balkan country? Probably not because we may not have as much to offer, and our political culture wouldn't allow us to debate that. Option two is the kind of Macron option, which is to make great statements and claims about a new world order, but it's not quite clear whether it ever gets delivered. Option three is that you really begin to do the serious work in working out how Britain gets lockstep with Europe and begins to work out how it becomes more independent more independent on critical minerals, AI, nuclear, etcetera.”

“One of the leaders, it's claimed by somebody who knows a lot, gave $20,000,000 to somebody who'd been part of Trump's first administration, believing the guy would get him into the Trump second administration, and feels cheated and ripped off because the individual got a job in a different part of the Trump administration, didn't help him. Another one of the leaders has apparently handed over all the mines in the territory that he controls and in return gets to swagger around in Mar A Lago. The stories about hotels everywhere, you know, this bit of crime has been given.”

“What's beginning to happen here is an America which doesn't even pay lip service to global norms. In fact, celebrates outrageously chaotically defying them. In fact, what I would say is that the United States is increasingly behaving like Israel, but Israel's reason for doing it was always that it was a small country facing existential threat. That was the justification Israel came for rejecting the UN, declaring the Secretary General of the UN persona non grata, rejecting international legal arguments.”