Can Starmer navigate an increasingly dangerous world?
The Rundown by PoliticsHome
PoliticsHome
4.1 • 105 Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2024
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A panel of foreign policy experts joins host Alain Tolhurst to look at global affairs, the dangers the UK faces around the world, how the public feels about them, and what Keir Starmer's government can do to tackle the big security issues. Sophia Gaston, who works at the ASPI think tank, Tobias Ellwood, former defence committee chair, and Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollsters Savanta, discuss whether it’s Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza or China and Taiwan, if foreign policy will end up distracting Labour from their core domestic agenda fixing the country’s public services and growing the economy. Later in the episode former Conservative defence secretary Grant Shapps, and the new chair of the foreign affairs committee, Emily Thornberry, both speak to Alain about those threats, and how the government can help the public feel safer in our increasingly dangerous world.
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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast for Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst. |
| 0:09.1 | This week we're focusing on global affairs, looking at the dangers the UK faces around the world, |
| 0:13.4 | how the public feels about them, what the government can do to tackle the big security issues. |
| 0:17.5 | Whether it's Russia of Ukraine, Israel and Gaza or China and Taiwan, |
| 0:21.9 | will foreign policy end up distracting labour from their core domestic agenda, fixing the country's public services and growing the economy. |
| 0:27.1 | When we need to discuss that, I'm delighted to be joined by foreign policy expert, Sophia Gaston, |
| 0:31.1 | who works for the Aspie think tank, Tobias Elwood, former Defence Committee chair, and Chris Hopkins, |
| 0:35.6 | political research director at the pollster Savanta. And later in the episode, we'll hear from two senior politicians about the threats |
| 0:41.0 | the UK faces, the former Conservative Defence Secretary, Grant Shaps, and the new chair at the Foreign |
| 0:45.7 | Affairs Committee, Emily Thornberry. So I start with you, Sophia. Lots of people talk at the moment about |
| 0:52.2 | being an increasingly dangerous or uncertain world. |
| 0:54.8 | Would you agree with that viewpoint? And if so, why do people say that? |
| 0:57.7 | I would definitely agree with that viewpoint. I think there has been a marked deterioration of the global |
| 1:02.9 | security environment. And what's really challenging about that is it's also coincided with |
| 1:07.5 | the time of really sluggish economic growth in advanced democracies. So we've |
| 1:11.9 | got greater number of threats, different and much deeper kinds of immediate threats, and |
| 1:18.9 | also fewer resources to address them. I think there's kind of three core ways in which the |
| 1:25.6 | world feels and is more unstable at the moment. The first has obviously |
| 1:30.9 | been the rise of China. It is a considerably more formidable competitor than we have faced in the |
| 1:36.5 | West. It is not a kind of obsolete, staggering decaying economy. It is really genuinely challenging |
| 1:43.3 | Western primacy on not just sort of economic |
| 1:48.6 | growth, but leadership of international institutions and also competition around the really vital |
... |
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