Speaker 1: Our listeners will know that there's a huge amount of
Speaker 1: political risk out there around the world. One political risk consultancy,
Speaker 1: Eurasia Group does a list every year. It's become pretty
Speaker 1: famous actually, and today we're going to talk to the
Speaker 1: co author of this list, Ian Brema. But quickly, fran
Speaker 1: you have your trustee iPad to hand give us the ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it's really important how he ranked them.
Speaker 2: Number one he has United States versus itself, so US
Speaker 2: elections number two, Middle East on the brink. Three Ukraine
Speaker 2: for Ai, which he calls ungoverned. Five access of rogues,
Speaker 2: so this is dictators coming together. Six China recovery or
Speaker 2: no China recovery. Seven the fight for critical minerals. Eight
Speaker 2: he talks about monetary policy, no room for error. Nine
Speaker 2: actually weather patterns, Elmino's back and ten risky business.
Speaker 1: So this week, as we kick off the new year,
Speaker 1: a deep dive into those political risks. Welcome to in
Speaker 1: the City, Bloomberg's podcast, Connecting the conversations and the story
Speaker 1: is shaping the world of finance. I'm a legostraton I'm
Speaker 1: front in Lackwell, and.
Speaker 3: I'm David Merritt and joining us. This week we have
Speaker 3: Eurasia Groups president and founder in Brema, walking us through
Speaker 3: this year's list.
Speaker 1: Ian, can you just give us a bit of a
Speaker 1: history of this very famous list you now, Ron, when
Speaker 1: did you start?
Speaker 4: I started top Risks. I'm going to say it was
Speaker 4: about sixteen or seventeen years ago, and you know, it
Speaker 4: was kind of this coming back to school ready for
Speaker 4: the year, and let's do something that isn't just you know,
Speaker 4: sort of impressionistic, but rather that we can have a methodology,
Speaker 4: hold ourselves to account, and then come back at the
Speaker 4: end of the year and see how we did it.
Speaker 4: Seems like it's an obvious thing to do, and yet
Speaker 4: people don't do it. They make headlines and then they
Speaker 4: move on. And also, one of the things I like
Speaker 4: about top ris is, as opposed to responding to headlines,
Speaker 4: we get to actually set the story. We tell you
Speaker 4: here are the things we think you need to focus on.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a very valuable thing to be
Speaker 4: able to do with audiences that are getting deluged by
Speaker 4: way too much information and they don't know what matters
Speaker 4: and what doesn't. And of course the algorithms drive you
Speaker 4: towards the things that induce anger. That's not a useful service.
Speaker 4: So this is meant to be a counterweight to that.
Speaker 1: And in that sort of idea of metrics and accountability,
Speaker 1: how successful have you been?
Speaker 4: Well, First of all, it's a wonderful disciplining tool for
Speaker 4: all of the analysts. We've got about two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty people in the firm around the world, and they
Speaker 4: need to know that this is going to be on
Speaker 4: the homepage all year, and at the end of the year,
Speaker 4: we're going to go back and see how they did.
Speaker 4: And it's fine to be wrong. You're going to be
Speaker 4: wrong about things every year, but being wrong and being
Speaker 4: wrong in an intelligent way so that you understand what
Speaker 4: it was that made you wrong and what were your
Speaker 4: thought processes that you need to rethink. And my view
Speaker 4: on top risks, and again we're looking forward at the
Speaker 4: coming year every year and we're looking at impact, likelihood
Speaker 4: and eminence together is that we don't have a crystal ball,
Speaker 4: but rather we have a really good sense of where
Speaker 4: the world is today and also what the constraints are
Speaker 4: on the political acts and actions of various leaders, whether
Speaker 4: they are business leaders or government leaders or other leaders
Speaker 4: all around the world. Which doesn't necessarily tell you what's
Speaker 4: going to happen, but it tells you a lot about
Speaker 4: what can't happen. It tells you a lot about things though.
Speaker 4: For example, I really don't want Ukraine to get partitioned.
Speaker 4: I really want them to be able to take their
Speaker 4: land back. I think it's desperately unfair that that is
Speaker 4: not going to happen. And yet I have a lot
Speaker 4: of confidence that Ukraine is essentially going to be partitioned
Speaker 4: over the course of this year. That's much less of
Speaker 4: a prediction than it is about a sense of reality
Speaker 4: of where Ukraine Russia is right now and the things
Speaker 4: that just can't happen. So I think a lot of
Speaker 4: top risks is about that.
Speaker 2: In your Top Risk twenty twenty four, the United States
Speaker 2: versus itself, will we have President Trump and what will
Speaker 2: that look like.
Speaker 4: I have very low confidence about who the next president
Speaker 4: is going to be. I would say that today, if
Speaker 4: the election war today, Trump would win, and in November
Speaker 4: I probably put it at Trump sixty forty. But there's
Speaker 4: a lot of time to play out before then. But
Speaker 4: let me tell you the things that I think I
Speaker 4: have more confidence on, and what goes into this risk.
Speaker 4: The first is that I have very high confidence Trump
Speaker 4: will get the nomination, and when he gets the nomination
Speaker 4: in the next few months, he will become much much
Speaker 4: more powerful Immediately, all of the Republican leaders will be
Speaker 4: loyal to him. He will have far more money to
Speaker 4: spend for his campaign, for his message, and he also
Speaker 4: will have the Republican leaning media all in favor of him,
Speaker 4: covering him all the time in a way that they
Speaker 4: are not. Right now, there's a lot more hedging, and
Speaker 4: that means that Trump's policies, both domestic and international, will
Speaker 4: become the policies of half of the American policy space.
Speaker 4: So that by itself is a very big issue. Secondly,
Speaker 4: and this is of course the big monster that's looming,
Speaker 4: is the fact that the United States today is the
Speaker 4: only advanced democracy that cannot count on a free and
Speaker 4: fair transition that is seen as legitimate by its population.
Speaker 4: It's the only country that is experiencing a crisis of democracy.
Speaker 4: Among the wealthy democracies in the world today, it's also
Speaker 4: the most powerful. That's a very serious problem. That's why
Speaker 4: it's called the United States versus itself. Democrats and Republicans
Speaker 4: exist in different fact spaces, different information spaces, and there's
Speaker 4: no effort to there's no effort to fix that. There's
Speaker 4: no diplomacy going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know you basically say that he would,
Speaker 2: you know, Trump president would take steps to consolidate executive power,
Speaker 2: undermine the rule of law. Then you many questions about
Speaker 2: checks and balances. Would you worry more about domestically what
Speaker 2: it does to the US or foreign policy? So what
Speaker 2: that means for Ukraine, what means for israeland likes.
Speaker 4: I worry more about the domestic side and the implications
Speaker 4: the domestic side have for the rest of the world.
Speaker 4: So that's the causal process, that's the driver. But for example,
Speaker 4: I don't think if Trump would have win, I don't
Speaker 4: think the United States will withdraw from NATO. But I
Speaker 4: think NATO will start to fall apart. It'll fragment. Let
Speaker 4: me so to explain how Trump is a political adversary
Speaker 4: of President Zelenski in Ukraine, he demanded that Ukraine open
Speaker 4: an investigation under Biden and Hunter, it was enormously important,
Speaker 4: Zelenski refused. Trump absolutely will do everything in his power
Speaker 4: to respond to that if he becomes president. That means
Speaker 4: demanding that Zelenski accepts unacceptable terms to the end of
Speaker 4: the war. It means ending military support for Ukraine that
Speaker 4: allows Putin to get on the offensive, to take more land,
Speaker 4: to threaten Kiev. The response of the polls of the
Speaker 4: Baltic states of the Nordics will be incredibly alarmed and urgent.
Speaker 4: But there are other countries in Europe with leaders that
Speaker 4: support Trump, like Orbon in Hungary, as well as let's
Speaker 4: say the Italians and Maloney, that will say, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, why are we paying for this, why are
Speaker 4: taxpayers on it? Let's just find a way to normalize
Speaker 4: relations with Russia. That is an unprecedented existential challenge for NATO.
Speaker 4: That's the way that's likely to play out. And I
Speaker 4: can give you other examples for how that might play
Speaker 4: out in the Middle East, how it might play out
Speaker 4: on the border, how may play out with tariffs and
Speaker 4: decoupling with China, all of those things that are starting
Speaker 4: with the dysfunction domestically in the United States, but are
Speaker 4: having massive implications well beyond American shores.
Speaker 3: What about domestically within the United States, the impact of
Speaker 3: possibly another fractious handover of power. Would we see worse
Speaker 3: scenes than we saw at the January sixth riots at
Speaker 3: the Capitol. Are there more attacks on American institutions? And
Speaker 3: what does that mean for the American economy and business
Speaker 3: as a whole.
Speaker 4: So I don't believe we'd have a January sixth reprize
Speaker 4: in Washington because it would be expected and planned for
Speaker 4: in the city will be locked down. But the stakes
Speaker 4: here are very high. If Trump loses, He's probably going
Speaker 4: to jail. He knows that. And therefore, if it looks
Speaker 4: like he's going to lose, or if it looks really close,
Speaker 4: he is highly incentive to do everything possible to prevent
Speaker 4: that outcome, and that includes actively sending his supporters to
Speaker 4: try to disrupt this election. There are also actors that
Speaker 4: would outside the US that benefit from chaos in the
Speaker 4: US that are much more incentive to engage and intervene
Speaker 4: against a soft and complex homeland security target that is
Speaker 4: the US electoral process. So there's that on top of that.
Speaker 4: If Biden loses, then certainly Biden's many of his advisors,
Speaker 4: many Democratic senators have spoken to them about this. They
Speaker 4: really believe that they will face legal jeopardy in a
Speaker 4: Trump administration. That Trump would focus on of course, ending
Speaker 4: the investigations and the judicial cases against him, but also
Speaker 4: would focus on politicizing the IRS, the FBI, the Department
Speaker 4: of Justice, and would use those institutions to go after
Speaker 4: his enemies, some of whom would be arrested, some of
Speaker 4: whom would face investigations, but many more of whom would
Speaker 4: have a chilling impact of this new McCarthyism that would
Speaker 4: stop them from saying what they would otherwise want to say,
Speaker 4: acting in ways they would otherwise want to act. And
Speaker 4: of course the implications of that of red versus Blue
Speaker 4: state are significant. Now does that affect credit worthiness of
Speaker 4: the United States over time? I think it does. I
Speaker 4: think if you are a foreign investor looking at the
Speaker 4: US and you have exposure in red states exposure blue states,
Speaker 4: and they are both creating environments that are mutually exclusive
Speaker 4: in terms of the cost you'll have to pay in
Speaker 4: the policy alignments you have, that'll change the way you
Speaker 4: think about investing in the United States. Absolutely. So, there
Speaker 4: will be a market positive response to Trump if he wins,
Speaker 4: because he will still focus on lower taxes and regulatory
Speaker 4: rollback and large amounts of deficit spending, all of which
Speaker 4: near term is market positive, but then you will have
Speaker 4: this inner circle of large number of Trump advisors whose
Speaker 4: top priorities are vindication and retribution, and that will be
Speaker 4: a negative.
Speaker 3: So it sounds like sort of lose lose, right, like
Speaker 3: either outcome. You're saying the American democracy suffers in the
Speaker 3: long run regardless of who wins, because of the reaction
Speaker 3: of the other side.
Speaker 4: We've had President Biden now for almost four years, and
Speaker 4: if you look in our report at the level of
Speaker 4: trust in the United States for all of the critical
Speaker 4: political institutions, the executive and the judiciary, and Congress, and
Speaker 4: the church and public schools and the newspapers and television news,
Speaker 4: they've all gone down. And they've gone down not just
Speaker 4: over the past couple decades, but also under Biden. So
Speaker 4: I mean, if you're telling me that somehow a second
Speaker 4: Biden term, when he's eighty two to eighty six, he's
Speaker 4: going to manage to somehow turn that around. With Trump
Speaker 4: facing far more legal jeopardy, and with Trump's supporters believing
Speaker 4: that there are a series of politicized judicial cases against
Speaker 4: him to take him out. And by the way, I
Speaker 4: don't believe that, but I do think that some of
Speaker 4: the cases against Trump are politicized. I think that raising
Speaker 4: the financial charges to felony charges in the state of
Speaker 4: New York that would not happen against someone else. That's
Speaker 4: a politicized case. And if you're a Trump supporter and
Speaker 4: you see that in one of the cases, well your
Speaker 4: presumption is that must be what they're doing everywhere. So
Speaker 4: it's the fact that Americans do not remotely agree on
Speaker 4: shared facts or narrative, which is very similar to Israel
Speaker 4: and Hamas, and it's very similar to Russia and Ukraine.
Speaker 4: And it's very dangerous in this environment.
Speaker 1: And do you see anybody anything coming forward to try
Speaker 1: and address that kind of parallel universes that the two
Speaker 1: different Americas live in.
Speaker 4: Oh, Elon Musk absolutely is trying to address it with success,
Speaker 4: with success for one side. No, I mean, I know
Speaker 4: that that wasn't the question you were asking on being
Speaker 4: cute about it, because of course, No. What I see
Speaker 4: is exactly the opposite. What I see is that we
Speaker 4: are increasingly driving people algorithmically. But this is the big
Speaker 4: We can talk about the inequality in the US, and
Speaker 4: we can talk about the identity politics and the race politics,
Speaker 4: but the big thing that has happened in the last
Speaker 4: thirty years is that the institutions that Americans have been
Speaker 4: a part of raising them into becoming civic minded creatures.
Speaker 4: Civic minded citizens have eroded. Church membership is way down,
Speaker 4: public schools are eroding, the family is atomizing, and you know,
Speaker 4: even Little League attendants and all the rest. And what
Speaker 4: has replaced that has been algorithmic learning. What has replaced
Speaker 4: that has been people being intermediated in their personal connections
Speaker 4: and in their information sources through their smartphone devices by
Speaker 4: business models that have no interest in creating citizenship or
Speaker 4: promoting democracy.
Speaker 1: But just confirming what they think already.
Speaker 4: Well and creating you know, I'm not even sure that
Speaker 4: that's what the models are trying to do. I think
Speaker 4: they're trying to addict people that are on them to
Speaker 4: gather their data and to make more money out of them.
Speaker 4: But it so happens that the best way to do
Speaker 4: that is through confirming what they already believe, even driving
Speaker 4: very strong emotional reactions. And so yes, that is exactly
Speaker 4: what's happening right now in the United States, much more
Speaker 4: than in Japan or South Korea, or Canada or Europe.
Speaker 4: And we are reaping the consequences of the United States.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty nine, when I wrote my dissertation the
Speaker 4: Wall came down, the US was the principal exporter of
Speaker 4: democracy in the world. The United States today is the
Speaker 4: principal exporter of tools that destroy democracy in the world.
Speaker 4: And that is a radical transformation over the course of
Speaker 4: thirty years.
Speaker 1: And extending that thought, we've written this over seventeen years.
Speaker 1: You just talked about nineteen eighty nine when you write
Speaker 1: these lists, to what extent is this year's list your
Speaker 1: most gloomy yet?
Speaker 4: I think that maybe the one that was the most
Speaker 4: gloomy was about twelve years ago when I wrote about
Speaker 4: the G zero world for the first time, and the
Speaker 4: star of that was, Look, we've had all of these
Speaker 4: political institutions globally, and they reflected an old balance of power.
Speaker 4: The balance of power has shifted dramatically. It's not coming back.
Speaker 4: The institutions no longer reflect that new balance of power,
Speaker 4: and therefore they're starting to fall apart, and we're going
Speaker 4: to enter into an age of geopolitical recession that will
Speaker 4: get you more conflict, which means.
Speaker 1: This is what twenty twelve, twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: I think it was twenty twelve and I said, what
Speaker 4: that means is that the United States, which historically has
Speaker 4: been the global policeman, the architect of global tay trade,
Speaker 4: and the promoter of global values, will no longer do so,
Speaker 4: will no longer act in that way, and that no
Speaker 4: other country or group of countries will replace it now
Speaker 4: at time, the people said, well that that feels very gloomy,
Speaker 4: and I said, well, not yet, but structurally will over time.
Speaker 4: And I think that if you take that as the
Speaker 4: backdrop as a long cycle, what we see in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four is the result of the g zero playing
Speaker 4: out for over a decade of Now we're in the
Speaker 4: teeth of it. So in that regard, it might not
Speaker 4: be the most gloomy, but it probably feels like the
Speaker 4: most gloomy because people now accept what we're saying in
Speaker 4: a way that they weren't prepared to in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: In what will happen in the Middle East.
Speaker 4: I think the war will expand I think that it's
Speaker 4: very hard to imagine that you can keep the war
Speaker 4: contained to the territory of Gaza. There are too many
Speaker 4: ways for it to metastasize. There is the Northern Front
Speaker 4: with Hezbollah, where the skirmishes are growing, and where the
Speaker 4: Israeli war cabinet sees an opportunity to degrade Hesbelah's military
Speaker 4: capacity and also push them back from the border in
Speaker 4: accordance with you and Security Council resolutions that have never
Speaker 4: actually been implemented. Then you've got the Huthies that the
Speaker 4: Americans and allies are trying to deter unsuccessfully, more likely
Speaker 4: to lead to the US to attack those bases inside
Speaker 4: Yemen that'll escalate the war. You've got the Iranian proxies
Speaker 4: in Syria in Iraq that are more likely to have
Speaker 4: success in causing casualties among American servicemen and women, and
Speaker 4: that the Americans will respond to. And then of course,
Speaker 4: you have the radicalization of millions upon millions of Muslims
Speaker 4: all over the world, some of whom will turn to violence,
Speaker 4: some of whom will turn to terrorism, lone will for
Speaker 4: organized activities. So I put all this together, it's very
Speaker 4: hard to imagine that we will be smart enough and
Speaker 4: lucky enough to avoid all of that escalation over the
Speaker 4: coming months. I'm not talking about the US is at
Speaker 4: war with Iran two hundred dollar oil in a global recession.
Speaker 4: And then Trump wins that is possible. Maybe it's ten percent,
Speaker 4: twenty percent. It is not the baseline, but the baseline
Speaker 4: is that this war will escalate over the coming months.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there's so many fundamentals that are so worrying about
Speaker 1: the world right now. What's the rays of sunshine? And
Speaker 1: it might sound panglossian, and if the rays of sunshine
Speaker 1: don't exist, it's not particularly helpful to try and find them,
Speaker 1: But what are the things that could surprise on the upside?
Speaker 4: If you want to look at some of the things
Speaker 4: that I'm much more positive and we do at the
Speaker 4: end of this report. We have red herrings every year,
Speaker 4: and so I'll give you a couple of those, and
Speaker 4: I'll talk about some others that aren't here. One, this
Speaker 4: is a year where billions of people are going to
Speaker 4: the polls deeply concerned about the United States and it's
Speaker 4: crisis of democracy. But for the rest of the world,
Speaker 4: you're not seeing that. In India, the world's most populous democracy,
Speaker 4: Modi's at seventy five percent. He's going to win easily
Speaker 4: have another five years. Not only will he have strong
Speaker 4: growth and will he be able to conclude legacy economic
Speaker 4: reform packages, but he also acts as a bridge between
Speaker 4: the West and the global South. Imagine if a country
Speaker 4: as powerful as India instead had the politics of the
Speaker 4: ANC in South Africa and was much more aligned towards China,
Speaker 4: you'd have a geopolitical environment that feels much more like
Speaker 4: blocks pro West and pro China. That's not happening at all.
Speaker 4: And India is a big piece of this. Mexico going
Speaker 4: to have a very strong trans towards a new leader
Speaker 4: supported by AMLO, but who is more technocratic, who has
Speaker 4: a climate science background, who's more pro business, who understands
Speaker 4: the economy. That's a really big win. Indonesia post Djoco
Speaker 4: likely to be pro Boa, who he wants also one
Speaker 4: of the most populous democracies in the world. The EU
Speaker 4: likely to have likely to return the same constellation of
Speaker 4: parties to create a vonderline or related led largest common
Speaker 4: market in the planet for another five years. Then you
Speaker 4: have the US and China, which are the most powerful
Speaker 4: countries in the world and the most important geopolitical relationship
Speaker 4: in the world, and it's likely to be better managed
Speaker 4: this year than it was in twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 4: two reasons for that. One is because the Americans have
Speaker 4: this very challenging domestic year with the elections, and Biden
Speaker 4: does not want yet another crisis to have to respond
Speaker 4: to like he has in the Middle East and Russia.
Speaker 4: Ukraine and China is facing significant economic under performance and
Speaker 4: this is not the time for them to have a
Speaker 4: fight with the US and or its allies. So yeah,
Speaker 4: there'll be problems over Taiwan, problems over the South China Sea,
Speaker 4: but they will be better managed and responded to than
Speaker 4: we would have had over the past Year's next final
Speaker 4: point artificial intelligence, which is a risk, but also does
Speaker 4: represent transformative economic opportunity, productivity and unlocked human capital much
Speaker 4: faster than people think. And I'm very excited. I'm an
Speaker 4: enthusiast for that. That could be a second wave of globalization,
Speaker 4: So that's pretty exciting too.
Speaker 2: But Ian we're facing two wars. So there's war in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: there's a Middle East, and frankly, it's you know, the
Speaker 2: possibility of escalation in the Middle East is huge, So
Speaker 2: what do you expect in the Middle East? And it
Speaker 2: seems that when there's a power vacuum or when the
Speaker 2: US is divided, that's when foreign policy or foreign leaders
Speaker 2: trying to take advantage and frankly do what they want
Speaker 2: across the world.
Speaker 4: So I was too positive for you in the last Okay,
Speaker 4: we made it go back to horrible things. So yeah,
Speaker 4: the United States, of course, has not been divided for
Speaker 4: the last year and a half. On Ukraine, it's mostly
Speaker 4: been united. And that's also true with NATO, and it's
Speaker 4: also true with American allies in Asia. Eleven rounds of
Speaker 4: sanctions against the Russians and a half of Russia's reserves
Speaker 4: being frozen by the US and Europe and Japan. That's
Speaker 4: all to the good, but that is now becoming much
Speaker 4: more divided. In twenty twenty four. I think we've already
Speaker 4: seen peak NATO, We've seen peak Atlanticism. It's going to
Speaker 4: get a lot harder, and the Ukrainians are not going
Speaker 4: to get enough money to take more territory back. So
Speaker 4: Ukraine is going to be divided. Ukraine is going to
Speaker 4: be partitioned. And I say that as someone who desperately
Speaker 4: does not want that to happen, but I think it will.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like North Korea has nuclear weapons. I
Speaker 4: don't want it to happen when we try to ignore it,
Speaker 4: but they have it.
Speaker 3: But resolves the conflict that end.
Speaker 4: It resolves the conflict at all. No, No, because first
Speaker 4: of all, it's not clear that the Ukrainians can even
Speaker 4: hold on to the territory. They still have. The average
Speaker 4: age of a new Ukrainian recruit today is in the forties.
Speaker 4: It was twenty six two years ago. They're having a
Speaker 4: harder time fighting. The Russians are very aware of this.
Speaker 4: The Ukrainians are likely to become increasingly desperate and take
Speaker 4: more risks on board themselves to try to find a
Speaker 4: way to keep their country. And also the fact is
Speaker 4: that no one's going to accept in the West that
Speaker 4: there has been a partition of Ukraine, which means that
Speaker 4: Russia will still be treated as a rogue state. And
Speaker 4: they're friends that are helping them militarily. Are countries that
Speaker 4: we do not like who are chaos actors. North Korea
Speaker 4: and Iran all led by men that are five foot seven.
Speaker 4: By the way, so there may be a small man.
Speaker 4: There may be a small man issue here. I don't know.
Speaker 4: That's not in the report, but I just mentioned it
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: Is putin secure then, because you know he.
Speaker 4: Was as someone so short. No, look at the heaths
Speaker 4: hewares he's clearly very insecure.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I will.
Speaker 2: Say, so what this is the Napoleon complex?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, No, I mean, look, nobody, you remember when
Speaker 4: Progosion did his ill fated effort to IU was Putin,
Speaker 4: and I referred to Progosian at that point as dead
Speaker 4: man walking. It was very clear that this was not
Speaker 4: a serious threat to Putin, that there were no generals
Speaker 4: that defected, no oligarchs that defected, no ministers that defected.
Speaker 4: It was just that Progosion was in an absolutely impossible
Speaker 4: situation and you know, essentially any out, any option was suicide,
Speaker 4: and that's what he got. Assisted suicide. Let's say euthanasia
Speaker 4: is legal for some people in Russia.
Speaker 1: He's making no comment on anybody's height. What's your prediction
Speaker 1: for the UK election?
Speaker 3: Russia's about five foot He's really short. You might be
Speaker 3: told it's.
Speaker 4: Not I don't think it's hard to say that that
Speaker 4: Labor is going to get a majority this time around.
Speaker 4: But that's I don't think that's Sunnac's fault. I think
Speaker 4: that this is well over determined at this point. But
Speaker 4: the key point is that the UK election, we don't
Speaker 4: have large numbers of people in the UK that are
Speaker 4: saying we do not trust the electoral process, that we
Speaker 4: no longer believe in our political parties or our leaders.
Speaker 4: There is not an existential threat to democracy representive democracy
Speaker 4: in the UK and the way that there absolutely is
Speaker 4: in the United States. In fact, there is not such
Speaker 4: a threat in any of the advanced democracies, not in Canada,
Speaker 4: not in Japan, not in Germany. It is only in
Speaker 4: the United States, and that is a very serious problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, a couple of years ago, of course, we
Speaker 3: were saying there were some threats to British democracy with
Speaker 3: the kind of legal challenges proroguing part of it. All
Speaker 3: that has faded now, right, and the UK is looking
Speaker 3: a bit more boring, but maybe a bit more stable
Speaker 3: as a result.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Brexit was not fun. It was a
Speaker 4: huge own goal, but ultimately it didn't have that much
Speaker 4: to do with the precepts of British democracy itself. I mean,
Speaker 4: it turns out, if you give the people a vote
Speaker 4: on something, they'll vote, and if you create political incentives
Speaker 4: to be on the other side of something, even if
Speaker 4: that side may be stupid, a whole bunch of people
Speaker 4: will take it for different reasons and As a consequence,
Speaker 4: it came closer and closer to fifty to fifty and
Speaker 4: then who knew, you know, sort of the the Brexitiers won,
Speaker 4: and most of them now regret it. But you know,
Speaker 4: there's no Backxies when it comes to the EU, and
Speaker 4: that's too bad for everyone the EU. Of course, the
Speaker 4: Brits did help the EU because I think that the
Speaker 4: EU now SERTs all of these other exit movements inside
Speaker 4: the EU see what happened with the UK, and recognize
Speaker 4: in this global environment you need a stronger EU. And
Speaker 4: the EU is you know, set to expand and is
Speaker 4: set to have voting reform, and is set to reduce
Speaker 4: the ability of challenges inside the EU to have as
Speaker 4: much impact as they have had historically. I think all
Speaker 4: of those things are important. Crisis, whether it's Brexit or
Speaker 4: the pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all has
Speaker 4: led to a stronger European Union and that is frankly
Speaker 4: quite necessary as the world's most successful supernational experiment of
Speaker 4: governance that we've ever had.
Speaker 2: Ian, Thank you so much. Just like that, Thank.
Speaker 1: You so Who else is depressed.
Speaker 3: In New York? Not much to be sunny about, right
Speaker 3: I mean, I liked your question about you know, is
Speaker 3: this the risk? I was thinking they should come up
Speaker 3: with some sort of cumulative score, like how bome risk deadly?
Speaker 3: Is this you know that the cumulative fact? But it
Speaker 3: feels pretty it feels pretty bad. But particularly concerning what
Speaker 3: the number one is. You know that his point about
Speaker 3: the pivot in the United States to being the biggest
Speaker 3: export of democracy to being the biggest export of tools
Speaker 3: to on the mind democracy, I.
Speaker 1: Think it was striking for me. Normally in this business
Speaker 1: you have people hedging, and he wasn't hedging, and he
Speaker 1: was so certain of the American election outcome, but also
Speaker 1: you know what he.
Speaker 3: Thinks happen in the Middle eages. Well, the sort of
Speaker 3: certainty that was striking.
Speaker 1: There wasn't very much room for There was no ambiguity
Speaker 1: in that he wasn't trying to cover, which is admirable
Speaker 1: and interesting. And his prediction of the fact that Ukraine
Speaker 1: is going to get partitioned and so on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the problem with that is, of course then
Speaker 2: you don't know, I mean, this will probably if this happens,
Speaker 2: it emboldens well Raputin, and then you don't really know
Speaker 2: what happens next, right, you put in motion chain of
Speaker 2: events and you don't really know where the endpoint is.
Speaker 1: And part of the problem with his big one, his
Speaker 1: big number one is America, and part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that that is a risk that will not be
Speaker 1: resolved either way until November, and so it dominates, it
Speaker 1: sort of sits squatting over the entirety of this calendar year.
Speaker 3: But also not even not even November, right, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed the beginning of the resolution is November, but
Speaker 1: it drags on into Yeah.
Speaker 3: They're either way.
Speaker 2: The UK doesn't look too bad.
Speaker 3: I know, we're pretty right when you asked about.
Speaker 2: The UK, it's kind of like two parties will have
Speaker 2: an election. Two parties, it is going to be five
Speaker 2: fairly close in some of their policies, and so whatever happens,
Speaker 2: you're not going to have a huge shock, like potentially
Speaker 2: another guns with the safe favor.
Speaker 1: It was both what he had to say about Britain
Speaker 1: was both, you know, uplifting and troubling. It was uplifting
Speaker 1: in the you know, to to an American who is
Speaker 1: looking ahead to a really really fraught election, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a sort of calm backwater. We sounded like
Speaker 1: a calm backwater to him. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, his part of the dynamics that led to
Speaker 1: Brexit are part of the dynamics that they are grappling
Speaker 1: with in America, which is, how do you make sure
Speaker 1: that the vast majority of people feel they are benefiting
Speaker 1: from the economy? And that was what partly Brexit was about.
Speaker 1: And partly some of that alienation and alienation from Biden
Speaker 1: and love of Trump is driven by that similar kind
Speaker 1: of who is going to make America great again? And
Speaker 1: who is going to do right by me and my community.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that sort of trends in the
Speaker 1: two different countries are so far apart as he seems to.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's in the City. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week, but in the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: like our show, please head on over to wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts and rate, review and subscribe. It helps
Speaker 1: people find the show. This episode was hosted by me
Speaker 1: Allegra Stratton, David Merritt in New York and Francine Laqua
Speaker 1: to My Left. It was produced by Samasadi and additional
Speaker 1: editing by Blake Maples.