158. Sunak's net zero culture war, Africa's 'coup belt', and a new strategy for the German far-right

The Rest Is Politics

Goalhanger

News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 11.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why are Rishi Sunak and other politicians of the right looking to weaponise net zero? How should the international community respond to the rising number of coups across the Sahel? Can elections now been won through the sheer power of social media manipulation? TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: restispolitics@gmail.com Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to The Restisted Politics with me, Alistair Campbell, and with me, Rory Stewart.
0:12.6	Now, Rory, we're going to be talking in the second half about the 7th coup in Africa since 2020,
0:19.8	this one in Niger. We're also going to talk about the problems in Sweden in particular,
0:26.0	and also Denmark, where there's been this Karan burning going on, which has led to all sorts
0:31.6	of difficulties for Sweden, and to a lesser extent, for Denmark. But we're going to kick off with
0:38.4	Ulez, but also you've been digging into this a little bit. So just tell us what you've found in
0:43.3	relation to the campaign against the ultra low emission zone extension. Absolutely. So we've
0:51.3	talked a lot about populism, polarization, post-truth, and we've talked a little bit about the way
0:57.2	in which new social media coincides with that. So obviously, there's no coincidence that the
1:02.2	Arab Spring takes off in 2011 once Facebook and Twitter is going, and we can talk about that a
1:07.9	little bit actually, also in the way that coups are spreading across Africa. There's a bit of a
1:11.6	social media story there too. We've seen social media playing a role in the election of Donald
1:16.8	Trump in 2016. We've seen a play a role in Brexit. But it's only recently that really clear
1:25.2	proper methodology is beginning to be shared with the public on how this actually works. And
1:29.8	friend of mine called Emma Skies shared some research from Valent, which has looked at the Ulez
1:36.0	campaign. What is Valent? So Valent is a research organisation that focuses, it seems on social
1:42.7	media manipulation. And they've done a particular study around the creation of new Twitter accounts
1:48.6	in the campaign in London, which led to the conservative's holding usbridge, which was a campaign
1:53.9	about ultra low emission zones. So again, just very, very quickly to remind people, this was
1:58.2	Sidi Khan, the mayor of London, trying to extend new taxes on people with polluting vehicles
2:05.6	out to the edge of London. And the objective of that was to stop air pollution and help climate.
2:10.8	And it's been very, very unpopular, particularly with people who felt that a lot of their
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