My guest is Mushhtabah Rahman.

Mishaba Rahman.

Mishdaba Rahman is the managing director of Europe of the Political Risk Consultancy, the Eurasia Group.

He is also a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, where he teaches

political risk to graduate students.

He is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall

Street Journal, Economist, and Bloomberg, and has written for The Financial Times, The Guardian,

Plytico, New Statesman, and May I also encompass. Welcome back to the podcast, Mitch.

Thanks for having me, Paul. Well, you may remember, and this may remember this time last year,

I invited you on and invited you to look at the year ahead, especially inside the European Union and the United Kingdom.

This is just to tell listeners of the advance, is not me expecting you to crystal ballgaze.

The basic premise is we're going to look at the year 26, but we can't cover the whole globe.

As I said earlier, let's focus on Europe.

But I thought a starting point might be just a quick reflection on the speech that Mark

County made in Davos, this week that everybody is talking about.

When he talks about this being not a transition, but a rupture, to what extent do you

agree with his assessment?

I think he's right, Paul, but I think most countries have come to that conclusion early last year

on the back of two events, Vice President J.D. Vans coming to the Munich Security Conference

with, talking about the enemy that Europe has to deal with comes

from within, not without. That was a speech that shocked member states to their core and the

humiliation of President Zelensky, Ukraine's president in the Oval Office by President Trump

...