Gaza, Trump and me: UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
BBC
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Driving through Gaza is like "driving through the ruins of Hiroshima, or Stalingrad, or Dresden"
Tom Fletcher has been the United Nations humanitarian chief for almost a year and speaks to Nick two weeks into his organisation's efforts to get as much aid as possible into the Gaza Strip.
He gives a behind-the-scenes account of how he works with the Trump White House and how the ceasefire deal was struck in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Fletcher also shares his lessons learned from his years as foreign adviser to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
Producer: Daniel Kraemer Research: Chloe Desave Editor: Giles Edwards Sound: Hal Haines and Ged Sudlow
Transcript
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| 0:36.2 | Hello and welcome to political thinking. |
| 0:38.3 | My guest this week has been said to have the most difficult job in the world. |
| 0:43.8 | He is the UN humanitarian chief. |
| 0:46.2 | Tom Fletcher, the man whose job now is to get all that aid that has been talked about for so long into Gaza. |
| 0:57.7 | That and dealing with one or two other wars and humanitarian crises. Tom Fletcher, welcome to political thinking. Thank you so much for having |
| 1:03.8 | me on, Nick. But just to be clear, this isn't the toughest job in the world. The toughest job in |
| 1:07.8 | the world is being a father in Gaza right now and trying to put food on the table or a mother I met in Conduz a couple of months ago who lost her child because she'd had a cycle three hours to the nearest clinic or the women I met in Haiti last month, victims of terrible gang, sexual violence who can't go back to their communities and they're taking preemptively contraception in preparation for the next attack. |
| 1:29.6 | Compared to that, my job's pretty easy. |
| 1:31.6 | Those stories are fresh in your mind, particularly the ones about Gaza, because you have just got back from Gaza. |
| 1:37.6 | You wanted to go for a very long time and couldn't. |
| 1:41.0 | Many of us think we know what it's like. |
| 1:42.8 | We've seen the pictures. |
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