The Truth Behind The Fall Of The UK - Rory Stewart - #837

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Rory Stewart. He's a British academic, writer, podcaster and a former politician. From riots to stabbings, useless politicians to corrupt businesses, all wrapped in terrible weather and high taxes, the UK is not having a great time right now. Perhaps Rory can help to explain just what's going wrong. Expect to learn what Afghanistan is like under the new Taliban control, what the real problems in the UK are, why politicians are so reliably stupid, whether immigration really is breaking Britain, just how bad extreme poverty is around the world, the latest updates with the royal family and much more. For those of you who are not in the UK, Rory happens to be the host of three of the top 10 podcasts on Apple podcasts at the moment. The guy is absolutely prolific and very everywhere and has a unique perspective. He knows what government is like from the inside. He's able to explain and understand why it's so reliably inefficient and why politicians are such unimpressive people. He's really great and there is tons to take away from this one. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify, which is why they are the global force behind Gymshark, Skims, Aloe and Neutonic. When it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout is 36% better on average compared to other leading e-commerce platforms and their shop pay means that you can boost conversions by up to 50%.
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You've just come back from Afghanistan. What is the atmosphere like now, after the last few years, since the Taliban took over? What's it actually like on the ground?

**Rory Stewart** (4:39)
Well, I think the first thing is just that it's surreal. So I was in Afghanistan first when the Taliban were in their last. So they ran the country in the late 1990s, through to September the 11th. And it was a time when it was one of the most, I guess, sort of shocking governments on earth. There were public executions in the main stadiums. Kabul, the capital city, was a ghost town. There were very few people living there, very few vehicles. Half the buildings were still in ruins from the Civil War. And they were hanging televisions from trees. I mean, they were on a campaign against any kind of image. So they were literally, you could see television kind of suspended from trees. Then we invaded Afghanistan, and I walked across Afghanistan just after the invasion. So I walked from the west to the east of the country. And I saw a country slowly emerging from the Taliban. I stayed in a lot of village houses along the way. The US and its allies then spent one and a half trillion dollars, that's one and a half thousand billion dollars in Afghanistan trying to build a nation, build a democracy. And after almost exactly 20 years there, they pulled out. So having invaded to get rid of the Taliban, they pulled out and handed the country back to the Taliban again. So I turn up and I'm turning up the airport that used to have big pictures of Hamid Karzai, who was the US-backed president. Now, of course, no such pictures at all. You suddenly see everybody's return to wearing traditional dress. So you used to see a lot of people in t-shirts and jeans, now they're mostly back in shawakamese. Very few women on the streets.