The Untold Iran Crisis, Henry Nowak, and Farage’s Politics of Rage

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Donald Trump has driven us into something that is one of the worst economic crises that we've faced in living memory, and something that we're very, very poorly prepared for. And if the Straits of Hormuz don't open anytime soon, we are not that far away from an energy crisis, which of course has the potential to lead to an economic crisis as well. We could be a few weeks off, a massive crisis on jet fuel, diesel that we're not even beginning to talk about. The damage done is now going to take months in the case of gas, and possibly even two or three years in the case of oil. We Europe became reliant on Russia for energy, China for the economy, USA for security. We're now facing real security pressure from Russia on energy, and we're facing political pressure from the United States.
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Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Today, we're gonna be talking about Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and energy and renewable energy before we get in the second half on to the tragedy of Henry Nowak and his murder and what that means for British politics. But the first half comes out of a conference that Alastair and I just attended in Finland where we had some very interesting conversations about renewable energy and about Ed Miliband and about Britain's energy policy and the world's energy policy, which I suspect we're going to get into a bit of an argument about where I'll be taking more of the side of his friend Tony Blair. But we're also going to look at the biggest unreported story, I think, which is probably the biggest story in the world right now, which is the way in which the Strait of Hormuz, which continues to be blocked, is on the verge of crippling Asian economies, African economies, European economies, and not just through oil, which is people talking about, but through oil products, jet fuel, diesel, NAFTA, fertilizer, and the way in which no national politicians are being honest about the fact that Donald Trump has driven us into something that is probably one of the worst economic crises that we've faced in living memory and something that we're very, very poorly prepared for. So, Alastair, let's start maybe back with a conference. Tell us what you felt about it. Tell the audience about the conference. This was a really interesting, very enjoyable conference, essentially about electricity. It was hosted by EUR Electricity, E-U-R Electricity, which is the electricity sector across Europe. Two parts in a way, which is why I left a bit trouble. The first part, absolutely amazing progress that's being made on the whole renewables agenda, especially in that part of the world where we were. Scandinavia is showing a lot of leadership on this. But then also talking to people who really know the energy markets worldwide inside out, who say that we're not remotely being educated sufficiently about just how severe the energy crisis that we're possibly facing really quite soon as a result of Trump starting the Iran war and now his failure to stop it. If the Straits of Hormuz don't open anytime soon, that we are not that far away from an energy crisis, which of course has the potential to lead to an economic crisis as well. It was of course as always completely astonishing and impressive to progress and particularly many of the Nordic countries which are getting incredible backup renewables from things like hydro, and of course Spain which is doing incredible stuff on solar. One of the problems in the debate of course is very quickly people will say, well, look, how come this is happening in Scandinavia or how come this is happening in Spain and it's not happening in Britain and Britain can do the same. The truth is Britain doesn't have that enormous hydro and it doesn't have the sun that Spain has. But there's other particular problems with Britain which at some point we're going to get into, which has to do with the fact that we're still paying enormous amounts for the cost of the renewable energy that's already been installed. So even though it's cheaper, put in the stuff, the way the government subsidized it, all of which is sitting on our bills, are on taxation, still paying for a massive amount of renewable energy investment. And secondly, this problem of distribution and transmission, they kept saying very casually things like, well, of course, Britain, it's all going to be fine provided you put all the wind turbines in the southeast of England. The problem is that you have them in Scotland and the transmission costs are too big. Anyway, enough on that. One of the things that I think brought us to this is that it wasn't just about electricity. And we began to realize how much the story of the Strait of Hormuz is causing an existential threat not just to Asian and African, but also European economies.