 Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SOAS director's lecture, director's lecture series. The theme today, the year of the big vote. We've got four colleagues joining me. We've got Anthony Dawkins from the European Council of Foreign Relations. We've, of course, got Professor Leslie Vervin Jamuri from our politics department at SOAS, Dr. Subir Sina from Development Studies at SOAS, and of course, Professor Stephen Chan from Politics at SOAS as well. And of course, my name is Adam Habib. I'm the director of SOAS. I will be moderating this debate on the big, the year of the big vote. More than two billion people will be voting or will be at least invited to vote in this coming year. This is almost a third of the world's population. It is also an incredibly challenging moment across the world. It is a moment of multiple wars, deep, deep inequalities, and significant transnational global challenges. Do we have the kind of leaders required to address the challenges of our time? That's the fundamental question that I'm going to pose to all of our panelists this evening. We each can speak to the kinds of elections that are playing out in Asia, in Western Europe, in South Africa, in the United States, and asking, why is it that we have these deep polarities in our world? This is a climate where misinformation and fake news has become right, where the appetite for populism remains strong, and where now our ability to think about the world critically is persistently challenged. And so I'm going to give each of my colleagues about five to seven minutes to kick off to say a few introductory comments, and then obviously I'll ask a number of questions, and then obviously we'll come to all of you so that you have an opportunity to ask questions that you have. So I'm going to kick off with you, Anthony, if you can kick off and give us your introductory comments. It's a pleasure to be with you and with my colleagues on this panel. It's a big subject and a big year. And in Europe, the elections that everyone is watching, of course, is the European Parliament elections coming in June. The votes to be held across Europe, which not only elect the European Parliament for the next five years, but they also will be a kind of Europe wide bellwether showing what public opinion is in Europe. And of course, they also coincide with a kind of general reshuffling or shuffling of jobs and positions across the EU institutions, the Commission presidency and the leadership of the Council leadership of the European Foreign Policy Diplomatic System. So this is a moment for Europe to take stock and the omens are a little ominous at this point. ECFR has done some studies of the likely results of the European elections and they show that there will be a swing to the right. The populists and the far right are kind of in the ascendant within Europe, across Europe, and they are likely to be the big winners of the election. They won't be, you know, the largest party. I think the two mainstream blocks, the center right and the center left will still be larger. But I think the kind of overall center of gravity within the Parliament will shift a little bit and the right and far right will have more influence. And I think that has consequences, both for directly in terms of policymaking, but I think also, you know, setting the stage for what's likely to be quite a taxing five years in Europe. But just in terms of the direct consequences, you know, I think our focus here is on foreign policy, but some of the big issues which I think are driving support for the far right in Europe are issues like migration and also green issues. There is a bit of a backlash against some of the environmental legislation that has been being pushed through against the Green Deal and the Green transition, you know, a fear that it's impact on some sectors we've seen a lot of angry farmers driving their tractors through European cities in in a sense that some of the economic burden of that is falling disproportionately on certain sectors of the population. But beyond that more broadly and I think, you know, perhaps the big question is, is to take stock of where Europe is at this moment. And, you know, when the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen came in at the beginning of her term she said it was going to be a geopolitical commission. And I think over the last five years there has been this sense that it's a changing world, it's a more complicated world. And Europe needs to be a more kind of tough and savvy international actor on the international stage. And it's, you know, it's achieved a certain amount in that respect but the challenges look even greater I would say if we look ahead to the next five years. And one of the reasons for that is domestic shifts which are making life more complicated for the for the political leaders, more diverse set of leaders being represented with some, again, you know, more kind of aligned with the right, but the biggest change of course is that there's the war in Europe and a serious war. Two years ago now since Russia's all out invasion of Ukraine but if we look at a year ago, I think there was a sense of optimism in Europe, you know that Europe was supporting Ukraine, Ukraine's counter offensive was going well it looked like, you know, hopes were raised, I think that this could be a war that would end on terms that would sort of reinforce the European vision of how the continent should be organized and how international affairs more broadly should be organized but now the picture is much over a year later two years in the Ukrainian counter offensive stalled Russia is clearly shifting to a war economy and preparing to be in it for the long haul. And the CFR recently did some quite in depth polling looking at views across Europe on this question and you know the numbers who believe that Ukraine will emerge victorious from the conflict. Way down. More people think that Russia is likely to win then that Ukraine is likely to win, but where the center of gravity is is is the sense that there's going to have to be some sort of compromise solution some sort of settlement or peace deal that falls short of the full Ukrainian victory. That's, you know, a sobering moment for Europe, a question of how is Europe going to live with this more aggressive Russia, if Russia comes out of the conflict or if the conflict goes on. And, you know, Putin is not being clearly defeated. So Europe is shifting much more to a sense of how do we plan for, you know, trying to sustain Ukraine through a conflict that may be drawn out. How do you keep the domestic support going so far the public although they're getting more pessimistic about the war. They are still on board largely with the idea of supporting Ukraine. But Europe I think is thinking not only about that but also about rearming itself. There's a growing worry that that Ukraine could just be the beginning and that Russia may be shifting to a more broadly aggressive stance that could threaten other neighbors, Moldova, Georgia and ultimately perhaps EU member states NATO members like the Baltic countries or beyond. So there's a lot of assessment now about how is Europe going to be a more serious defense actor. What's that going to entail for European economies if they're going to have to scale up spending on defense. How is that going to relate to some of the concerns that we've seen about economic worries about the impact of the Green Deal. So it's a sort of a moment of real rethinking I think of, you know, what Europe is is about and how it exists in this world and there are two other factors I'd mentioned today. The Gaza war obviously, which I'm sure others will talk about has shown some of the problems for Europe of being a geopolitical player because European countries have been really divided on this right from the moment of Hamas's attack. Some have been full fully behind Israel and Israel's response. Others, I think, growing increasingly uncomfortable and calling for a ceasefire. So it's been difficult for Europe to be an influential geopolitical actor, because its own member states are really not on the same page. And finally anticipating I think a little bit what Leslie is going to talk about in a few minutes. The threat of the return of Trump is also an existential issue for Europe because Europe worries that if Trump comes back. He will, he's said as much that he will effectively leave the Europeans on their own or at least threaten to do so if they don't seriously step up their defense spending. There's a lot of worry that he's going to pull back from support for Ukraine that Europe will have to bear the burden on its own which it so far has not really shown itself ready to do. So this is a moment of deep reflection I think in Europe about the values that underpin Europe's engagement with the world about how far the leaders have the support of their populations and about what Europe needs to do to make good on its aspiration to continue acting in a way that can defend its interests in a serious way on the global stage. So that's my opening sobering sketch and look forward to the discussion. At what level there's a double there's a lot of content there Anthony and thank you very very much it seems to me that there are issues about, we do have to think whether the shift to the right in Europe enables us to address issues like climate change can it be a serious player on the global playing field given its concern around migration given the divided responses of European countries to the Gaza war or what's playing out in the Ukraine what I'm interested in is what right wing parties are thinking about what are their positions on Ukraine as opposed to the broader sentiment in among the population itself. We'll come back to those issues as the conversation evolved but Subid let's shift to Asia, Indonesia, India, let's get your thoughts. Well, I mean, you know the India is going to go to elections latest by the end of May. They've not yet declared the schedule in fact they've not yet declared the election so far. I think they're also partly waiting for the IPL cricket schedule to come around because I'm sure that Mr. Modi is trying to go is going to make some strategic use of the cricket schedule. That's a part of the joke aspect of that there is an element of so called total politics in the strategy of the BJP under Modi in the sense that almost every aspect of everyday life entertainment sport food can be converted into a polarizing issue. And that has been the case of the last 10 years, during which we've moved in India from a democracy with some elements of authoritarianism to an authoritarianism with some elements of democracy. 970 million Indians are eligible to vote that effectively is 11% of the population of the world. So apart from the one third that Adam mentioned in his opening remarks that we're going to get a chance to vote this year. That's an extremely large number. And if you think in terms of just the logistics of it, we have an electronic voting machine system for the last three or four elections. And these have been quite controversial in terms of the fact that in election after election including in provincial and state elections. The outcomes very often confound everyone 30 you know 20 point leads just vanish overnight and this tends to surprise people voting people reporting. So there's an element of surprise within the conduct of the Indian elections, which also makes the predictability based on, you know, opinion polls very difficult really to sustain over this particular period. Now, the significance of these elections are massive both for India and for the world. For India, I think Mr Modi has said in the last few months that he is going to make fundamental changes and by which I mean, I think he means that he's going to formalize fundamental changes that have already taken place within India. Kind of an undeclared majoritarian rule is well established. Now, one can see that there are key members of the ruling BJP. For example, the chief minister of the state of Assam. Himanta Sharma, who says he would not he does not want Muslims to vote for his party. He can do without the Muslims voting. The other so called star campaigners of the party chief ministers of other states like Yogi Adityanath, they don't make such an open and explicit statement for the exclusion of Muslims. But if you think in terms of the conduct of justice in these states, we have a very famous model of so called bulldozer justice where people who are accused of writing for example, very often without any evidence have their homes destroyed by bulldozers before the matter goes to court. We have recently had destruction of mosques in Delhi as a result of planning infringement, though these mosques were 200 years old and there was no planning permission at that point in time. So there's a relentlessly relentless effort within the country to make sure that Muslims and some other minorities, Christians whose places of worship have been attacked as well, are made to feel that they're not equal to other citizens, especially Hindus in the country. And this has taken place at a very informal level. And I'm not the only one to make to think that what we are heading towards in if the BJP comes for a third term is some kind of a formal constitutional mechanism that will declare India to be a Hindu state. What that might mean in terms of differential levels of citizenship is I think an open question. And also it could very well be that this is a sort of a rallying cry on the part of BJP strategists to rally the base around the party for the coming elections. There are other issues. You know, I mean, we have the world's highest youth unemployment in the age group 18 to 40, 18 to 30, there is 40% unemployment, economic data lacks credibility. So you can't really hold the government to account. In fact, you know, for a while, some of us were compiling the number of things for which there is no data. So for example, for growth by economic sector, you will not find data. Farmer suicides, which used to be a kind of an indicator, you know, previously regarding the government's successes or failures in agricultural policy, there is no such data and things like that. So as Mr Modi says, you have to trust me and that I suppose also means we have to trust the data that the government comes up with. Sometimes they even disregard data coming from the government statistical office. So there's a I think India is a perfect example of a democracy that is driven by misinformation, fake news, almost complete control over television media and a complete domination of social media spaces. Some of you might have seen in the last few days, Elon Musk and Twitter coming up with an official statement that they have switched off the accounts of many critics of the government, because they can only function in India if they obey what the government says. So if you're looking for a laboratory for how social media destroys democracy, whereas at one point in time, we had thought it would be a democratizing element. I think India is a very good example of that countless fake news accounts exist. There are entire websites that government ministers and government influences will retweet or, you know, quote even in parliament, which are notoriously fake news oriented and in fact, on the Wikipedia entry, some of these have been described as not as notorious for fake news. So internally within India, there is, you know, not only is an enormous, you know, youth unemployment, there is the danger for this to explode at any point. So as a small example, just a couple of days ago, I think something like 20, two and a half million people applied for 4,800 jobs. And these are competitive exams, the question papers were leaked. And then you had students on the streets coming close to a riot. So these are sort of just just below the surface simmering. And that is why it sort of, you know, gives us pause with respect to the predictions coming from most observers on in television and in media, which basically seemed to gift the elections already to Modi saying it's just a question of how many more seats than 300 or even 400, the party is going to win. Now, in terms of, yeah, I just want to ask you, do you have a thought or a statement on Indonesia by nature? Yes, I do. I'll come. I'll come to that in just a minute, because I think India symptomizes what Indonesia has just gone for. But I just want to make a quick point about the geopolitical elements here to, you know, make a connection with, you know, what Anthony had just said. The projection of Mr. Moody as a global statesman is one big part of his appeal within India. I think there are large sections of the electorate who believe that the world listens to what he says. This idea is reinforced by comments by European leaders, by the Australian Prime Minister, by Biden and a whole range of these people. We are told in India that he can stop the Ukraine war as at will and that he has done so in the past to evacuate Indians from Ukraine. And that despite the fact that he has given up his responsibilities with respect to Israel and the conflict, the war in Gaza, they seem to believe that it is within his powers to stop that. So there's a massive attribution of these kinds of powers to Moody. Now, I think that what has happened just in Indonesia is in a smaller scale, what India has already been through. And by that I mean the following. Within the Indonesian elections, what we have seen is that issues that people used to be really concerned about, such as human rights, for example, the election of Prabowo in Indonesia basically seems to suggest something similar to what has happened in India, which is the preference for a strong man as a leader, an openly majoritarian stance. The reliance on TikTok in that case, of course, that is banned in India, so we use other social media, but TikTok as the social media platform of choice in which short clips basically reinforce all of these three elements. The element of majoritarian rule, I would say even a hatred for human rights or a contempt for human rights in the sense that human rights is seen increasingly in many countries of the third world as a Western hypocrisy. And as a result of that, if a leader comes out in opposition to the idea of human rights, they are seen as coming their nose to the West, and therefore it bolsters the idea of that particular strong man. I think Indonesia also has major dangers in terms of formalizing the drift towards majoritarianism. And I think unfortunately for large parts of the world today, there is a feeling that majoritarianism is true democracy and that anyone warning you against majoritarianism is somehow being inauthentic and in fact perhaps has been too westernized in their thinking. I think these are elements that we saw briefly in Brazil. And as a point of comparison, I would say that because some of the key institutions maintain their independence in Brazil, the judiciary for example in parts of the media and the election commission things which are attenuated currently within the media, these are countries that are likely to go into a long period of flirtation with some form of authoritarianism and majoritarianism. So I'll stop there and then we'll come back perhaps to more questions. Absolutely. Thank you Sabir. I'm going to go straight through to a completely different part of the United States. Leslie, why don't you give me your introductory comments. Okay, thank you. First of all, Adam, it's an honor to be asked and it's great to be with everybody here today. I'm learning a lot. I've just returned from India from the Raisina Dialogue and I will say there was one panel led by Orof America on the US elections. But apart from that on the main stage, there was remarkably little said about the US elections and I raise that because as Anthony well knows is all of us so as and across the UK, and frankly across much of the world know the rest of the world is very passionate and very caught up and very engaged by this US election. One of the concerns is that perhaps they're more passionate about this election than many Americans who are eligible to vote. And so perhaps I'd start there I was with Adam and Steven in Adam's office before we began and I sort of looked to see what was the turnout in the US election and election were clearly many people felt that there was something very significant at stake. We had four years of a Trump presidency. This is of course before the capital of the assault or the insurrection on the capital of January 6 but nonetheless, the pressure it was very enthusiastic very passionate and felt very strongly and there was a 66% turnout rate amongst eligible voters in the United States, which was higher than we'd ever seen the US before and I think the concern. And this sort of sets a context for where we are now the the concern right now is that it looks like the US is headed towards. And this is a rerun of the 2020 elections, Trump versus Biden, but within an electorate which is feeling much less enthusiastic. They, people are largely divided into the camps that they will probably still be in in terms of which candidate they support. And I don't know in a US election the thing that really moves the needle is you know who gets who gets out of bed and votes or who sends in their mail ballot. And I think people are anticipating right now that a number of young voters, which are absolutely critical, especially to the Democratic Party they care about climate. Obviously, their their ability to earn money and to do well at a time in their career where they're harder harder, there are more challenges on that dimension. They care about things that the Democrats align with what when it comes to a woman's right to choose and that's men and women, and they care a lot about the war in Gaza. And on a number of these dimensions, the benefits of Joe Joe Biden presidency aren't being felt. Joe Biden has produced very considerable growth in a positive way in global terms and certainly in the US he's generated the creation of numerous jobs. But it hasn't really hit the headline and it possibly the effects haven't yet been felt on. If you add to that you know the concern about by these age and most especially I think the disaffection that so many young voters in the US have felt about the Biden administration's the appearance of its inability to restrain Israel to really push for a ceasefire to take a more certain stand when it comes to supporting Palestinians is really dampen the enthusiasm of many young voters despite the fact that the administration has been so strong on climate policies. But I guess the second thing I would say is, you know, it's not just an election between what looks like and there is a long road to go we are already in election season there's tremendous politicking. There's tremendous division. There's a long road to go but it already feels like we're there it's hugely uncertain. But there, there aren't just, you know, headline elections it's not just the presidency it's also the Senate, where we have 34 seats that are up for election, and where Democrats look like they're going to be on the back seat defending a lot of those seats and we could see you know as a Senate that's narrowly controlled by the Senate's flipping to Republican control that matters for what America does on the global stage. And as we know, every single seat in the house will be up for election so there's a lot going on and it's already playing out and it's, it's beginning to show some of the signs of what will matter most in the next phase of America's domestic and global role and what will happen is that as soon as Donald Trump started to feel more insecure which I would date at the New Hampshire primary when despite the fact that he won very comfortably he also didn't win as well as he should have given that this is a man who won the Republican Party for the last year since 2016 2017 a younger woman mixed race well a Indian American woman who openly refuted the legitimacy of the former president I took around 40% of the vote which is very very considerable in a primary those people who turn up tend to be on the extreme of the party and in the case of the Republican Party they're much more supportive of Trump so it's a headline of you know Trump winning but there is this sort of this thing this born in his side which is which is of Nikki Haley so there's a lot of uncertainty and the politics and the issues that are rising to the fore are the politics of immigration. And what happened after New Hampshire was that the, the former president decided that it was time to get in the way of any disruptive legislation that might come out of the house. I, despite the fact that assistance for Ukraine had been at the request of the Republicans linked to measures from border security, and support for Israel and even some support for humanitarian relief and Gaza. And the former president sort of used his leverage over those eight Maga Republicans in the house to ensure that nothing's really going through and all that is to say that immigration's at the top of the set of issues that are dominating the debate and it's already started it's not, you know, it's not a race that's that's primarily about November. I guess my other point on this and I'll say just a few words about what it what it means for America's democracy and what it means for America's global role is that anything could happen we've got two candidates that are flawed in different ways and perceived more importantly perceived to be flawed in different ways we know that Donald Trump has 91 criminal indictments hanging over his head. And we know that so far that hasn't deeply damaged the support that he receives from his base but I think we can also think that if a court case did go through if there was a conviction that there wouldn't be many people who would be very even if they didn't vote for Biden they'd be very reluctant to turn out and vote for the former president. We know the concerns about Joe Biden's age and we know that for despite a very strong record domestically, he has just simply failed to ignite the passion so you know he is older, many things can happen. But let me say a little bit about what's at stake, if Trump were to be elected because I think it's the thing that everybody wants to know. And I would argue that the number one concern for for most Americans is what happens at home and rightly so Trump 2.0 were to come about would not be the same as Trump 1.0. Those individuals and organizations who are supportive and leaning conservative and supportive of a future Trump administration have come together under the coordination effort of the heritage foundation in Washington they have made available in 900 page public document that's called Project 2025. They aren't doing what Trump did in 2016 which is being shocked that he won and wondering who's going to work for him and what he's going to do and is he will have to actually move into you know the White House in Washington, which was not something he actually wanted to do. This is a president and a, and a layer of organizations who is planning, who is very certain, and, and, and, and has, and has a very serious plan for the next of changing the structure of America's democracy and the most important thing to know, if you don't know it already is what schedule f is, and schedule f is the plan to in a sense, rid America of the so-called deep state and the way to do that is to turn permanent civil servants those who enjoy you know a certain kind of status and job security into an effect political appointees with the president, and the idea the justification is that many people who work in Washington lean liberal because of where they live they've worked for a very long time with each other and they no longer do what they're supposed to do according to the Constitution which is to implement the president's agenda and so therefore schedule f will rid the president of that constraint on his ability to implement his agenda that is a rather serious move if you listen to the architects of the policy. It's very easy to nod your head and say actually there's a lot there's a lot to the argument until you recognize the politics the ideological just requirements that will be required of those who wish to work for the administration there is a radical not a not a fly by night plan for what comes next so America's democracy there's a lot to say there let me say very quickly because I'm getting up to time on what it means for the rest of the world because the rest of the world is very worried, certainly here in the UK and in Europe. American should be even more concerned. Trump as we know has a very different vision of America's global role and say what you wish to say about Biden, and there are many things to say certainly in the context of the war in Gaza. But Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn't really care about multilateralism he doesn't really care about working with America's allies, or its partners, or it's sometimes friends to solve the global challenge of climate change. He denies the greatest problem of our time the facts of climate change the number one thing you know at risk from a long term perspective would be science and under that heading of science would be America's commitment to climate change. Secondly, the broader array of multilateral institutions many of which Donald Trump and probably pull the United States out of thirdly and we can talk more about this Anthony's already said it Europe I think has the most to worry from a geographical perspective. Donald Trump just has a be in his bonnet about the problem of burden sharing that Germany isn't stepping up that Europe isn't stepping up he likes Russia. We don't know why it's been investigated. Nobody's ever gotten to the nub of the problem but this is a former president who really really likes. Putin and that means something not only for Europe that means something for America's Russia policy would, which would be radically different in Asia I think the key thing to watch here is that the that Donald Trump cares about tariffs. He has a very different style of economic engagement, and he's made it very clear that he would revoke MFN status for China that he would go that he would double down on a tariff war, doesn't seem to care very much about supporting Taiwan in whatever way. It's, you know, his policy on Taiwan his views on Taiwan have changed so much that it's very difficult to predict, but there's there's no doubt that the uncertainty and the chaos and the doubling down on tariff policy would create all sorts of problems for confidence and stability in the global economy for business for consumers. And I think there's there's a whole lot to be worried about the number one concern I think there's really democracy in the US. Well thank you very much and I want to quickly go to Steven right to the bottom end of the African continent in South Africa and they great to the elections on May 29. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me it's a very, very great pleasure. And yes, the elections will be held in South Africa on the 29th of May. It's only one of a huge number of elections in Africa this year, the 54 countries in Africa and 17 of the one third of them are going to election this year a whole float had elections last year. Elections don't always mean what they suggest in many parts of Africa it's unlikely that in many of these 17 African elections this year there'll be a significant change of government. Basically, it's more of the same. And the whole idea is that they're held as validation exercises, but all the same attract huge turnouts when you attend African elections. The number of people who wait for our after our after our inverting views shows at least some kind of commitment among the general population that maybe there is a chance for a change. And in fact, there could be a change in South Africa. Ever since Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 and the first elections of a majority rule nature were held in 1994. The ruling party the ANC has held power. 70% voting preference for the party. More recently it's declined to the 50% and there's some speculation some opinion polling right now suggests that in the forthcoming elections that could drop into the 40s, which means that the ANC would not be able to command a majority election. I would have to go into coalition. And it's deeply unsympathetic to both the major opposition parties, the white dominated Democratic Alliance, and the fiery economic freedom fighters of Julius Milema. Both of those parties are not conducive to the sense of the ANC that it has of itself as responsible party leading into the future. At the same time the echoes of Mandela Linga, the president of South Africa right now Sir Ramaphosa was one of the chief negotiators in the four year interregnum between 90 and 94, leading to the new South Africa leading to the elections that gave the country respectability as being majority ruled. So what you have is a memory that is very, very recent to when democracy first came to South Africa. And yet this could be a very, very fraught election, not because of memory, because so much is at stake. So much infrastructure has degenerated. And so many of those who would be expecting to have normal services, and the ANC was built on the platform of service delivery. Many of those services have been eroded to the point where they're not recognizable anymore as reliable functioning services. The domestic issues are going to be huge on the agenda. At the same time what you do have as a president, be very very active and try to create an image of himself as an activist as a respectable statesman in international relations, the South African and the international court of justice over Gaza, for instance, for something which was not just an election stunt. However, very very much. There's been a longstanding commitment, Palestine, Nelson Mandela when he was inaugurated went out of his way to have the Nasser Arafat safely conducted to South Africa to attend this inauguration. So there's a longstanding affiliation to the struggle that South Africans feel that the Palestinians are also waging. It kind of double as it were edge to it, but public relations within South Africa. Look, I'm the president who can get the world's attention, but also mature to the values of the past. Those things will play out on a twin track in South Africa, but probably you're going to be having leading as a verb in terms of all of the issues, domestic concerns about why is my standard of living declining. Why is that prospect as a young person of salary deployment declining. Why can't I get electricity. Why can't I take a train ride that's reliable. And at the industrial end of the scale. Why can't I get my exports to the ports because the trains aren't working all across the country. In the industrial sector you can think of, you see this degeneration and poor quality construction of housing units, degeneration of the medical infrastructure immigration also is a major problem. And this affects relationships with surrounding countries, huge influx of some Bob wins desperate to try to escape deteriorating conditions back home. It's much faster than anywhere else in the world, right now, crossing over into South Africa and causing very, very great resentment about South Africans already having trouble getting jobs, they see the newcomers as direct competitors. International relations are fraught certainly between those two countries and Bob way in South Africa. There's this ambiguous sense of what are you doing in international relations when you should be using your considerable prowess as a president to solve domestic problems. The international relations of Africa, what you've got is a very enigmatic moment, wanting to be close to the United States, obviously a mover and shaker in the world but very, very leery of a Donald Trump victory is remembered well that Donald Trump called Africa that was one of the most powerful countries that really struck a big bell of alarm and this taste in many, many parts of Africa, including in South Africa. A Cold War debt to the old Soviet Union, today's Russia, because it was Cuban military aid sponsored by the Soviet Union that really laid the path for the eventual release of Nelson Mandela. It is said to forget that there is a Cold War debt there. There's a huge reliance increasingly on Chinese investment and Chinese are very active throughout the entire region and propping up or rebuilding infrastructure. The very thing that is decaying, which means that the future South Africans get to be deeply enmeshed in the next stage of what we used to call the Cold War, the new Cold War will have South Africa as a central player. Now in South Africa rise to this challenge. You've got very poor public administration. Many of the protocols of public administration are directly inherited from the apartheid days, when a very, very small white population had as it were a command of services designed to benefit that small population. And that kind of public administrative protocol is used now to try to govern a huge country which is meant to have majority benefit. So there need to be several revolutions in South Africa before it can be at ease with itself, before it can achieve some kind of equity distance in international relations. And in terms of the coalition that might take place. Well, that would be interesting. I don't think any coalition is going to be with the Democratic Alliance. Too short a distance from a white-willed past to get into bed with a party led by a white man. I'm afraid race relations still come in South Africa. Some distaste for the young firebrand Julius Malema who heads the Economic Freedom Fighters. But if there is a coalition, I'll make a prediction here and now, it will be with the Economic Freedom Fighters. And Julius Malema will demand the vice presidency. That will set the scene for a very, very interesting South Africa. Not of instant agreement within government, but of contestation within government as it seeks to find its path in international relations, as it seeks to find its way forward to a new domestic dispensation in what is now a very troubled country. Thank you very much. I think those were useful comments colleagues from all four of you. I was going to ask a couple of questions, but we, we only have a half an hour. I'm going to be very quick and go to the audience. There's a number of questions that have come up. One of which is across the world, voters are losing hope. So what elections in as a democratic process can achieve. And the big question is, why is there such significant support for identity, identitarian politics, or even populist of one kind or the other think about Trump had more than 70 million people vote for him in the last election. Look at the number of conservative right wing politicians that have won elections in Western Europe. A severe Modi, however much you may criticize him earns the vote of hundreds of millions of people. And so the big question is, what is going on here. And why do progressives feel paralysed at this present time. How can they really reclaim political agency. Now, I'm going to all of you, but I'm going to ask you to please try and respond quickly because there's a couple other questions. Let me come to you to be your mute. There's a global moment of majoritarian upsurge going on now for about 15 odd years. The desire for very strong leaders for whom law and deep state kind of administrative things are restraints on their power. It seems to me that there's a popular upsurge to give one person enormous powers. The global turbulence starting all the way from 2001, the Twin Towers and their destruction with successive economic crises which are global in scope, the pandemic. For all of these reasons, it seems to me that electorates are actually going in for an authoritarian person, rather than taking matters in their own hands through other means of democratic governance, for example, participation and things like that. I just want to add on that. There is a massive upsurge in democratic participation. So there's a kind of paradoxical moment in which larger and larger numbers of people are actually participating in processes that ultimately disenfranchise them. Basically, it suggests that the scope of the problems facing the world are seen by voters to be too strong for them to be directly involved in the participation of it or in the solution to that. So I'm going to pose a question to Bill and it seems to me it goes to all of the countries we're talking about. And the question I want to put it provocatively, is Modi a product of the failure of Congress? Have liberal parties failed in what they were meant to do that has created the prospect of conservative politicians coming to the fore? The decline of the Congress is a long term phenomenon going back 30 years. The rise of Modi in contrast is a phenomenon that basically comes after the death of the Congress. So I don't really see that necessarily as a causal factor in the rise of Modi. What we do have is the lack of any consensus as to what the opposition will look like and the terms on which they might form a coalition. If they're able to form a coalition, let's not forget that the BJP and Modi despite Modi's great popularity are still pulling around 37% of the vote in India. So if the opposition gets its act together, there is 63% of the vote to play for, but the chances of that happening. It seems to me are not zero, but there are many ifs and buts before that can actually take shape. Anthony, your thoughts? Clearly there's a crisis of political representation in democracies around the world and Europe is not excluded from that. We see new problems, a sense among large sections of the population that their concerns, their values, the way that they look at things are not adequately represented by traditional parties. And that's leading them increasingly to look at parties of the populist rights, also in some cases to look at new parties of different shapes. Remember that President Macron, you know, he's the centrist, but he rose to power by rebelling against the traditional party system. The situation in Europe is complicated though. Remember that in Poland, we recently saw a swing back away from the populist right towards a much more centrist traditional approach. In Spain, the kind of parties of the, you know, center left and center right are hanging on this again was a turn away from the extremes. And the populist parties are you asked before about about immigration and this is a kind of yes immigration is a big issue. But there is this kind of complication about the idea of having a kind of pan European alliance of populist nationalists because national interests can diverge. So on migration. Yes, it's a signature issue for the Prime Minister in Italy, Georgia Maloney, as well as for the Prime Minister in Hungary, Victor Obama, but their interests are aligned because the migrants are mostly are not aligned. Sorry, the migrants are mostly arriving in Italy and Italy has an interest in sharing the burden across Europe, whereas countries like Hungary are very much opposed. So there are some tensions and complications, but it is, you know, it is a kind of testing moment and I think there is an absence of strong leadership in Europe at the national stage. We'll see how Donald Tusk does, you know, coming back in Poland. But we need some kind of strong charismatic leaders who can really rally Europeans behind the centrist or moderate solutions to the big challenges that the continent faces. Leslie, I mean, one of our audiences put it quite boldly, has Biden laid the groundwork for Trump by failing to deliver policies that address the aspirations of people in the United States. It's the same thing to submit. I'm asking the same thing of you. It's a very complicated story at one level why people vote for Donald Trump because they're voting for him for very different reasons. Big business and a lot of wealthy individuals are voting for him because they think he will deregulate the economy and cut taxes again. And they're willing to give him a pass on the other issues because there's a sense of being protected from it and they think, and this is, you know, really important point. They think the system will ultimately work to constrain the more, you know, authoritarian tendencies of the former president that America's democracy is strong enough to withstand an assault on the capital as it did. The vote was certified on the same night that the Supreme Court, yes, you can stack it in a certain way, but ultimately they're still an independence. So they're willing to vote on the issues that matter to them and Donald Trump serves in that way and a lot of people are very opposed to the climate policies what seem to be as an industrial policy by economics so that you know they're complex reasons. But I guess the other thing that I would say is, you know, when you look back and you said 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. There were, again, if you go back to the 2020 moment it was such a complicated period because we had Black Lives Matter protests now that inspired very large numbers of young and progressive voters to come out for the Dems but Trump and the Republican Party were very effective at turning that into a, the Democrats don't have a handle on crime in our cities and it's true right during COVID the crime went up. Black Lives Matter protests spread that also led to a lot of crime on both sides but the narrative was captured by the right so there were people you know voting on the crime issue. The Democrats are weak on crime there are people voting on economic issues for Trump. And then there were people and this is you know this doesn't really get a headline outside of the US but it comes to the broader question of school choice and woke ism and those are huge issues right now because they come right to the core of identity politics. There are very large number of people that feel like identity politics have gone too far that you are too constrained in terms of what you can actually say that freedom of speech is not protected, let alone, you know, across America but we're seeing this play out on diversity campuses it's very difficult issue. And there are a lot of people who have mobilized to say we want our children, we want to be able to choose what they study in schools we want to have them protected to use all sorts of language, and woke ism has become its own form of, you know, soft totalitarianism so it is a complex environment, and people do choose their issues in which they vote final comment is I you know I'll put my cards on the table. I think if you look closely people aren't as enthusiastic about Trump as you know the world fears they are. And it's obviously going to be a very complicated several months, but I suspect that ultimately Donald Trump will not land back in the White House because people are concerned about what he represents. Stephen, I mean, looking at all of those questions. I mean, ironically, South Africa seems at one level, a fairly progressive alternative to everything else, even if it's a completely incompetent alternative. If it's progressive. Do you not think that an alliance between the ANC and the EFF, as you suggest, creates the potential for what's playing out in India, or what's playing out in the far right in parts of Europe or a Trump or Bolsonaro as early on. Does that possibility not frighten you in any way. I don't think there's going to be a swing to the authoritarian right in South Africa. My feeling is that if Julius Bolema doesn't attain some kind of position of importance. The other side of them will come to the fore, which is in fact a reasonably well educated young man who is very, very adept at being a popular rebel rouser when he's in opposition, whether or not you'll be able to turn his talents to something more constructive is an open question. But South Africa has advantages over many other African countries. What do you have for instance just next door to the north is in Barbway. This is an authoritarian government that panders to sectional interests. That's not going to happen in South Africa simply because South Africa is so diverse. Try to identify he sexual interest is much harder than in Zimbabwe. And you've got other examples in the region, the immaculate democracy of Zambia, for instance, despite 72 different ethnic groups. So you have examples in Africa and your neighbors to South Africa that constrain the drift towards authoritarianism and the whole recent history of South Africa is fighting against white led authoritarianism. And that still echoes the legacy of Mandela is not dead yet. It might be muted in many, many ways that people remember that this is a breakthrough living memory. Some of the leading politicians were part of that, as I said, many people voting were part of that. And so I think there will be as it were interesting and volatile politics possibly in South Africa. I don't see it become an authoritarian right wing state in any way. Moving on to another question, which is the international relations or what does the world look like with the shift in the right that is playing out in multiple places. I mean, I had two kinds of thoughts on the one hand, many people say to me that there's one part of this feels like a new version of the 1920s, something worse is possible. And that we may be building towards not exactly what played out in the 1930s. But a version of that in the contemporary order, given the rise of the right, given the polarized character, given the identitarian politics, given the very, very deep structural inequality, given the lost of hope. Is that possible? Is that something we should fear? Or are we going to look to something more mild? I'd like to kick up perhaps this time with you, Lizzie. I mean, look, it's milder in certain ways. It's much worse in other ways, right? If you add climate change, right, the concern of climate change to that, a world that becomes more restrictive when it comes to cooperation in general, that doesn't solve the really dramatic problem, and it's a real problem. It's not a made up problem. The problem with immigration, which is going to get worse as you have climate induced immigration, you could see what, you know, the contemporary version of the 1920s is that rather than increasing intelligent assistance and investments from, you know, those countries that have benefited from the system to those countries that have been on, you know, the very difficult receiving end in ways that tackles the immigration problem that's going to again get worse from climate change in a more serious way. What we might see instead is, you know, you throw up your borders, you close your borders, you do part of what the US has been doing for some time now, which is you restrict market access, you cease to have the kind of open trade and economic policies that were so important in the 1950s and the 1960s. And yeah, you get a much more dangerous situation where countries that need to cope with climate change, climate adaptation and have deep problems with poverty, now we know debt distress is a very considerable problem. And the world is, you know, the world of wealthy nations that could step up are really doing the opposite, right, they're being pulled inwards by all the things that we've just been talking about before, difficult internal politics, the poll, the shift to the right legitimate economic constraints and inequalities. But that leads to in my view in some ways a much more dangerous situation because we know if you're going to deal with climate change you can't do it by turning inwards. Subir, your thoughts? Yeah, I think that, you know, we are going to see continued sort of global turbulence, the collapse of global order, not just the second, you know, the global order that came into effect at the end of the Second World War, but even the global order that came into effect at the end of the Cold War is disintegrating in front of our eyes. What you now will see is some kind of an authoritarian international, which was already taking shape in, you know, in Trump 1.0 as Leslie said, there will be no global leadership that is going to be able to convene to solve these problems in any systematic way. We will be seeing a lot of opportunistic behavior such as that of India, in respect to the war in Russia and its own sort of policies to take benefit of differential petrol prices. So I would say unfortunately that we have to buckle up for a rough ride. There will be an exhaustion with this kind of politics. But unfortunately I feel that countries will choose to go through this politics for a while yet before there is a way out. Anthony, I'd love to get your thoughts, but I also want to pose a question about what do you think is going to happen in the Russian elections, especially after the death of Navalny, as you think this through? I don't think that the Russian elections are going to be a cliffhanger. I think we can foresee the result. But I think looking forward, the longer term future of Russia is a more open question. Russia after Putin, what does it look like? He's dominated the scene for so long. You know, it may not be democratic, but it will, you know, how will it orient itself in relation to its neighbors? For Europe, it's, there's a kind of Europeans like the flatter themselves that Europe and European unity is forged in crisis, that it takes a crisis to push the, you know, divergent cats of Europe to herd together and come up with a step forward in integration. And I think the next few years may put that maxim to the test again. We're so far, some of the populist rights leaders are friendly to Russia and would like to do a deal, but others, again, you know, to stress the diversity of European populism. Others have not taken that view. Again, in Italy, Georgia Maloney has been pretty solid. And she is very much in the ascendant now. It'll be her, you know, her group that's doing well in the European Parliament elections. She's taken a tough line so far on Ukraine, but I think it will be more testing when the demands of really rearming and sustaining Europe through a more hostile period begin to tell a bit more on the economy. That hasn't really happened so far yet. It could lead us to double down in some respects on climate and the green transition because that's how Europe is going to increase its energy independence, perhaps with new ties to Africa and make sure it can survive without Russian gas. We may see new, new thinking on migration migration currently is the most toxic subject and yet in terms of the demographics in Europe, Europe will need more people to come because it's got an aging population. So, you know, yes, climate change could drive wearing trends, but Europe needs to think this through. So I think there in the end there could be some sort of new vision for Europe in its relationship to its neighbors in Africa. And so the rest of the European Eurasian landmass emerging, but it's going to be a complicated path from here to there. And I think a key question is how the European publics are going to respond and can they be brought along, you know, through this difficult period of adjustment. Stephen, I mean one of the things that intrigues me about conflict on the African continent between 1995 and 2008 conflict on the continent reduced by two thirds. Since then I would venture it's expanded dramatically. Is there any hope that in the coming decade things will get better on the transnational continental. I think that we're likely to be entering a decade where there's increased conflict, small wars, medium sized wars and established states taking sides in what at first glance seemed to be like local warlord conflicts. This is always taking already taking place in Democratic Republic of Congo for instance, where the Rwandan sector very clearly supporting one faction in more than one ways and command positions as well as providing weapons and training. So I think there'll be contestation along many of the border areas of Africa. At the same time, I think that Africa is facing all kinds of other choices of a much larger nature as well, quite a powerful war among African countries it's the relationship with the large powers outside. The two most right wing leaders in the world today are in fact the Russian leader and the Chinese leader. So the big elephant the room that we haven't discussed is the future of China, and it's influence on Africa, which is profound, and it's influence on conflicts in Africa. So who provides the weaponry who provides as it were the residual training Chinese influence is going to be very, very pronounced and many, many parts of Africa, and also in the development of economic resources like lithium, for instance, the new green production would depend on batteries that are dependent and turn on lithium and the Chinese already big big players in that whole rare metals market conflict is basically taking place on a whole range of contested commodities that will bring economic welfare or ruin the different parts of Africa, and the Chinese is there right in the thick of all of this. So when I think about Africa I think about its international nations. I think about as democratic deficit. I think of its own tendencies rural towards authoritarianism. I also think about the affiliation of these authoritarianism with greater authoritarianism outside of the continent. I think that that's an interesting point to bring it up to to end this conversation I must say the one thing that I would say about the Chinese situation as I just read a report, which suggested that China has greater representation in the world. In the countries of the world in the United States. It has more. It has three representation in three more countries than the United States and that shows that the Chinese state has been building its diplomatic weight across the world in quite significant ways over the last period in time. I would say a couple of things that worry me about this conversation. It's an utterly depressing conversation. The world is in a seriously bad place we live in a dangerous time and frankly we lack the leaders that the world needs at this moment. We have all of these transnational challenges. She's come out of a pandemic. We have climate change. We have deep inequalities. We have multiple wars that could cripple our planet. And we need leaders that are capable of managing this and we don't have that. And the way I hear all of you. These elections are not going to deliver those leaders that we require. And that's the serious serious challenge of our time. It seems to me in addition to that we have to ask what is it that more liberal politicians have done. What have more progressive political leaders have done. Where is that their agency. The response to open is the electorates just not doing what is required. But why are they not voting for progressives. What is it about progressives that are not addressing the challenges of their time that are not responding to and being responsive to the citizens. And that failure of progressive leaders across the world is that not creating the crisis that is emerging in all of these multiple different national settings. This is the challenge. Most importantly, as Leslie has said earlier on, we are on a countdown to planetary destruction. If we do not get our act together as a global community, as a political class across transnational boundaries, we will not survive as a human species. And that's the fundamental challenge of our time. And it's the fundamental challenge our political elites need to confront. But frankly, it's fundamental challenge that all of us need to confront, including the universities. I'll leave it there. Thank you very, very much.