Who Funds Reform? The Missing Millions
29 May 2026
180. The Only European Leader Defying Trump? (Pedro Sánchez)
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Podcast
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16 March 2026
Why is Prime Minister Sánchez such an outlier in challenging Trump on everything from military spending to Gaza? What’s behind Spain’s recent economic success? How is Spain tackling the rising far-right? What are Pedro Sánchez’s lessons for Keir Starmer?
Alastair and Rory are joined by Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain, to answer all this and more.
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I’ve just listened to your interview with Pedro Sanchez and the discussion you had afterwards about European leaders. The one thing all the leaders you have interviewed have in common, and which you didn’t mention, is that they are all speaking in a foreign language. I’m sure there is not a leading politician in this country who could be interviewed in a foreign language. Alistair is an outlier and he’s not an elected politician. As a schoolgirl, I spent many holidays on exchange visits with penfriends in Germany and France and became fluent in both. When I went to Bavaria as an adult, I had a completely different sense of my place in the world in Germany and as a German speaker. I felt truly European. My Dutch friend told me years ago of course everyone in the Netherlands speaks English, when you come from a small country like ours, you have to learn English because no one is going to learn Dutch.
If you look at the education of this generation of European leaders, or indeed of any generation of European leaders, almost all speak English. How did they learn it? I’m sure you could bet that they all travelled to the UK or the States,, they mixed with ‘foreigners’, they were exposed to ‘foreign’ cultures, read and spoke English. This will have massively affected their world outlook, their values, their understanding of what it is like to be in a foreign country and mix with ‘foreigners’. British education is so deficient in this respect. Universities are closing down language degrees everywhere, Brexit, the restrictions now in place that make it difficult to live in European countries for extended periods. The thing I am most pround of about the person I am now (I’m 79) is that I speak three European languages fluently and that I have travelled all over Europe and the world. These opportunities have been the greatest gift of my life and the reason I volunteer now where I live to support asylum seekers and refugees. It was in India that I first learned how political language is. We are educating generations of people with a very narrow view of the world, with limited opportunities to learn about the world, impoverished in their attitudes to people from other countries, unable to communicate with people who don’t speak English. It’s embarrassing and contributes to the British narrow mindedness about people from elsewhere. So we are not educating people with the world vision of people like Sanchez and Sikorsky.