But how do you see this victory of Lula? And how do you see how easy it's going to be for him to continue his policy or be more pragmatic in negotiations?

Yeah, Alberto, and thanks to you guys for having me on.

It's a pleasure to be here with all friends.

Look, I mean, it's obviously going to be a very tough beginning, at least, to this mandate.

Having said that, there has been a rightward shift in Congress, with the liberals, Bolsonaro's party, winning a very impressive share of seats in the Senate.

But I think the point is that there are quite important divisions on the right, between the liberals and the bolsonaristas, the more ideological guys, and the more traditional conservatives, ranging from the progressive union, as it's now called, the LPP and Union Brazil, to the PSD, who've been central party, but went with Lula during this election.

And Lula is, as we all know, a consummate negotiator, and very sensible, pragmatic politician.

For Lula, it's going to demand a lot of political expertise from him.

Do you think their late campaigning, do you think their online kind of performance is turning this around?

I mean, I think it's easier to understand why there's a lot of greater optimism in the Lula camp.

The first round defeat at the beginning of this month was quite shocking.

It wasn't expected.

They lost by two million votes.

And really, Flavio Bolsonaro should be winning this second round runoff.

Many of the votes cast for third candidates, or most of the votes cast for third candidates, went to Conservatives.

You can see the strategies that appear to be more than coincidental.

So what do you think changed? Was it the economy? Was it social polarization, politics? Was it the corruption cases we saw in the 90s, 2000s?

Yeah, I mean, the context has changed quite a bit in the last 23 years since Lula began.

He began his first government in January 2003.

One of the things that's allowed Lula to introduce some of these positive changes, Brazil's relationship with China.

China...

You know, until 2008, I think I'm right in saying that the US was Brazil's biggest trading partner.

From 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, Its economy starts to take off, but those manufactured exports and their impact in Chinese society had an incredibly dynamic effect across Latin America, across South America really, in terms of sucking in ever larger quantities of primary products.

So what do you think about, I mean, you're talking about the trends, you're talking about the bigger dynamics, but how do you think Jair Bolsonaro made that his banner and made his election such a victory? And of course, his presidency and, well, what happened afterwards with the attempted coup?

talk a little bit about your book Lula what do you learn after doing all of this and what are the challenges again wow that's a

big question yeah what did I learn about doing the book I mean the strange thing is I I started this whole process the Bolsonaro book and the Lula book started I um in 2018 um after bolsonaro had come um had won the the election and became president and you know i i was i did a i did a some radio with um bbc with uh the briefing room and i talked about bolsonaro's support base this big move conservative move towards um in brazil that has really been very noticeable over the past two decades two to three decades really and the growth of these conservative lobbies i mean beef bible and bullets are all the big lobbies in congress but they represent you know substantial interest groups in society around agribusiness around the evangelical church which is now you know a third of all brazilians are in evangelical churches and the big security lobby that is consistently demanding a tough line, a tougher line on organized crime.

So those three big lobbies that are all very heavily represented in Congress, you know, they got Bolsonaro elected, really.

And I guess, you know, then fast forward, 2022 was in Brazil for the Lula election when Lula came back.

And promoting the Bolsonaro book and I was asked to by by another publisher uh by Bloomsbury would I be interested in writing a book about Lula and and I you know it is it's kind of too good an opportunity to turn down really and so so I did write the book on Lula and I think what I suppose what did I learn from that process I mean I think Lula struggled huge changes in Brazilian society.

We can talk about those at length, but he personifies, in a way, the big shift, the big urbanization of Brazil in his migration from Pernambuco, where he was born in 1945, to Sao Paulo, where he joins this huge and growing labor force and becomes a lathe operator.

and then becomes active in the trade union movement.

But even if he wins, he has a good chance of winning, but How easy or difficult is going to be for him to win and if he wins the next stage of the second phase of government?

Just talk me through if this was, uh, more of a cold, calculating political decision, or this was more of an awakening to economic realities.

If you look at Lula's life as a whole, as I did when writing the book, I think there are three things that, that kind of constitute a kind of political DNA, if you like.

His concern for social improvement and, you know, re- reducing poverty based on his own life experiences, really, as a, as a young man, a young boy and a young man.

Secondly, his pragmatism, um, which is rooted in his experience as a trade union leader.

And thirdly, his, his commitment to economic stability.

I think he's, by nature, quite a conservative figure in some ways.

Now, the problem is that to f- to, to win office in Brazil, Lula formed a party.

So is the biggest problem for Brazil autocracy/fascism internally? Is it where it is, uh, on the world stage? Is it being in the shadow, uh, of the United States? Is it something specific to Brazil or what all countries face, these populist movements that are quite angry and frenzied, yet don't have a lot of direction, or something else?