Are Voters Losing Faith In Democracy? | Lewis Goodall | Zack Polanski

0:00Some journalists think I'm some wild, absurd, incoherent, dangerous man who's an activist and leader of the Green Party. Other journalists probably think that, but they ask some pretty good questions. Here's Lewis Goodall from LBC and the News Agency.

0:17Hello, Zach. Chris Packham here. I hear you've signed up to EcoTalk. That's very bold of you. Brilliant. And if you don't mind me saying, very bright of you too. If your audience is half as smart as you, then they'll sign up too at ecotalk.co.uk.

0:41first of all thank you so much for coming on you're someone who's interviewed me a lot so it's nice to turn the tables now i know i've definitely give you a very very light time i think the first thing i want to do actually is to amplify your work because you did some amazing work around the super injunctions uh for any of you who don't know what i'm talking about could you kind of give a brief nutshell and then maybe we'll dive into it yeah of course so this was um a really sort of a mad story really um probably the biggest i've worked on certainly the one i I spent the longest time on because it went on for two years.

1:10What happened was, to cut a very long story short, what happened was in the summer, the August of 2023, I got a tip-off from someone in Whitehall, which basically said that there'd been this catastrophic data breach from the Ministry of Defence and a database which contained the names, phone numbers, details, familial details, the whole lot of pretty much everybody who had ever worked with the British Army in the 20-year, well, some people call it an occupation, 20-year military operation in Afghanistan. Now, obviously, immediately, you have sort of alarm bells ringing about that because the Taliban have made it their business at times to try and pursue people who'd work with us and kill them or take revenge.

1:57And obviously, the Taliban by that time were back in Afghanistan. So I rang up the Ministry of Defence. I told them that I knew about this. And I said, obviously, I'm not going to publish anything until we've talked about it, because clearly it's potentially dangerous to the people in Afghanistan. It's clearly highly sensitive. And then I, not long after I'd sort of sent that, pretty much, you know, almost instantly, I basically got an email dropped into my inbox, which was basically a summons to a court hearing. So secret court, which was going to be held online because it was a summer and the courts don't usually sit.

2:28And it was just me, this rather kind of fusty judge and someone else from Global and a government KC representing the Ministry of Defence. And what happened was is that this basically government had applied for an injunction to keep the story secret. Their argument was so they would be able to have time to get people out of Afghanistan who were affected. I thought this was fair enough. I knew as a journalist, it's very, very unusual. It's not usual for government to take out injunctions to stop, suppress a story, basically. And then something slightly weird happened even within that hearing, which is that the judge said, well, don't you think you ought to have a super injunction?

3:06Now, a super injunction, the difference for people who don't know is an injunction forbids a journalist from reporting a story. But a super injunction forbids a journalist or indeed anybody from even telling you that you've been prevented from reporting a story. So it's complete secrecy. And then I knew that this was very, very unusual. because it was confirmed even within that hearing that it was unprecedented for a government to use a super injunction against journalists. Normally they're used for like when celebrities like they have an affair and it's a matter of privacy. And the government in the hearing said, oh, well, my Lord, thank you.

3:39Yes, please. And basically, even though with that at the time, I thought, OK, well, I don't want any of these people to be killed. I don't just for the sake of me telling my story. Obviously, I want the government because they promised in that hearing to get as many people out as possible. And then the months rolled by, the super injunction was renewed several times. And then I found myself going to these secret courts that were held at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, basically sort of initially at least sort of representing myself against sort of government KCs and so on. and they what became clear quite quickly and this is when I think the story starts to get much darker was that the government weren't really initially then proposing to get anybody out or they were going to get out like 150 people of the maybe up to 100 ,000 people who had been affected if you include all the family members and it was clear that they just wanted to keep it secret and use a super injunction potentially in perpetuity to prevent it from being reported and eventually different media organizations did did some bit worried found out about and was so super injuncted as well but it started a two-year process of a secret court and secret justice which eventually only became lifted because the current government decided they didn't want to continue anymore what kind of effect did that have on you obviously um the story is really about those families but of course um i found it very very frustrating i found it quite disturbing because what you sort of what it sort of revealed was that what I just sort of kept thinking is that even though they said this was unprecedented I started to think what else don't we know about right how many other courts are there like this and have been like this because what the government was saying was basically it was became completely circular it was that we don't know if the Taliban or even they They could, as they said themselves, they could be aware of this data breach and we don't know because they can't like just phone up the Taliban and ask them.

5:41Right. So they could be aware of this data breach. But we need to keep the super injunction in place just in case they don't know. And of course, I was getting up and saying, well, how will we know? I mean, when does this logically end? You're not proposing to get anybody else out. So what's the point of it? It's just to hide your embarrassment. And you could tell that that's what it was about, because I mean, big picture, big picture. here right. The Speaker of the House of Commons was super injuncted to. Parliament was basically denied its right to scrutinise one of the biggest mistakes that the government has made in relation to defence and put all of these lives at risk.

6:16Then we learn later that the government is spending billions of pounds to actually get some people out, although they were judged, jury, and execution as to who that would be. And again, Parliament was denied its right to scrutinise that until after the fact. And the thing is, For me, what I find disturbing about it is that the precedent it has set, because as I say, this had never been done before, is a really disturbing one. And I have asked government ministers whether they can rule out using a super injunction again to denude parliaments, never mind journalists, but denude parliament of its right to scrutinise what the government is doing.

6:50And they do not say yes. And I do not think that, you know, this could never for all the United States problems. This could never have happened in the United States because they have First Amendment rights. But in our system, Parliament is sovereign and it can basically do what it likes. And what this showed, and this wasn't Parliament in this case, but it was the government, this showed that the government ultimately, thank goodness, we had a great judge who was asking the right questions. He talked about democracy being put into cold storage, all of that sort of thing. But if we hadn't had a good judge, if we'd had a judge who was more oriented towards the government, I don't know if this would have ever been lifted.

7:22What kind of message is that? It's pretty horrific. And without kind of pulling you into this conversation, we've seen this with Palestine Action recently, where we had a government say there's extra information that they have that for national security reasons they can't divulge. But this is now a terrorist group. And that must put you in a difficult position as a journalist. It certainly does as a politician where you go, you kind of have to trust governments on national security issues up until the point that you don't. and with trusting governments, whatever political colour, kind of declining over the years, how does journalism kind of find this way to navigate between national defence issues and security issues and actually asking them questions that need to be asked?

7:58I think it's very, very difficult. And what was very clear during this process was that the government wanted to... The Conservative government at the time, Sunnet's government, they were just pushing to get to the general election. They did not want this coming out before the general election. And they did everything they could, played every trick in the book, to delay, they didn't submit papers on time, They tried to defer court tribunal decisions. They, you know, and it's all and even even small things that weren't even necessarily the government's fault at the time. You know, I'm sort of sat there at the back of this.

8:26You asked how it affected me. Sometimes I just wanted to sort of scream because not only was it sort of Kafkaesque and circular logic being deployed the entire time. But, you know, sometimes we sat there in court number 72 of the Royal Courts of Justice. And, you know, ultimately, we knew that this was about 100 ,000 people in Afghanistan who had the right to know that their data had been lost. Remember, no one ever told them. No one ever told them. And the British government, if they weren't proposing to get them out, didn't they have a right to know? So they could at least try and take some security measures, right?

8:56And try to take some precautions for themselves. And we're sat there. And then there's debates between the government, KC, and the judge about, you know, courtroom availability dates. And can we do the 3rd of June? No, we can't do the 3rd of June because, oh, and it's a bank holiday or it's Easter. And you're sat there and you're going, hang on a minute, this is about people thousands of miles away whose lives are being put in danger and you can't do it because it's a bank holiday? Really? And so you're just sort of sat there wanting to scream. and I think that ultimately the problem with our system is that it relies on the government holds all the cards we do have sort of provisions for this so-called sort of secret justice but a lot of it relies on the judge and it being a good judge as I said we had a great judge who was very minded I think about the precedent this was setting and about the terrible infringement this was putting on parliament and on journalists right on self-expression and freedom of the press.

9:53But as I say, it shouldn't be that contingent. It shouldn't be so contingent on a particular judge. And there should be, in a democratic system, secret justice is not open justice. And if it's not open justice, it's not proper justice. And it worries me. It does worry me. You might not be able to answer this, but was there any pressure put on you? From the government? Well, no, except that, you know, they were very clear throughout that any deviation from the super injunction, you know, you go to prison for 10 years. So, you know, you couldn't tell anyone. You couldn't even tell, you know, family members and things like that.

10:30And even that was problematic for journalism. Because as I say, one of the central questions on which this entire thing rested was whether the Taliban knew already or whether they didn't. And obviously the judge was saying to us, well, you know, if you can talk, if you know, do you have any evidence that they do? But we couldn't go to anyone. You know, by the time we had some people join the case from different newspapers who had better contacts in Afghanistan and follow this story more closely than I had done, who would have been able to go to people in Afghanistan and say this breach has happened if you heard anything about it.

11:04But of course, they were forbidden from doing so because you can't tell anybody about it. so it was again this is what I mean about the sort of circularity of the entire thing although there were some times that kind of it was just absolutely comical it was just sort of like moments of high authoritarianism from the British state but also kind of like just remind you how sort of utterly lame it was in the sense that like you know when it was coming towards the end we knew it was coming towards the end and the super was going to be lifted more and it was quite funny because over the years it started with just me and then like a few more other journalists joined and then a few other journalists joined and then more people as more people were super injuncted you got more MOD people coming and whatever but by the end of courtroom was completely full and the government KC who'd been there throughout just sort of looked up at one point this was like the penultimate one I think where we knew that it was going to be lifted next week she just said um before we start can I just check that everybody here is supposed to be here and everyone was like okay fine I said what is that it two years of super injunction process of the height of British security and then they're turning around and that's that you're basically relying on a show of hands I mean it's like that joke in The Simpsons.

12:04It's like, are there any investigative journalists here? He's like, I am and he is. Do you want us to leave? Could you? It's that kind of low farce that's characterised so much of the British state. Presumably the role of social media now too and online has changed this entire discourse too. There used to be a lot more control over what could be printed or couldn't be printed. Why do you think so is that? But you know one of the things that astonished me, and I astonished the judge actually because I think one of the things, because I actually sort of felt for him a lot, this guy called Martin Chamberlain, who's very bright, brilliant judge, but you could sort of tell this was weighing on him a lot because he knew at various points during the proceedings he sort of said, you know, I'm setting constitutional precedent.

12:41I've got no, I've got nothing to consult and I can't even consult anybody else, you know, like if this were going to take place in a normal court, there would be legal scholars pouring over this stuff and, you know, but none of that was happening. But, I mean, I think he thought, I think we all thought that basically the kind of precedence wouldn't be set for long because someone would find out. You know, in the digital world that someone will put something out there. And indeed, the reason this first came to light is because someone did put it on Facebook and then it was removed. But I think we all thought that someone somewhere, it would just leak online.

13:14It never did. And actually, I thought one of the things that my conclusions from it is actually the power of the state to regulate information is much stronger than perhaps we think it is. That's really interesting. Because I just would think, you know, in two years, it never leaked. And it never, I mean, because one thing we also thought was it could easily end up in the US. Now, if it ended up in the US, the super injunction wouldn't apply to the US. We all thought the New York Times might get it and just publish it. And we thought, we the journalists were really concerned that that would happen because we'd lose our story because they're not subject to the super.

13:43And, you know, the British court would have no authority to impose it, but it never did. And so I sort of thought, I thought actually, like, it's remarkable how kind of Hobbesian the state still is, right? Like, actually, when it comes down to it, how much power, even, you know, over social media, than it has, more than we might think. There's lots of conflicting thoughts there. As usual. Yeah, well, no, because it's complex, right? Very complex. We're also speaking at a time where the BBC are in a particular mess, and it's a different conversation to the one we were just having, but I think the power structures are quite similar sometimes around a government that we know needs the licence fee or has the licence fee, and a BBC that's meant to operate without fear or favour, presumably, and to inform, educate and entertain.

14:26has got itself in a mess around this Trump video. But I think this is just an example of what's clearly been going on at the BBC for a much longer time. For those who don't know, you were at the heart of the BBC for a long time. I think more like the sort of gallbladder. As I said the heart, I was like, I don't know if this is the accurate description. Without making it all about me, the first 15 seconds, I want to say, because a conversation we had on the newsagents was around comparisons between me and Faraj. Yes. One of the biggest differences, I think, is I believe in institutions. So I criticise institutions because of vested interests, because of the problems of the institutions, but ultimately I do believe we need a BBC.

15:04We need a public broadcaster. I think private corporate capital absolutely wants to see the end of the BBC because it's competitive. In fact, I might just be quoting you back at you. I love it when that happens. Or maybe it was Emily Maitlis. I'm not so sure about that. But they said, you know, people would kill for that kind of real estate of the BBC. That's a site that everyone goes to. How do we protect institutions? Should we be protecting an institution? What needs to happen? I'm very ambivalent about the BBC, to be honest. I mean, I think the BBC can only deserve to exist if it lives up to the ideals that it sets itself.

15:47and I think that I think that too often it hasn't and that pains me to say because you know I mean yeah I worked for it twice and I you know I loved it or I loved the theory of it anyway and when I was a kid you know when I was growing up and you know working class background there weren't lots of people interested in politics around me BBC was an absolute sort of gateway to expanding my horizons and got me interested in politics I used to like sit and watch Newsnight in my little room in my little telly and all that stuff so absolutely sad but it's true and you know so I sort of I revered it really but I think that it's too often allowed itself to be cowed I think it's too often allowed itself to be bullied I think that its opponents have got inside its head and you know particularly with regards to the people it fears it often feels this weird I always think it's like it's almost got a sort of masochistic sort of gene in it somehow you know like it feels almost it acts very often as if it owes its, it owes most to its worst enemies, you know, that it needs to sort of, and these people have convinced all of its, you know, staff or a lot of those who make it up, they've convinced them that they are part of this sort of liberal metropolitan elite who is so different from the rest of the country.

17:06Now, I'm not saying that people at BBC aren't, you know, that there may not be a grain of truth in that, but I just note that many of those people making those arguments, I would call them the illiberal metropolitan elite. They're just as elite and they're just as metropolitan and usually as the people at the BBC. And usually, in different ways, they're just as unrepresentative of public opinion, but they nonetheless have convinced the people at the BBC that they're not real people and they're not authentic. And very often there's a consequence. They don't speak with... They don't act with the guts that they should.

17:33So I think in terms of protecting it, I think that that change has to come from within. I don't think that it's really for those on the outside. And if they can't and they won't, then what I'd say is it doesn't deserve the licence fee because the licence fee is expensive for people. and doesn't need to exist, right? It doesn't need to exist. I think it's going to need to be reformed in any case because of the world that we're in. But I think the BBC, if it is going to survive, has to deserve it. I suppose it's the idea, though, of a broadcaster that has no vested interests. Yes, yeah. And that is a noble thing.

18:04And that is a noble thing. But then it has to act like it has no vested interests. Sure. And too often it is. If it's going to be bullied by the vested interests, then in effect it's part of the vested interests, right? And it's actually more damaging in a sense. because on the face of it, it doesn't represent the vested interest. So I think that it has to, I mean, look, it's never going to be perfect and it's always going to disappoint people. Of course it is. It's made up of human beings who are, you know, being pulled in different directions. And I think just in terms of, it's struggling at the moment, partly because the political moment, the political environment, your part of this, has changed so much.

18:37You know, it was easier for the BBC in a two-party or two-party-ish system, quite easy to deal with. Five, six-party system, harder to deal with. And it's not just the parties, right? Politics, when the BBC existed, when it was most hegemonic, when basically politics was more or less a sort of economic kind of left-right distributional question. That was at the heart of politics. I know you'd like to put it back at the heart of politics. But there are now politics is so bisected by so many other axes, like not least cultural questions, but even within those other cultural questions, which are actually harder to bridge as well.

19:10Right. Like when when when politics is about economics, you can come to accommodations, you can come to some compromises to take the trans issues. The BBC has got so much so much difficulty with, even though I personally think that there is a common sense sort of public position out there. It's a debate which is marked by such binaries, forgive the pun, but it's marked by, you know, you either believe, you know, it's become you either believe that someone is a trans person or you don't. And it's very, very hard for the BBC. And then and not only that, but those are absolute questions. Right. And if the BBC even entertains that debate, one or other side will be furious about it.

19:43Right. And that's difficult. That's difficult. So I think it finds itself bullied. I think it finds itself. I think it finds itself slightly overwhelmed by the changes, the political changes that we're seeing and are not sure how to to respond to them. And so as a result, what it does, and I think this is the most unforgivable thing personally, too often its political coverage sort of anchors itself in the banal and the twee and the kind of, oh, God, they're all bad as each other, aren't they? You know, it will avoid taking, you know, it will avoid saying anything. You know, when I was there, I think it got into the point too much of basically the sort of metric for success for a successful item or whatever is if no one noticed it at all.

20:22Right. Or no one complained about it. Whereas that shouldn't be the metric for success. it's fine if people complain as long as what you're doing is grounded in accuracy and impartiality but too often I think it it got into a different headspace It's a different thing but this week I went to a national emergency briefing so this was Chris Packham and the various scientists who came Oh yeah I interviewed him about that and said let's talk about the climate and nature crisis and the scientist was a lieutenant talking about defence and a food expert talking about food security at one point one of the people on the panel said my name and the rumour erupted into this ginormous cheer I spoke to them afterwards and they said they were worried that that might be deemed as political and I thought well what if the politics is is that you have a party and a politician who are saying I agree with the science I want to take the action that's needed that's commensurate with the science now we could get into an argument about do other people want to do that or not I sometimes worry that the quest for neutrality actually means you go the other way and take a deeply political position Well, indeed, neutrality, I mean, neutrality isn't impartiality.

21:25There's a difference between neutrality and impartiality because there are some, if the pursuit of, if journalism is about the pursuit of truth, then your end point won't necessarily be neutral. It will arrive at a destination. It's truthful. And you can't be, you can't, you can't. And then it shouldn't matter if people complain about it because it's just truthful. It's not this on the one hand or the other. I mean, this is, I think, was displayed a lot by the sort of slight bizarre testimony we saw from Michael Prescott, who wrote this sort of dossier when he was sort of complaining about. And again, just showed he didn't understand BBC impartiality because he was saying, well, he thought that the panorama show about Trump might be fine if they'd done a show about Kamala Harris.

22:03Kamala Harris was not involved, did not try and overthrow the government on January 6th, didn't try to overturn an election. She hadn't been president before. That's a completely false equivalence. right so and and but but but that kind of ersatz impartiality that sort of base absolutely basic view of impartiality is one that is used against the bbc to try and bludgeon it to do things doesn't want to do but in a way is that you you epitomize the sort of problem in one sense which is that you're sat here to me and saying you know i want to protect the institution i want to make it better and i completely understand it and so do i but that's why they're not afraid of you right you know like you know and i'm it's not it's not purely out of fear that they act but i'm just saying that It just makes me laugh when people say that the BBC is this sort of reflexively liberal institution, because the thing that, you know, that they fear most, the pressure they get most, let's put it that way, the pressure they get most is from outside the right, outside.

22:56And that's the pressure that they feel day, day after day after day after day. Because you said they're enemies earlier on, and the question I wanted to ask you were, who are those? And I was trying to be discreet, but actually we're there now. Well, I suppose there is obvious, right? It's the newspapers that hate them. It's, you know, there are sort of new news channels that have popped up to sort of take them on and so on. So and we can see that, you know, look, I think next time there's a conservative government, if there is ever a conservative government again, and certainly if it was involved in reform, I can't see the license be surviving as it's going to survive.

23:28I think it's just I think it would be inevitable. I think that's just the place that they're kind of like not because the defenders of the BBC within the Conservative Party were the sort of, you know, the sort of centre right kind of figures who have largely their faction has largely disappeared. You know, sort of Chris Patton types, you know, that's just largely disappeared. But presumably for Robbie Gibbs of this world of the people on the board would be nervous about government with the Greens in or where decisions were made. Yes, I think they would be. Yes, I think they would. I think they would be.

23:58Yes. but I think, I imagine they wouldn't be on the board for very long. Right, but then when you say they're not afraid of me, I want to push back on that a little bit. I suppose, I mean, look, I can't say, I don't know if they are or not, but I suppose what I'm saying is that it's true to say that the sort of left or the liberal left, whatever you want to call it, has genuinely been more defensive of the BBC for the reasons that you've articulated, right, which is that, generally speaking, it's a public service broadcaster, right, and it sort of fits more neatly into a sort of left kind of worldview.

24:28of how the media should be and so on. So I think that's why it would be. You've got a podcast. You know how this works. We'll be right back after the break.

24:42Zach has signed up to EcoTalk. He's taken the great plunge. Why has he done that? Well, he's a man who sees sense. Firstly, brilliant network coverage. Secondly, fantastic customer service. And thirdly, of course, all of the profits are going to nature restoration. Yes, we're spending them on rewilding. And you can go to our website to see what we're up to. You can also get some wildlife tips from yours truly. So come on, follow his lead and sign up to EcoTalk. All you've got to do is go to ecotalk.co.uk and it's simple, absolutely simple. And look at the benefits. Life is beautiful.

25:26Getting back to the briefing, what all the MPs were asked to, so lots of MPs there, co-sign a letter at the end which is going to all the big kind of broadcasters. And one of the asks in that is around misinformation and the role of vested interests in media, particularly around the climate and nature crisis, but let's broaden it to everything. I know as someone who is telling stories a lot, I see what gets clicks and what doesn't. When we talk about science and climate science, it rarely gets the clicks. It's the kind of very binary fights that do get the clicks. what role do you have as a journalist to both kind of do the stuff that gets for clicks but also there is a role there, right?

26:02To go, even if this is the thing you're not yet interested in I've got to find a way to get you interested in or maybe that's not your role. I think that it is, look, I think a slightly broader question is I think that one of the joys of having a daily show like News Agents is that, I mean the bad thing is is that you're only as good as your last show, right? And so you do a great one. there's another one along tomorrow but also vice versa it's kind of where but it does mean it allows you to you know the space to sort of dip in and out of subjects look we know that like yourself we know which subjects work right we know that but we used to joke about having something sort of Mount Rushmore so there were always like four politicians at any given moment who if you put them in the title you'd probably be in it in fact you definitely would be in it I'm number one on that modestism yeah exactly but you know it would be kind of like you know it would start off as being truss and suella yeah and like johnson and trump but yeah and it would change as the kind of as as time as the story would move on but you know you put them in their type boom boom boom yeah you're gonna and podcasts in particular as you know from this you know you actually great unlike tv or radio you get great information right it's looking real time you can see the downloads whatever the trick is obviously to kind of you know you can't become too addicted to that because because well for a start you'll give the audience a sort of two not socially very dire but also because you'll miss stuff and so sometimes you have to take you know for example I mean we did a big investigation at the start of the year on you know something called sodium valparate and this is a sort of drug that was given to women with epilepsy which has caused you know all sorts of birth defects and so on in children over like 20-30 years and it was being prescribed until relatively recently in their sort of hunt for justice now you know that's probably not going to it's not going to do as well as the episode where Trump beat up Zelensky in a while but you've got to you know if you're what you're about Now, I suppose one of the differences, sometimes I think, you know, particularly in podcasting, there's a lot of content creators or a lot of content in podcasting.

27:56There aren't actually that many journalistic shows. I think what's important is to remember, you're not just making content, you're making journalism. And I think there's a balance to be struck there. But I think if you can get it right, then they sort of reinforce and augment each other. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In terms of the future of podcasting and future of journalism, do you think it is going to move more and more to, I guess I'm asking someone who does a podcast, a very successful podcast list, so maybe it's a Turkish and Christmas question, but do you think the role of kind of traditional and legacy media is going to fade away even more or can it find a way to come back?

28:27It's in a really unusual place, I think, at the moment, which is that I think that newsrooms are in this odd position where I think more so than any other moment in their history, really, that you have such profound generational cleavage in terms of how different generational cohorts absorb news. And, of course, that's always been true to some extent. Like, you know, different generations that younger people versus older people will consume. You know, they'll read different magazines. Maybe they'll read different newspapers. Maybe they'll watch different sorts of shows. But they would still be consuming the same media type.

29:02Like, they would still be reading magazines, they'd still be reading newspapers. They'd still be watching TV shows. But all, you know, just the actual media type was the same. It's just the brands that they'd be consuming would be different. Whereas now, you've basically got, you know, if you're two big groups, if you're sort of over 50, probably, you're still probably largely consuming news. Kind of how your equivalent would have been doing 20 or 30 years. You know, you might still be watching the 10 o 'clock news, reading newspaper, maybe digitally, but like still reading a newspaper and so on.

29:33And then you've got anyone who's like 35, maybe 40 under consuming everything in a completely different way via content. Right. They're still actually absorbing loads of news, but they're absorbing completely different mediums, whether it's podcasts or TikTok or whatever, Instagram or whatever, what it happens to be. And that does pose a really weird challenge. And the best way I can sum it up, and I know this was something that was happening in newsrooms like everywhere. Best way of summing it up is when Charlie Kirk was killed. So I think that there was an absolute, again, a binary in different newsrooms around the UK.

30:05Charlie Kirk comes through and it flashes through. everyone who's like under like a certain age is like oh my god Charlie Kirk's been killed and one who's over a certain age is like who the fuck is Charlie Kirk and and that just because there is a completely different news and political universe something that you're tapping into news political universe in a digital space it's not completely different but it can be very different to that is that is happening away from the digital space and that is a really hard thing for old newsrooms I think to get their head around that will obviously change over time but we've got this weird sort of, you know, we've got this weird kind of dual news world at the moment.

30:43Yeah, I think my pushback, I agree with pretty much everything you just said, but I keep getting framed often in the media as the TikTok politician, the Zyko politician. But actually, if we go take a walk now, obviously we're in East London, but if we went to the North, it still happens. I'm getting stopped every 30 seconds. Now, we know that doesn't necessarily win elections because we saw that with Jeremy Corbyn, but it isn't just on the online space and meeting people. No, no, for sure. But what you're doing is exactly the right thing, right? Which is that you're doing, you know, you've imbibed correctly the guy who led the way in this, which is Trump, right?

31:15Like Trump, I know you might not like the price, but just in terms of media strategy, right? What Trump showed, and this is something that I think Starmer has struggled with enormously, which is, and it's really annoying, but it's true of any content creator, put it that way. You have to be, you know, everything, everywhere, all at once. Right. And that's really exhausting, right? But because we have this multiplicity of kind of media at the moment, it's unavoidable. If you want in the attention economy that we're living in, if you don't do that, if you're not ubiquitous across all these different things, then you're right.

31:47You'll end up being pigeonholed or just in one particular area. But in order to get the eyeballs, you do have to be everywhere. Now, Trump understands that very well. Certainly so the people around him understand that. I've been surprised how few British politicians have understood that or at least how it's really caught up quite recently. I don't really remember that. Well, during the election he was, in the 24 election he was. But again, I think this was people around him. But he did pioneer it in a sense with X and Twitter, or Twitter as it was then, right? You don't have Trump without Twitter as it then was.

32:15So I think that his campaign was very, very effective in that. And also, you know what I mean? It's like if he doesn't, if he's not, he'll just literally phone up a breakfast show, right? If he feels that he's not in the arena enough that day or being talked about enough that day. Now, obviously, he's coming from a deeply ignoble and kind of self-obsessed kind of, you know, set of impulses. But nonetheless, I think he intuited very quickly and early that the kind of, like, fracturing of the media landscape meant that his ubiquity... I remember when people used to say, oh, he's doing... Maybe this is far back in 2016, but people used to say, oh, he's doing too much.

32:45You know, he's doing too much. His appearances aren't being sort of rationed out enough. Like, no, like, he understands that, like, actually, in the world that we're living in now, the focus is just for attention, and it's harder and harder to get your attention, so it means you have to be everywhere. Why do you think Kirsten was so bad at this? Do you think it's just not his natural personality? I think that, unfortunately, and again, it's something that you've done very well. We're living, for good or ill, we're living in a vibes-based political age. It's not just vibes. It's obviously, you need the message to go alongside it.

33:15But, you know, it helps a lot. And I think Starmer, you know, for whatever his virtues are, and he does have virtues, is a vibeless politician. You know, the vibes kind of bounce off him. Rachel Reeves is the same, you know. And when they try and do it, I mean, I think the best example of it, and again, I feel for him in a way, is when he talks about football. Now, I don't know anything about football, but I do work with somebody who does. And when Starmer is genuinely authoritative about football, you know, he really loves football. It's probably his principal interest, right? And yet when he talks about it, somehow it seems inauthentic.

33:50It doesn't, it sounds like, it still feels, and I've thought so long and so hard about like why that is. I say the editor news agency used to work at Talk Sport I mean he always says it's because it's partly him but it's also partly because he talks about football in a way that nobody actually talks about football you know like he talks about it as this starts talking about the halftime orange and stuff like that you know like something from the 50s but then you have someone like Boris Johnson who absolutely knew nothing about football would put like a shirt on when England were playing put Boris out there and you know Boris is on the back of the shirt and he sort of lifts his arms up and everyone goes yeah great now that isn't great that's sort of like rapidity I don't love, but it's, but it's, it's true.

34:27And I think that he finds himself. He's, I think, I think there's that. And then the other problem he's got is that he's a politician who does not like talking about the conceptual side of politics. He doesn't like thinking about the conceptual side of politics, and he doesn't like talking about the conceptual side of politics. And so, you know, he doesn't like talking about ideas. I think the problem therefore is if you've got a politician who doesn't do very well in the kind of content machine that we're living in plus doesn't like talking about ideas then they just seem grey and bland and stolid and no one really understands what he's about and I think that's his basic problem I felt the epitome of this was this week actually Rachel Reeves taking a pop at me in the chamber where I felt like the joke was badly written she had to check her script while she said it, she said there was a former hypnotherapist and the thing that grow under me was inflation and debt and actually Green Party membership shot up.

35:24She ended up looking really silly and I just thought they've fundamentally misunderstood what's happening in the digital space at the moment, who's liked and who's not liked. And I just thought how did they not turn to an advisor and go that line's not great. Yeah, well I mean she's not very delivering the lines. I mean, yeah, exactly. I think And I think that this stuff would be not as consequential if things were fine or, you know, the wider kind of political environment was better. But in a situation where the wider political environment is bad, it makes it even worse. Right. I mean, I once, Stammer is unusually, he's so reluctant to talk about his sort of political life.

36:05I mean, you know, normally if you talk to Labour politicians and start asking them about, you know, which Labour figures they admire or, you know, who in Labour history they most want to be like. I've asked him a few times which Labour Prime Minister and he just sort of says I don't want to get into this I don't want to talk about it it's such a Westminster game and it's like but it's not it's not because you're trying to understand you and part of it I mean fair play he's a man in his 60s he's not someone who I think feels particularly comfortable about talking about his inner self and everything like that but I think part of it though is as I say his just complete lack of apparent curiosity about political ideas I think he thinks that they that they're a sort of, almost an extra, they're sort of the thing that Westminster likes talking about.

36:47You know, it's like the thing that was in that book about him when he insisted he said to some aide, you know, I'm telling you right now there's no such thing as starmerism and there never will be. You know, like some politicians, most politicians go around trying to create an ism, right? But he actively eschews it. And I think that in the age we're in, that's difficult. I mean, it's the ultimate in bureaucracy, right? It's just we will manage and we will get through it. Well, I think one of their biggest problems, I think the ultimate, the biggest problem of all, and actually it's not a communications problem, because everyone always turns to communications and says their comms need to be better.

37:17And of course, of course they do. Everyone's going to be better. Their ultimate, their main principal problem, and you saw it with playing out in the budget, was that the analysis of what was wrong with Britain was very superficial. Labour had this very unusual period going into the election where very unusually for the Labour Party, that they were playing politics on easy mode, right? Trust had exploded everything. Everyone knew that when that happened, it almost didn't matter what was going to happen now. You know, the country just wanted them out. And so you had a principal in Keir Starmer who doesn't much like thinking about ideas.

37:54And you actually had a political environment which almost incentivized them not to do so. Because if they did, the problem was someone might find out and go, we don't like that idea. And it, you know, and it reduced their standing in the polls. They had the Ming-Va strategy. And that was a great strategy, you know, great strategy going up to the election. And it was a terrible one for the day after the election because they're fundamental. And I think it was a bit more than that. I think they genuinely thought that the main problem was Britain was that the Tories were feckless, useless and riven.

38:25Now, they may well have been all of those things. That's probably not an unfair analysis. But it was never a sufficient precondition to just remove the Tories and expect everything to be fine. like the little yellow man on Google, you just pick him up and throw him away and everything will be all right. Like the fact that the problems in British politics and the British state are so deep seated and so structural that you needed a, you know, very clear idea about what you wanted to do about it and what the diagnosis was and what the prescription was. And the weird thing about actually about Starmer is, is that you would think from the way he was talking about politics in the run up to the election, that that prescription would be pretty drastic because he kept saying Britain is completely broken.

39:05You know, it's broken. It's been completely destroyed by the Tories, basically, which is not something that, for example, Tony Blair said in the run-up to 1997. Actually, you know, that was a far more modest kind of sort of diagnosis of what was wrong with Britain. But so Stalman was big on diagnosis in the sense that, you know, the country was broken, but very light on prescription. And I think ultimately now they're having to do that intellectual work on the hoof. and that's really hard to the point of being impossible. Listen, thank you so much for coming in. It's my pleasure. I look forward to you giving me a hard time next time, as you should.

39:37Well, you've let me all get off very lightly, so I'll remember that. This is what this is all about. It's true, it's all been a ruse. It's all just a ruse. Thanks, Lewis. My pleasure.

39:50Hello, Zach. Now listen, I've had a text, I know, improbable but true, from the beavers, the butterflies, the beetles and the badgers. It's all sending you big love for signing up. They're hoping that your listeners are going to do the same by visiting ecotalk.co.uk.