Why A Vote For Reform UK Is A Vote For Russia | Carole Cadwalladr | Zack Polanski

0:00It's been a pretty grim start to 2026 and one of the things this podcast always seeks to do is offer hope And one of the most hopeful things we can do is like exactly what's going on and what can we do about it. At the heart of so much of what's been happening and the resistance is Carol Cadwallader. And she's here today on Bold Politics.

0:24Zach, I'm so excited about this year. EcoTalk has new land coming for rewilding and habitat restoration. And we're bringing back beavers. Any week now, yes, I'm also going to start live streaming the garden birds from my home. And all of this happens because EcoTalk has customers. That's people who pay their mobile phone bills to us. They make a call, they send a text or they just surf the net and British wildlife gets a boost. That's it. No shouting. Just go to ecotalk.co.uk slash bold politics to find out more.

1:11Carol, there's a million things I want to talk to you about. And I think not just your bravery as a journalist, and I would argue as an activist too, I don't know if you'd use that phrase, has all been important and it's been important for a long time. And if we'd had this conversation a month or two ago, it felt important, but a little bit more abstract. It feels like in the last week or two, there's nothing abstract about this at all. And I'd imagine you'd argue it's never been abstract in the first place. for those who maybe haven't followed the full journey i guess for me i first became aware of your work around brexit and cambridge analytica but maybe you want to go even further back i don't know or maybe you want to start with brexit so my background has been i was a features writer at the guardian observer for many years and i sort of wrote across the paper and then i started i started got interested in technology and started writing about that for this sort of lay audience and i went on a bit of a journey with that because i sort of it was i was a real techno optimist back in the day unbelievably and it was like oh there's this you can do this amazing things with this new technology and then that started to change as I started to see the darker side of that and then it was really 2016 when a convergence of things came together and I was like what is going on here and that really led me to then starting investigating this phenomenon which we then called fake news.

2:28And that led me to this company called Cambridge Analytica. And that led me to trying to figure out what on earth had happened during the Brexit referendum, and in America during the election of Donald Trump. And what you know, that investigation uncovered is that they those two phenomenon were absolutely linked. At the hearts of those critical elections was this new technology and that that new technology had facilitated massive illegal unlawful behavior by different campaigns and also sort of infiltration by state actors such as Russia and so everything has kind of cascaded on from that really and that problem has never gone away everything has only got worse since and we haven't done anything about it so those tech platforms, which I believe facilitated this, you know, sort of convulsion in our politics and in our democracies that was at its heart unlawful.

3:37We just simply failed to hold those companies to account afterwards. Every time I listen to you, I just think, God, it's in everything. So if I start with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, I went to university actually in America and drama school. So I was around there when Facebook first started. And I think I was one of the first university campuses that got Facebook, because I think initially it was just universities. And I remember being really excited by this sudden community that was growing digitally. And people even in the living, as in the real world space would be like, oh, did you see that thing on Facebook?

4:08And it felt like quite a pleasant space to be in, in the same way that we'll get onto Twitter, I'm sure, felt when that first started as well, a space where people could be together, whether power of citizen journalism or even just, you know, activism was a great way to organise. At some point, things got darker. Do you think Facebook started with the intention, this is always where it was going? Or was this kind of accidental that they realised along the way the political implications of what they were doing? I think so. There's a writer called Corey Doctorow, who you've probably come across, who's been really helpful in coming up with this analysis of...

4:39And shittification. And his sort of analysis is that wherever these platforms and start out, they eventually end up in shittifying. And that is because of the nature of they take these vast amounts of venture capital. They then have to try and seek a return and they sort of fall to the lowest common denominator. And so with Facebook, you know, I mean, there's arguments about the original intention behind that. But if you take it at face value, it was about connecting your friends and family. well at some point they changed it so that it wasn't your friends and family you were getting in your feed they made it algorithmic so you started getting other things in your feed and that was part of the sort of process of initiatification and now you open up facebook and it's like ridiculous ai slot videos you know mad conspiracy theories and whatever being in you know going into your feed and that's just a process that we see all of these platforms going through And can I ask you about virtual reality?

5:40I often wonder if, so people are going into these games where they're fearful or excited and they're making decisions. Do we still think at the point where they're collecting this data about how do people behave in pressured situations and how do people make decisions? Or am I into the world of conspiracy theory? No, it's absolutely what's happening. Everything that you are doing online is measured. It is tracked. It is stored. It goes into a profile about you. That data is then blended with all sorts of other data and information about you, what you've bought, what your credit score is, what things you've Googled, health concerns.

6:17I mean, and this goes to the sort of like very heart of why we are in such a sort of dangerous situation, because this, I mean, this sort of architecture of the world that we're living in and the way that these, they're all surveillance technologies. These platforms, their business model is surveillance. What they're really good at is collecting this information and making predictions about it because of it. But how else can you use that information? That is the thing that we really have to start waking up to, which is that there are all sorts of uses. And the fact is, we can now see that these technology platforms, these guys who own it, are very clearly aligned with Donald Trump and his government.

7:08and we, you know, I believe really have to understand that at both a personal level, how that could be weaponised against us personally but also at the bigger level which is the United States and its allies which are clearly the Silicon Valley platforms are not our friends. You know, they are clearly not serving the interests of peace, harmony and democracy and I think everything we've seen in the last week if we weren't aware of that before should sort of tell us that now. You had one of the biggest TED Talks of last year, of 2025. The biggest, actually. The biggest, sorry, the amazing. Sorry, I didn't mean to read that.

7:51It's all right, it's weird. And you literally started, don't you, by going public speaking is not necessarily my thing. So it's amazing that you're putting yourself in that space and we'll talk in a moment about why you did that. But you started that talk by saying it's a coup and I think that's speaking to what you're saying now about Donald Trump and I'm presuming Steve Bannon gets in there too as well, and Larry Ellison. Could you paint a little bit more of a picture of what you mean when you say it's a coup? Because it's a small group of individuals with a bunch of vested interests who have, you know, grasped control of the US executive, and Donald Trump, you know, who is the front guy for what is that sort of coalition of which the tech bros, the AI bros, the crypto bros are all in there.

8:38Vast amounts of money went to support that campaign. He is now clearly breaking rule of law on a daily basis. What we saw ahead of this bombing of Venezuela and the kidnap of its president and his wife, we saw him blowing up these fishing boats in the Caribbean without any due process, that is extrajudicial murder. And of all of the things which have happened in the last year, many, many, many instances of the US government acting beyond the rule of law. I do think that that was, if there's nothing else that wakes you up, murdering people with no due process without any suggesting, you know, without even presenting any evidence you know that is a clearly disturbing development i think we saw we've seen it this week in the you know these paramilitary force out of control on u.s streets murdering an innocent woman at will and then you know gaslighting the nation about the reasons behind that.

9:51So that's, I believe, and we could see it very early on, is a coup. And it's not, you know, the thing is, it's not me saying this, you know, Carol Goodwalder, a journalist in London, it's like all of the sort of most considered historians of authoritarianism all came out and said it in those early weeks. But there was still this hesitancy, you know, amongst mainstream news organisations against certain politicians to name these things clearly. And I think it's so important in this moment that we are really clear about what we're seeing and naming it. Because we can't fight it, combat it, unless we can see it in those ways, I think.

10:39I think that's really well put. And you're not here for me to drag you into a party politics of it, so I'll speak for myself here, but then I'm interested in your reflection. I'm deeply worried that I think Keir Starmer has entirely tied his entire foreign policy to America and to Donald Trump and that's been problematic for lots of reasons, for lots of different reasons but this week we've literally seen someone murdered on the streets and Keir Starmer has not even condemned that noticeably Nigel Farage has been absent from the conversation around ICE as well we know he was talking about wanting some sort of deportation police but they seem very quiet on it because I think no matter how many stories you tell the British public look at what's happened see a woman murdered in her car that clearly wasn't driving towards them and go, no, this isn't right.

11:19It's more than not right, but I'm talking about the most basic level. You understand the reasons why they've got themselves into this diplomatic bind of needing to suck up to Trump and not piss him off. And you can understand why. But at the same time, it is deeply dangerous to have a prime minister who cannot say that black is black and white is white and international law is international law. And this is clearly in breach of it. And I think that's why, as I say, even though you can understand the reasons behind it, I think it's doing something to sort of public political discourse, everything else.

11:58We cannot talk clearly about what is happening. And to be led by a government which is refusing, it's in this state of denial, it will not say those words. That I do find really alarming because we can see that in America, this clear denial of what has happened on the streets there with these ICE officers. Now to have that echoed by Keir Starmer. And, you know, last night, I don't know if you saw, Lammy visited J.D. Vance yesterday, you know, who was the chief propagator of these lies about what had happened. But then we have Keir Starmer with Palantir and technology companies. And I'm just wondering, how much do you think, moving away from Keir Starmer, but if we talk about the establishment more and more widely, know exactly what they're doing in terms of their ties to American interests and technology?

12:46Or is it more that they're just stumbling around and don't have an alternative? Obviously, we have this clear security alliance with America. That has been the bedrock of the post-war international order. It's been hugely important. But what has happened now is in making these trying to suck up to Trump, which has involved sucking up to Silicon Valley, which has involved making this series of what I believe are totally disastrous deals with the Silicon Valley companies in which we're bringing their software right into the very critical functions of how the UK state operates. We have put ourselves in a vassal position of complete surrender because there was a 250 million dollar or pound deal made, I think, just over a week ago between the Ministry of Defence and Palantir.

13:42And so at this moment in which you have the United States threatening to invade a NATO country, Greenland, which would put the whole of Europe in conflict with another NATO member, we at the same time are embedding this government's clear ally in the heart of our own military infrastructure. It's total madness. I mean, I think to sort of understand how these things operate, I was thinking this morning, you know, Teslas, you know, this like you buy a Tesla and you're buying a car. It's like any other. You're not really with Tesla. You're sort of renting the software, you know, so it's the and it can be turned off at any points.

14:26You know, this is the way that the sort of business model works. So you think about the fact that you've got Palantir being embedded in your whole entire military defence to say nothing, of course, that is embedded in our entire NHS. I mean, it has made us so vulnerable. And, you know, the blindness that we cannot see what that means. We can't look at who Peter Thiel, the founder of this company, is and what he believes in. And what he does not believe in is democracy. But that is very clear in his own statements. So, you know, I mean, I can't. Can I ask you why we should be concerned about Peter Thiel, just in case people don't know kind of the background to who he is?

15:07Yeah, yeah. Would you want it? I mean, yeah, because you've mentioned Palantir. What's your kind of position on all this stuff there? Oh, I mean, I'm very anti-Palantir. And particularly, I think, if we look at the genocide in Gaza as well, and the relationship between security and technology companies and the militarisation of the police, I think there's a second piece to this too. And it's not me dodging the question. It's putting these things together. I saw a quote from you about your work with The Guardian, which we will get onto as well. They said, when you put your head above the parapet, it gets blown off.

15:36And I certainly feel that as a left wing politician in the UK, that there are certain things I will say that the media will find maybe even amusing and will challenge. But in a way that I think is perfectly legitimate, I feel like I'm being criticized or challenged. And so it feels like there's a whole range of policy areas I'm allowed to be out of the mainstream on. But one where I feel like I instantly the kind of guard comes down is on NATO. And just even a year ago, I was saying that Donald Trump is an unhinged president. he is in charge of a NATO country. American military is a huge part of that NATO deal.

16:08And in fact, when he wants to put up NATO spending, a lot of that money is just going straight to US military supplies, which is going straight into US oil, which we've now seen with Venezuela is about essentially extracting and empire and colonization imperialism. And that's just my starting position. And then my argument to someone, even if they support NATO, so this isn't an anti-NATO or pro-NATO conversation, but even if you support NATO entirely, is how do you reconcile with someone who has so much power in NATO threatening Greenland and the triggering of Article 5, which is, you know, an attack on one is an attack on all.

16:39What if one is attacking another? Now, I don't claim there's easy answers for that. But what I've been trying to initiate or continue, I suppose, is a conversation about this political moment we're in and Donald Trump and the coup, as you put it, around the power of America and the power of an EU that has not condemned things like Venezuela is not condemned for the genocide in the Gaza with the power that I would like them to. And just, it's always felt like in the media, that's a conversation we're not allowed to have. We're not even allowed to touch the conversation. Well, it's so interesting because I would say that I was, when I heard you talking about NATO, it really worried and concerned me.

17:15Because, and I tell you why, is because there's been this traditional sort of progressive position in which the US is an imperial power and we're anti-NATO and also Russia's not a threat and we've just got to do a deal with Putin. You know, this tanky position in which we're all out in supporting the plight of the Palestinians, but the Ukrainians are just going to have to cut a deal with Putin. Definitely not my position. And so when I heard you say that, and it came at a very similar time that Zahra Sultana was talking about NATO, it really worried and disturbed me because that's kind of this narrative that I'm used to hearing.

17:50And I think, I mean, I think we are in a different world. I think this last week has shown us we're in a different world. And actually, what it's shown us is that we have to have a European security alliance. Like that has to now happen. There is no other choice. And, you know, so maybe I can say, well, actually, it's like you're ahead of the game on that. I do feel quite vindicated. I mean, the game is not to say I told you so. But I also go, well, this is what I've been saying because it's very clear where we were at. And we absolutely need to show solidarity to Ukrainians. But Keir Starmer's position, I would say, completely doesn't make sense now.

18:25Starmer rightly criticises Putin, but it seems Trump can do what he wants. And not only do we not challenge them, he seems to implicitly agree with him or say that Trump's allowed to do this because he happens to be off-line. I mean, I think the thing is, and the thing which worried me about it was, is because our security piece in Europe, that has been dependent upon NATO. And I think, you know, there's a really interesting documentary that you should see, which is it hasn't been distributed yet, but it's called Facing War. And it's this bird's eye view inside the NATO negotiations and the delicate dance that has taken to kind of keep Hungary and Turkey on board as NATO has expanded, you know, to bring in new European partners.

19:07That actually it's it really impresses you about actually the value and importance of this diplomacy. And so there has been this dance of keeping the US inside that umbrella in spite of everything has this clear, clear value. But I mean, the reality is that we are in a different world order now. I mean, that is what has become so abundantly clear over the last month, which is Trump has unilaterally decided that the old this world order, the post war is no longer that is no longer a thing. And he has, you know, the ramifications of, I mean, we published in The Nerve, which is my new insurgent new grassroots publication, which maybe we'll get on to.

19:57We published a story this week about which we had a great former diplomat, Arthur Snell, doing this filleting of this national security document, which was put strategy document, which was put out by the US three weeks ago, a month ago. And that just so clearly sets out what a completely sort of state of emergency that Europe is now in. You know, it sets out that we are the enemies, essentially, of the US. It considers us, it says that what is happening in Europe, in Britain, in these countries is civilisational erasure. And it says in that document that, you know, the solution it believes is to support patriotic parties that can clamp down on immigration, that can clamp down on platform regulation.

20:53And also we're now in Russia's sphere of influence. That's what it says. We have to make nice with Russia. It's kind of up to us. So we cannot rely on the US, you know, for our security, for anything else. And the sooner that people wake up, I think, to the stakes here, the stakes that the US government and its allies, these technology companies now want to see far right governments all being elected or brought to power by other means, by any means possible. they see that in their national security interests. So it's like it's really, really profound and I just do not feel that sort of that scale, the stakes, the sense of emergency has communicated itself to most people through the media yet in any way.

21:46And it's interesting because we're on Cambridge Analytica and we've ended up in a different place but of course they're entirely linked because I would argue and I think you would agree that Brexit was partly sponsored by Putin because exactly he wanted to weaken Europe for the exact reason for what we're seeing right now, which is a much more complicated geopolitics where America and the UK were in a much more kind of tense position where we can't really turn to America and Europe aren't being particularly brilliant at the moment either. And so we're left in a pretty vulnerable position as a country.

22:13And this is not by accident. This has all been by design. I think that's exactly right. You can see there's this clear, clear sort of genealogy between 2016 and now. And, you know, one of those lines is Nigel Farage, your good friend who has been so polite about you this week. But, you know, the thing my ongoing frustration with Nigel Farage, which has only now just started to change, is that he is seen as this, you know, he's an English figure. He wears tweed. He goes to the pub. We see him through the lens of this sort of way that we've always looked at our politics. He has received almost no journalistic scrutiny throughout his entire career until very recently.

22:57And the whole thing is with Nigel Farage. He's not that cuddly, cosy golf club, English pub figure. He is absolutely in a relationship with the US far right. And he's absolutely in a relationship with the European pro-Kremlin far right. Actually, they're both pro-Kremlin, of course, because that's what the US far right is. And you can see absolutely in so many ways that what happened in Brexit was we saw that money, that force, that influence, and we saw that money, that force, and that influence, and those networks coming together at this moment when we had this, you know, innovative, new technology.

23:33It was the first real political campaign in Britain which was, like, run through these online platforms. And they ran amok. That was why it was blasted through electoral law, data law, everything else. We're living with the consequences. You know, our constitution changed. the shape of Europe change, our national security, I mean, all as a downstream effect of that. And here is Nigel Farage in this pole position now to potentially take power. And again, I still feel we're not understanding the consequences of that. If you look at what Trump is doing in the US, you know, the way that he had a plan of what to do when he took office, Farage is starting now.

24:21They're communicating and working with the same people. There is going to be an all-out assault, I would say, in the same way on the rule of law and our institutions. Well, it's already happening, in fact. It's already happening. But again, it's like the stakes of that, I feel, are really underfelt by most people. It's an abstract, whereas this is where we have to attend to what is happening in America and to learn those lessons and to really see and understand that what is coming for us unless we do really, really start thinking about how to stop that. And you brought up Nigel Farage there, which links me immediately to Nathan Gill.

24:59It's just a personal experience, but being on Question Time a couple of weeks before his sentence and bringing up his name with Zia Yusuf and Fiona Bruce shutting it down, basically saying to the audience, does anyone know who this is? and the audience saying, no, we don't. And me thinking, well, that's a responsibility of the BBC that there's a pretty huge story going on and the vast majority of this audience have no idea what I'm talking about. Now, as that happened the next day, there were then lots of stories about Nathan Gill and a week or two later he went to prison for ten and a half years.

25:27I don't know if you want to outline why Nathan Gill is important and why people should care about this and why it's not over just with Nathan Gill, potentially. Well, it was an amazing moment. So thank you and congratulations for that because you actually did manage to get that sort of name out into the mainstream media and it just hadn't been before. And what we have seen throughout this has been a failure of the media to cover aspects of this story. And that is ongoing and that is because of the structural nature of the ownership of our press, which is our print media is overwhelmingly dominated by right-wing, pro-Brexit, millionaires, billionaires.

26:08And the BBC takes its lead from in many ways from like what's actually in the printed newspapers. And with Nathan Gill, I mean, it was quite astonishing because we set up the nerve, the new publication, end of September. And we were able to have this like huge, splashy exclusives week after week, because nobody else was covering Nathan Gill, apart from our friends at Byline Times. And then it was only when it came to the sentencing that there was some at that point. And BBC Wales, in fairness, were doing some stuff the Welsh media was. But it's, you know, it goes back to this black hole of Brexit and the black hole of nobody wants to talk about Russian interference in this country with relation to politics and the effect it's had.

26:55And we are again in this, like, astonishing moment of danger in which we have the head of the armed forces, the head of the Navy, the head of MI6, the Home Secretary, all in pretty much a week before Christmas, signalling that, yes, actually, Russia is a real threat. Russia, you know, we have to be prepared. We are in a state of, if not war, I mean, Russia believes it's at war with us. And that's now being clearly messaged. But at the same time, what that's meant for us as a country and to our politics is still being brushed under the carpet. And I would argue that is because Brexit is still this black hole, which most political parties and most politicians don't want to go near.

27:40You know, we've had this total refusal to have this inquiry, which Parliament called for and Boris Johnson refused to have. Where are the Greens on this? Because this has been, I don't know if you know that. It says a release of Russia report. Yeah, so off the back of this, you know, I worked with Caroline Lucas and a bunch of other MPs, Ben Bradshaw and Alan Smith, cross party to have this legal challenge to try to do what Parliament, the Parliamentary Committee had insisted, which is we have to have an inquiry into what happened in order that we can protect the country going forward. and you know Boris Johnson's government and now Keir Starmer's government have just refused to, completely point blank refused to have that where are the Greens on it?

28:29I mean without sounding tweet, genuinely if ever you want to know the Green Party's position on something, if it involves accountability and transparency, it's going to be towards accountability and transparency, so we'll be in full report of making sure that there's a reviewer and enquiry into exactly what's happened.

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29:55it was noticeable that keir starmer a man that i don't often praise but has said recently as well that there needs to be some sort of uh investigation but he was very unclear and very i mean it's it's it's a whitewash okay so they've they they made this announcement of like oh yeah Yeah, we're going to have an inquiry into, I think it was, you know, how to protect electoral elections from foreign interference. They deliberately don't mention Russia. They put the housing minister in charge of it. Hello, with that deep national security background. And it's reporting in about six weeks, I think.

30:26And they won't publish the proper terms of reference. So that is that again just feels like another whitewash in which they do not want to touch this hot potato. And it is a hot potato. Because, you know, we know the Conservatives took shit tons of money. We know that Boris Johnson had a relationship with Evgeny Lebedev. But we are still in a position where it is, you know, it's a clear and present danger. And I think going back to the Nathan Gill, if people don't know who he is, you know, so he being sentenced on eight charges of accepting bribes from a Russian agent. and um they're a ukrainian agent right but working for russia i think yes yes well yes pro-kremlin we call him yeah but who but who is now in russia but he's also he was a very very very close ally of nigel farage yeah worked with him for years one of his closest associates was in the welsh parliament the senate then and in the european parliament and you know we can see that nigel Farage was saying pretty much the same things as Nathan Gill, you know, during this period and earlier in terms of, and we know Nathan Gill was paid for what he said.

31:41Nigel Farage apparently was saying it all for free. But does that make it any better? I don't know. I mean, but what is that relationship? Because this guy, Ollier Voloshen, he was not working alone. I mean, he was part of a pan-European pro-Kremlin network that targeted and worked with far-right MEPs across Europe and also was deeply connected with this individual who played a major role in subverting the US 2016 and trying to do so in 2020 as well and was sanctioned by America for that. So and yet, you know, Nathan Gill, he took the he took the he copped it. He kept his mouth shut. He pleaded guilty.

32:28He's gone to prison for like 12 and a half years. And that shut down all other inquiry into what on earth was this spiring which was operating in the heart of our politics. And there seems to be no curiosity about, you know, what that is, whether it's ongoing, who else is involved. And the thing that really staggers me is there's a huge set of elections coming up in May for the Senate. So it would just feel that even if you said, OK, this was a while ago, it's very relevant to what's happening in May, because this is someone who was the leader of the Reform Party. I think it was a Brexit party back then, but we know it was exactly the same people in the Senate.

33:05And it seems the lack of journalistic curiosity from most quarters seems pretty strange. And what was it? So what got you interested in Nathan Gill? Why did you bring that up on Question Time? Because as you say, nobody was talking about it at the time. I think generally, having followed your work and Brexit and Cambridge Analytica have always been interested in terms of how technology is being used. And we'll get on to Elon Musk in a moment because I think he's clearly, I was going to say a key player in here, but I think you'd argue almost not a key player, actually, because both him and Mark Zuckerberg are essentially puppets of the Russian state.

33:33I think you'd argue, but a key player in terms of. Well, I don't know if I'd say I don't. Well, I mean, it's so weird. I mean, it's so weird. We don't understand Elon Musk's, he's clearly doing Putin's work in many ways, but we don't clearly understand what that relationship is or why. But he's clearly, obviously, you know, whatever the relationship is on off again with Trump, he's, you know, a part of the US state apparatus now and is being used as such. And they're all problematic. It's like the thing about the great thing about Elon Musk is that for me, from my point of view. It's a statement no one's ever said before.

34:10I know, exactly. But from my point of view, it was kind of amazing when he came in and set up Doge and appeared with a chainsaw and all the rest of it. Because this thing I've been talking about for a decade and trying to expose and trying to get people to pay attention to of why these technology platforms are so dangerous and they are out of control. They're unaccountable. They operate with total impunity and they are a threat to us. He suddenly made that visible. and that suddenly communicated itself to people in a way they just hadn't got before. And that's where Elon Musk is doing what the other guys are doing.

34:47He's just being more of a kind of edgelord twat about it. So it's just easier to see. And to answer your question about Nathan Gill, I suppose more widely, I've been thinking a lot about Farage and putting the legitimacy of everything you're putting aside. I suppose Brexit had been totally legitimate. There hadn't been kind of awful technologies or spy networks going on. Just the fact that he was at the centre of this catastrophic project that has gone so badly and then has the chutzpah to return and go, you know what, I've still got the answer for the country. It's just Brexit wasn't quite done the reform way.

35:20Just made me think how much we need to keep exposing reform, who they're connected to and who they stand for. And talking about Nathan Gill was part of that. But I think talking about Brexit more widely, aside from the technology issues, which I think are very legitimate, but just in terms of economic, cultural, social issues and the breakdown and the fact that almost anyone who voted for Brexit back then still doesn't think it's been done particularly well. I know, I know. But, you know, the thing I really think about is there's a whole rising generation of voters who you are clearly connecting with who did not vote for this, who, you know, are absolutely the ones who are living with the consequences of it.

35:56And I think that, you know, where I have a little bit of hope, which is that there has been this gap of time, there's a new generation who want to understand actually what happened. And if they did understand what happened, if we did storytell that better, I think they would just go out of their minds that this was done to them and has systematically been covered up by every politician and political party since. Can I ask, because this gets to the crux a little bit, because I think storytelling is incredibly important. The question is, how do you storytell with technology? So we're on a podcast.

36:32I'm very happy to have this podcast. I think it's often in the kind of top five or top ten in the country podcasts I listen to. That's quite different that a politician can have over a million listens in a month where I'm able to platform the stories I want people to hear. A much bigger platform, though, is X or Twitter. I still refuse to call it X. I feel personally very conflicted. it's clearly a pretty awful place to be it's full of fascist content far right content misinformation I think it has overstepped a line as well in the recent weeks with Grok and the child abuse imagery that's being created we're speaking on a day where Elon Musk has said he's going to withdraw that but only for unsubscribed people who don't subscribe which is almost arguably worse at saying you can have access to this if you can pay but how do we story tell if the places where, I mean, it's 35 million users, whereas something like Blue Sky, a place I much prefer to be, is 3.5 million users.

37:30Now, you could argue that it's mostly bots on Twitter, and I think there's something to be said for that. But it's still the place where the journalists are and the news goes first. I mean, I also am very conflicted on this, and I'm really glad you still call it Twitter. It's still Facebook to me. They try to get rid of the stink of that name, but it's still Facebook as well. and I think we are in a real conundrum. I mean, for me personally, I mean, I've got so many thoughts around this. I believe, so from speaking as myself as a journalist, and I think it's similar as a politician, is that we have to be where people are.

38:06You want to communicate to as many people in as broad an audience as possible. So you go where people are. I mean, and that's been my sort of philosophy on this. And, you know, and I found, you know, there was a kind of quite a lot of performative flouncing off Twitter. Now it's full of fascists. It's always been full of fascists. You know, like there have been Nazis on that platform since forever. And just speaking from a personal point of view, all the people are like, oh, now it's so awful. I get all this abuse. For me, it's a walk in the park compared to what I got through the Brexit years.

38:43I mean, it was unbelievable, like, what was the sort of fire hose that I experienced at that time. So this kind of like, it was also great in the past, and now it's not. I think that is like for the birds. But our real problem is, is that everything is just getting balkanized. So people flounced off to different places. Some went to Blue Sky, some went to Thread, some went to Instagram, some went to LinkedIn, some went to Substack. And this is the thing we're really losing, is that, because for me, I have to say, as a source of news, I find Twitter absolutely still unsurpassed. So I know what is happening 12, 24, 48 hours before some of it's being reported elsewhere because I have a really good, you know, set of accounts that I follow.

39:27So I do. But at the same time, yeah, I mean, he's a white supremacist, Putin loving, you know, madman, essentially. and what has happened with this grok undressing is despicable and horrific. What I would counter just slightly to be aware of is that people are going to go, OK, that's it, I'm over, I'm going to threads, I'm going to Instagram. Instagram is the biggest marketplace for paedophiles in the world. You know, we had these documents which showed that Instagram was deliberately connecting paedophiles to children. You know, and there was, where's the kickback on that? So these in-baked misogyny and paedophilic sort of tendencies are actually baked into most, you know, pretty much all of these technology platforms and also being baked into the models of them.

40:26And what, again, to go to what I like about Elon Musk is he makes the problem visible, right? that misogyny across all of these platforms being baked into these AI models is fundamental to everything that is going on right now. So, yes, we should be having a conversation about that, but it's not just Twitter. But we're also now in this complete bind because the US government has stated quite clearly that anybody who tries to regulate social media is an enemy of the state and is going to. So, you know, it's a really, really difficult conundrum. Obviously, we have to do whatever we can to stop this horrific material.

41:09But I don't see this as an isolated instance. I feel like the horrific material is a new thing, though, that has crossed the line. As in, everything else is pretty... He's just testing it. I mean, this is what he always does. And it's like, you've got to remember that this is just a new technology that is across all of these different companies and platforms. and every single new technology we have is weaponised first against women and children. I mean, we see that across the line. And so you want to understand what's coming for the rest of, you know, look at how women are being abused first. The canary in the coal mine.

41:47It is the canary in the coal mine in that way. So finishing off, we've not talked much about you. We've talked about why things. and one of the single reasons why I have so much respect for you is no matter how difficult it's been, no matter how much abuse you get, you seem to not stop. And I mean, I just don't tell you a compliment. It's not a criticism at all, but I imagine it must be tiring sometimes. I want to talk about The Guardian. I want to put the caveat, which I think you'd agree with, that I think there's amazing people who work at The Guardian and I'm not just saying that because they interview me often.

42:16I think there's problems at The Guardian too, which is probably another conversation. But things really came to a head for you when the Observer was bought out. And I believe that you were, was it an entire group of women? Yes. Yeah, all went on strike effectively? Oh no, the whole of the Guardian Observer went on strike. 93 % of the staff voted to go on strike. We all went on strike. But you were the media spokesperson, so you've got the kind of the brunt of the attacks, right? Well, it was, so when the sale, it wasn't a sale because the Guardian gave away the Observer to what essentially is an opaque group of investors because I'd been so visibly speaking up on behalf of the rest of everybody else who'd gone on strike.

43:03I was picked off and not offered a new contract with the new owners. And yeah, which is illegal in this country, by the way. So if you participate in union behaviour, that is a protected under law. So that is actually, there are legal actions ongoing, which we haven't publicised yet, but that, you know, protecting the right to go on strike is so fundamental and you've got to protect people from recrimination from doing so. But to go back, I mean, just to loop back, because these things are connected, which is that I totally agree with you. Like, you know, The Guardian is like, A, it's amazing.

43:50It's, you know, it's an absolute liberal institution in this country. We so need it. It's our, you know, it's independently owned. And that is a huge, huge thing. And brilliant journalism across the board. But The Guardian has its, like, a bit like Keir Starmer's government, got itself into a really awkward position in terms of making terrible deals with tech companies. And, you know, what that ensues. So, for example, The Guardian was one of those organisations which flounced off Twitter with a like, we're out of here, it's a toxic Nazi brew. But you know what The Guardian does now? If you want to read an article and you haven't subscribed, you have to click to accept the cookies, which under GDPR is supposedly illegal.

44:39You accept the cookies. This is spyware, surveillance cookies you're taking onto your phone and computer. I think it's 132 companies. Some of them, there's a terrible Israeli ad tech company is one of them. There's US ones. But one of the companies they're using is X Corp. Right. So, you know, and then, you know, the thing which really upset me was that The Guardian, they took on onto their board the president of Google Europe. and they did this deal, syndication deal with OpenAI. And that for me, it was, you're crossing a boundary there because, you know, we believe that OpenAI's scraping of data and journalistic content, you know, is illegal, is theft.

45:33The New York Times is suing OpenAI, whereas The Guardian is elected to get into bed with them. and to do this deal which sort of normalises that. Anyway, sorry, that was slightly... But it is... How do we stand up to these companies if you're also getting into bed with them and doing deals with them? And there's actually research that shows that news organisations that do deals with technology companies do report on them less critically. And I'm sure that's not conscious in any way, but it's just what the report, you know, the research shows out. Well, it's difficult. Even when I talk to Bobby Observer, they put me on the front page recently and I thought I'm having a conversation about a paper that put me on the front page recently that's our jobs as politicians and journalists is not to be tied by the vested interests of people who are nice to us sometimes but actually to do the thing that's correct and speak truth at all times Yeah and I appreciate that because it is really difficult to walk that line because it's kind of like there's already a load of newspapers which will hate you off the bat Can I end on a hopeful note?

46:34Yeah well can I do it well should I tell you about what I'm up to now? Well that's literally what I was about to do actually because you talked about how we can stand up to people so how can people follow you and what are you up to now which i think is going to be key to the resistance essentially so i actually think you know one of the one of the the most positive things which is coming out of this era is that because we're going into these multiple crises it does also create kind of these opportunities and i think you're seeing that i mean clearly the people who have sort of like you know really hungry for what you're talking about are looking for something fresh and different.

47:08And, you know, so what they're, you know, one of the sort of most sort of positive and uplifting things at the moment in the US, we saw this sort of insurgent new media brands being set up and by journalists just going out by themselves on a limb. We saw Mehdi Hassan setting up Zeteo, which has done this amazing work, you know, around the genocide. 404 Media is brilliant, these tech journalists who kind of formed a co-op. And what we've done is, So it's a group of five of us who've come out of The Guardian and Observer. We're all women, three editors and the creative director and me. And we just thought, fuck it, we're just going to start our own media outlet.

47:51And so it's called the Nerve.News. And it's because we believe that the one quality people need in this moment is to have nerve. And we're focusing on culture, politics and tech. We've done this with no outside investment. We literally just thought we're just going to start really, really small and see if we can grow it from the ground up. And that's had this sort of amazing, positive reaction. And it just feels like, you know, I think it was one of the things when we went on strike at The Guardian, we were standing outside this big corporate monolithic building thinking, what is this management and this board?

48:29Who are they? They are not our people. These are our people out here. and really thinking is another way that you can do news and media in not this corporate model, you know. And we need these mainstream media organisations, but they're also sort of failing to meet the moment in some way. So it's really felt like I sort of describe it as being, it's a bit like setting up a punk band in that we just decided to like pick up the instruments and start playing and see what happens. And so, you know, we're clearly going to make mistakes and fuck things up, But we want to do it sort of honestly and openly and transparently and just bring people with us.

49:08And like we ask you, please, it's free to subscribe to. It's twice weekly newsletter. But we're really hoping to bring in people as members and do events and create a community and just show that there's another way that you can do it. Really, really properly independent, brave, courageous, doing investigations, the kind of stuff which I really believe in and beholden to no one. I love this. It feels like from bold politics to bold journalism. Thank you so much for your time and for everything you do. Thank you so much for having me, Zach. It's been amazing.

49:44Zach, final words for me? If you're paying a phone bill anyway, like nearly all of us are, of course, why not pay a phone bill that funds rewilding, reintroducing and replanting? The three R's. You can even watch it happening on your phone. That's bloom scrolling, not doom scrolling. To find out more and to join the thousands of people helping British wildlife, go to ecotalk.co.uk slash bold politics. Join the bloom scrollers and the blooming nature revolution.