Populism, conspiracies and... Doctor Who

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:43BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Well, well, well. Nick, my friend, my hero, my colleague, my compadre. Stop that. Can you believe it? It's me. I have to say stop that. You have to say stop that. I was self-censoring, which you don't get enough of on podcasts. Do you know, this is episode 124 of the Today Podcast. We started in October 2023, more than a year and a half ago. And do you remember what we started off with? My birthday, actually. Oh, was it? Yes. It was a birthday present. That was what this was. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. No, there was something rather more serious that we started with, which was reflecting on whether Rishi Sunak can win it for the Tories.

1:24That shows you it doesn't sound like it's a long time ago, but boy, it is a long time ago. In political terms, it's eras ago. And the reason we're banging on about all this is because we have some news, don't we? This is... It's actually the beginning of something, but it's also the end. This is the last episode of the Today podcast ever, certainly in this iteration. And our listeners are the first to find out. They are. Fear not. Like Doctor Who, though. This is not death. It is a moment of regeneration. You are the kind of Billy Piper of this particular story. Excellent. Yeah, because emerging, to mix my metaphors terribly, from the chrysalis of the Today podcast, there's not just one new podcast, but, well, sort of two.

2:10One's already there. I'm going to do more of political thinking, my long-form conversations with people who influence and shape our thinking about the world. And you are. Da-da! I'm launching a new podcast and it's called Radical. Radical with Amol Rajan. It's an ideas podcast. It's going to go inside the zeitgeist. It's basically a podcast about tomorrow from today. How's that for a strap nine? I like that. It's about the future. It's about the future. And we're going to talk about the future and the future of political communication with our first ever guest on this podcast. He is, if I may say, to use a somewhat loaded historical term, a legend.

2:48Who is it? He is the satirist, the great Armando Annucci of Radio 4. A man who started his career here at the BBC, but ever since has conquered not just the world of radio and television, but the world of Hollywood and the stage, as well as the silver screen. So this is A Last Hurrah with Amanda Iannucci. Let's do it.

3:24Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast Studio. And it is Nick in what is still for now, the Today Podcast Studio. So I've got a question for you. If this podcast has been fun, which it has, if we've both enjoyed it, which we have, if we've learnt from each other, and if we've got a really lovely, big community of listeners who enjoy this podcast, why is it over? Well, there's a negative answer and there's a positive answer. The negative answer is workload. Yeah, I've often been worried about your work. I've got a day job. Have you? the day program, as have you. But I've also been doing this series political thinking.

3:57You've been recording University Challenge and your TV interviews as well. And getting the two of us together has proved difficult. And increasingly difficult, is worth saying. So that is, if you like, the slightly negative reason. The more positive reason is, I think we've both been thinking, podcasts have conquered the world, but when are they good and when are they not so good? It seems to me when they're not so good, they're blather. They're just people talking. It's quite a nice company. You have it on while you're doing the cooking. You have it on your car in the shower. Nice people. Have nice chat.

4:33But when they're really worth having on and listening to is when they add value. And that's because there's depth, there's intelligence, there's thought, there's reflection. And they tell you something about the future and not just what happened today or what will happen tomorrow. And that's where the space is. So on your negative point, it's worth just saying, and we are explaining this to our beloved Today podcast listeners first, and they're the first to hear it. But the practical logistical difficulties have got significantly harder, partly because political thinking is expanding. You had some minor American politician on a few weeks ago.

5:07That was it, Joe Biden, which involved a bit of travel. I think this week you've got Jacinda Ardern on. You've got more episodes. It's on, when's it on TV? It's now on Friday Lunchtimes in that Politics Live slot on BBC Two. as well as being on iPlayer. I watch it on iPlayer, so I wouldn't know about the old linear schedule, which I'm not allowed to say. So that difficulty has got harder, but also on the positive, as you say, for one thing, you and I are living through, have lived through an extraordinary revolution in the media. And you do have to constantly innovate. You do have to constantly research what the audience wants.

5:36You do have to constantly try things. And I think there's, not only is there no shame, but I actually take pride in the idea that we've launched something here. It's been a success. We've enjoyed doing it. And now we're launching something again. And on your point about the ideas and the future, I do think there's a space, actually. I do really think we are living through a terrifying, dizzying era of huge change where these enormous forces, technology, demography, populism, lots of the stuff we've talked about is reinventing the future. And I think doing a podcast which is squarely about the ideas that are shaping the future with some of the pioneers who are doing that is a vacancy, and I think we can do it.

6:11And I think doing a podcast which has all the editorial integrity and strength and value and power of the Today Programme but focuses squarely on tomorrow and goes inside the zeitgeist with some really big names is a thing that we should try and do. So I'm really proud of that. And it's about radical thinking. That's why we called it radical with Amal Rajan. I think one of the things that we've enjoyed about doing this, I hope we both enjoyed, I think we have, is that we've kind of learned from each other because we didn't know each other really before you started on the Today programme. I felt like I knew you, Nick.

6:37I'd been listening to you for years. Watching you on Bulletin. A brief pint before you walked into the Today studio for the first time. And one of the things I remember that you said then and you've always said, is somehow a kind of frustration with daily news, a kind of feeling that will that matter? Not just tomorrow, will it matter at all in a week, a month, a year, let alone 10 years? And there are these big trends, there are these big forces at work on our world, which it's quite tempting to never do because they don't necessarily move incrementally each day, but they are vast and they are really what's shaping what's happening in the world that I've spent my life studying which is politics well we're going to get told off for being too nice to each other but sod it I've learnt a huge this is not the end by the way this is the beginning of something very exciting but I should say I feel I feel genuinely like I've learnt so much from actually sitting in the same room with you in this podcast format as well as on the Today programme I've learnt lots of individual things about different parts of history and not just politics but all the other things you're interested in including some football club that you keep banging on about.

7:42I've learned some specific things about how to approach journalism. So you've got a strong view about the difference between opinion, which fails to be impartial, and judgment, which is impartial. And I feel like I've grown in my confidence and strength to assert impartial judgments based on what you said. I've also learned quite a lot of technical things from you. You're a, if I may say, better interrupter than me. I still feel awkward. Maybe it's a character thing. I still feel awkward about interruptions. I've learned from you both on this podcast and on the Today programme that when you interrupt you do it with conviction.

8:15Don't go, ah yes but, and then someone else is talking, you do it with a certain, so I feel like I've learned lots of individual things, intellectually but also technically, and that's going to continue, you know, as far as I know we're both going to be presenting the Today programme solidly for a long time yet, and it's worth saying, I do want to I do want to make, maybe it's a final point before we get into Armando and the future of politics and political communication, but I think that the era in which we lived does demand constant, constant innovation. I think you do have to say, where are things moving?

8:44What's the customer-consumer behavior? What's the appetite for? What's the demand for? And we know, because of the feedback we've got, that we've got a really committed, really loyal, really significant set of listeners to the Today podcast. So we don't give it up lightly at all. But we just think, on balance, we can continue the best of the Today podcast in these new worlds, and bring, as we already have done, the spirit of the Today podcast to the Today program. So this is not the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Yeah. Billy Piper. Remember that. You're going to have to explain that to people, you know.

9:14People don't know. Some people don't know who Billy Piper is. Some people don't watch Doctor Who. Really? Actually, I haven't watched for a while. Did I mention that I was once in Doctor Who? Have I? Have I?

9:26Well,

9:31we're constantly being told that the world has changed, so Armando Iannucci is back to help us navigate the enormous changes we've seen in the last year and a half since October 2023, when on Nick's birthday, we launched this podcast. I mean, there's a little blurb here in front of me about all the things Amanda Iannucci has done, but I think we can take it as read and understood that this is one of the great eminences in British culture. Someone who I last spoke to, talking very sadly about the death of Alan Yentob, someone who started out with the day today, someone who started out in BBC Radio, but who now presents the BBC podcast Strong Message Here with Helen Lewis.

10:05Amanda, welcome back. Hello. Glad to be invited back to celebrate your demise. Because we thought we'd have our own party instead of waiting for people to do it afterwards. Yeah, yes. Enjoy the week. Watch the ship go down. But re-emerge. It's going to re-emerge. Somehow I've been compared to Billy Piper so far from Doctor Who, which I think a lot of people aren't going to understand. But no, this is the end. Look it up. I think a lot of people didn't understand Doctor Who. Nick says he's never watched an episode. Have you watched an episode? Of course I've watched it. I watched it as a child.

10:35I watched it with my kids. and watch The Current Series. And you've not watched the episode that I was in. Have you enjoyed doing Strong Message here, Armando, and found that actually the original idea has been strengthened somewhat by the fact that political communication in the time that you've been doing the episode has got even more bizarre and deceitful? Yes, I know. I don't just stress that's not our fault. But the idea, I mean, we were down to do about eight and we're now on show 34. And we're going to keep going. The idea behind it is, Helen and I just take a phrase or a word that's current in the political discourse, may have been a phrase that came up this week, and then go on a riff about why have they said this?

11:19What are they trying to do by saying this? What does it mean? Is it there to confuse us or is it there to illuminate something? Just what's going on? And I find it's a lot of people are genuinely interested in what politicians have to say, but also bamboozled by the way they say it. When politicians sink back into the safe phrases like, you know, everything's on the table and that's for future discussion. But the underlying trend, all these phrases that nobody uses in real life. and inevitably when people come along and i would put people like farage bernie sanders trump i suppose uh as people who talk differently they get the attention my old colleague andy my had a good phrase for it they talk fluid human yes they talk or some version of human yes but i have you know i have to say that you know the more because we've had to kind of on a weekly basis just examine what people are saying you know there are cheat codes to the likes of farage and so on but you just have To watch a lot of him, to then realise what the recurring tricks or little gimmicks he does.

12:28But these plain communicators keep winning. I mean, they don't win everywhere and they don't win every time. But this week, an election which I thought got less attention than, frankly, it deserves, there was an election for the new president of Poland. Yes. In which the guy who won had just admitted that he'd been involved in organised, important word, organised football violence. Right. As a young man, he had actually been part of a gang who would turn up to have fights. Now, in any conventional understanding of the world, that would disqualify you from being the head of state of a country. It's this weird thing that the demonisation of your opponent doesn't work anymore.

13:07Your opponent can admit to all sorts of things, can be convicted of crime. But if you launch your campaign on that basis, as that's how you're going to attack. It seems that you're kind of actually questioning the judgment of those who support that person. So you're kind of, if you're insulting the opponent, you're kind of insulting them. And I think that's the surprise conclusion a lot of people have worked out. Well, it seems to me you can, as a populist, I don't much like that word, but we kind of know what we mean. You can attack your opponent if you're saying, look, that guy is kind of different from you and me.

13:43I don't know if you followed this, But the guy who's become Polish president, Karol Nowrowski, nicknamed his opponent, who was the mayor of Warsaw. Clever guy, speaks many languages, one of them French. Bazior, forgive the pronunciation if I've got it wrong, but apparently a Polish version of Bonjour. So essentially, it was just saying, this man speaks French. Right. He's not one of us. Now, previously, they'd accused Donald Tusk, the prime minister, an ally of the guy who lost this presidential election. They'd accused him not just of being nice to Germans, not very popular in Poland, but actually being German.

14:18That was the suggestion. He secretly was hiding his heritage. That sort of insult seems to work. Well, that's what's happened, I think, over the last 18 months to two years. The prominence of the language about the other, the demonization of those out there who are not you. I mean, Liz Truss this week was in Hungary doing a whole speech about how Britain is actually controlled by some mysterious global force, well-funded and well-organised. Not saying who it is, but just summoning up some other organisation that is like hoodwinking all of us. That's an evolution of her position. I thought that her position was that there was an internal establishment in the UK that had undermined her, the Bank of England, the OBR, the blob.

15:05Yes, given that she was in Hungary saying that she wanted to join up the dots with those in Hungary. So it's now an international force, a global force. But has the political cost of falsehood, lying, deception, whatever you want to call it, reduced? And has therefore the political potential upside for those who are willing to be looser with the truth increased? I mean, 25 years ago, there was a real thing that if you were caught lying, you're in trouble. it's sort of true to say that that was part of a media infrastructure which is just not there anymore and therefore people get away with falsehood well it's also you know everything's shifted towards the headline rather than um the summary of what's being said rather than what is said i think people tend to read that way as well you know because there's so much coming at you now that there is no time to you know get across everything so and it's all about attention it's an attention it's an attentional infrastructure way that politics works you know trump is all about attention he wants to make the headlines which is why on a day-by-day basis it's so erratic because you can't stick doing the same thing because then it gets boring well can i he has something fresh to say every day but yeah there's an underlying truth you see it seems to me in what the really successful communicators do so put to one side whether they sometimes because that undoubtedly do lie and knowingly lie.

16:30The underlying truth, I guess, in the Polish presidential candidate is, look, you and me don't speak French. We're not those sorts of people. He's that sort of person. Theresa May struggled to find a language, didn't she? She talked about people from somewhere or people from nowhere. And by nowhere, she meant people are happy in fancy airport lounges at Davos and at conferences. And it was her way of saying, look, there is a real gap between people who think a big night out is the restaurant half a mile away that you can't normally afford to go to? It isn't going to Bali. And bizarrely, it's people who are in power who utilise that sense of being something bigger and beyond our control outside that has even more influence on their country and economy than they have.

17:16So even when you're in power, you're still talking about an elite as if being head of your country isn't being part of the elite. Isn't the truth that throughout history, in democracies and in less democratic systems, the politicians that have been most effective have had two things in common. One is that they've been master storytellers more than they've been people in total grasp of the facts. They've had a narrative. Yes. Whether it's people who've been communist, fascist, or very effective ambassadors for liberal democracy. And the other thing is they've mastered the medium of the day. Churchill and radio, JFK and TV.

17:49And I'm going to put it out there. It's going to give me so much trouble, especially when we click this up on social media. But I am going to go from Churchill on radio and JFK on TV to Robert Jenrick on TikTok. Now, I've heard many of your 30 plus episodes. I've not heard the one with Jon Stewart. I'm not sure how much attention you've given and whether I've missed it to Robert Jenrick on TikTok. It's on this week's one that's coming out too. So Robert Jenrick, in UK politics right now, Robert Jenrick is making a lot of noise and is being effective in a world where you have to grab attention in cutting through.

18:20with his TikTok videos. He's hired a team and he's making high-impact TikTok videos of him doing stunts. Stunts. Talking to a cabbie about the cabaret rule going on the tube. Yes, we discussed a strong message here on Thursday morning. This is going out probably at the same time. What did you say? Give us a preview. And the phrase we've picked up on this week is weird Turkish barbers. That's what he said on the Channel 5 show presented by Jeremy Fine. That's what he said on one of his TikTok videos. What's wrong with London? He mentions weird Turkish barbers. He's drawing attention to some certain shops that are being used as money laundering fronts.

18:55But, you know, he chose to pick up on weird Turkish barbers as opposed to, you know, American style candy stores, which are money laundering schemes. It's been shown. Vape shops and electronic gadget shops. They've also been, you know, it's the implicit dog whistle, push button, you know, mention Turkey. mention people from outside mention the other the demon eyes the other that's what's been going but you mentioned the word the key word you use there is noise that's how effective they are they produce the most noise just being the loudest doesn't mean to say you're the most popular but you're the one that gets heard and I think there is a real dilemma here with people who want to present the facts is how do you present the facts in an accurate way a balanced way, an illuminating way, but in an interesting way, in a way that generates volume rather than noise.

19:53He'd say, dog whistle, my... I won't use the word. I'm just telling the truth. What happens is people kind of move around the truth because they don't want to say the reality. And I am, whether it's about fair dodging. And you're right, they've been very successful with... If you ask Robert Jenrick, as I've heard asked in interviews, what do you mean by this? You know, when he made, when he talked about families from alien cultures and so when he was asked, could you specify the ethnicity of these people? I think you did it on the Today programme. He said, correct me if I'm wrong, he said, well, that's a discussion, a difficult discussion we're going to have to have.

20:31But he didn't say it. He said that's, he said there is a discussion further on down the line. So your point is he wanted the headline, the summary, but didn't mention it, but he's not then going into the details. It was enough to raise the spectrum. It was enough to raise the idea. You know, if you look at the likes of Farage does it all the time, which is people are telling me, I'm not saying this is true. I'm just putting the I'm just asking the question. Yeah. Let's come to the deeper reason that this might be happening, which I think segues rather nicely into what Amal's going to be doing with this new podcast, Radical, which is the reason all this is possible is because the elites, if you like, are powerless in the face of much of what's going on.

21:10The big forces that are shaping our world, and this is the change from when you and I were at university, what, 40 odd years ago? God. AI, even the people inventing AI are not really in control of AI. They don't know where it's going. Yeah, they don't know where it's going. No, I think most interesting. They're honest about that. Yeah, they're honest about it. Yeah, when you talk to the founders of social media, Twitter, for example, they say, we had no idea that this is what would happen. And some of them are horrified by what has happened. And the public sort of get this, that these guys who they're looking at, who are meant to be in charge, don't appear to really be in charge.

21:46So that the people who are often called populists, there are always saying, well, no, we really would be in charge. We really are going to get a grip of this. Well, it could be something in that their message is basically hunker down. You know, the world is so uncertain out there that, you know, maybe the best thing is to go into our bunker and get, you know, tins of food and, you know, we'll be all right. There's that essence as well to it. And yet, strangely, you know, a lot of their message is against globalization and against these, you know, international organizations. But what have we found in the last 18 months that actually how interconnected we are, you know, our economy, there has to be a war in Ukraine or gas prices and Russian sanctions and, you know, for our energy prices here to be affected.

22:31The food supply chain, the medical supply chain, it just takes one slight conflict or some blockage like in the Suez Canal being blocked for five days for everything to go around. So we're aware that this comfortable existence we thought we had, we only have it just by the skin of our teeth. And if one thing goes wrong, the whole thing grinds to a halt. So the message there is actually how interconnected we are. And how fragile. How fragile. I think people feel a very strong sense that, you know, if there is a kind of problem with Chinese ports, suddenly the supply chains mean that you're going to be paying an extra 50p for your pint of milk.

23:09We're not hearing the arguments against, you know, in contrast to the populists, you know, let's build walls and let's, you know, draw up the drawbridge and so on. We're not hearing those arguments. People are scared to say those arguments that actually here are the benefits of contact with other countries and other systems. Is it interesting, though, that in a sense, when we watch this extraordinary show, if you can call it that, that's happening in the United States, we're beginning to see two different sorts of populists now at war with each other. So Elon Musk, having left the government, is turning his fire on Donald Trump, being incredibly abusive about what's called the big, beautiful bill by Donald Trump, which is basically a freebie tax.

23:51But we're beginning to see now, Musk was also pro-immigration, has been saying, hold on a second, we need many of these people. So you are seeing the tensions that once these people, as I say, we've never really found the right language for populist, nationalists, you know, new right, hard right, etc. That once they're in power, people go, well, hold on a second. And that surely will be a natural process. But also these people don't like the idea of sharing power because they don't like the idea of sharing attention. You know, Elon Musk sees himself as his own economy, which is his network of companies.

24:27and also, you know, the influence he has through X and so on. That's his economy. Trump sees the whole of the United States as basically the Trump economy to the extent that it's hard to distinguish between what is Trump's business interests that are being stocked up as opposed to America's economic interests. The Trump family interest. The family interest, the whole meme crypto thing. It's a blurring of that. And you see that, you know, if you read your history books, That's what happened in autocracies in the 20th century. It's power grabbing, but also money grabbing. Can I make an observation about Musk, which is, are you not struck actually, Nick, by the increasingly obvious, but in retrospect, always predictable parallels between the Musk-Trump relationship and the Cummings-Johnson relationship?

25:16Musk and Cummings being these very, very clever, unelected conciliary slash outriders. I'm interested to see how you then compare Trump with Johnson. I was going to say the strictly impartial part of it, which was to say that they then leave and they turn on their former master. And it was always going to be the case that Musk was going to turn on Trump. And, you know, to the extent, maybe he still supports lots of Trump. But Cummings has turned on Johnson. Musk is turning on Trump. Yeah. No, I think it was always completely inevitable because I don't think they agree about that much. which Musk, as we've discussed on this podcast before, had a rage, which was actually deeply personal.