BBC Trump scandal: Why Tim Davie needs to go

0:09It's yet another appalling example of BBC bias, this time involving Donald Trump. Our reporter Gordon Rayner will reveal how the BBC doctored the US President's words ahead of the January 6th riots to make him look like he started it all. This is the latest in a long line of scandals of the corporation. Is it time that Tim Davy, the Director General, take responsibility and resign? And Nigel Farage said he wanted to cut your taxes. Now he's changed his mind. Is this finally proof that he's just like all the rest of them? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominy.

0:57Ahoy there. Welcome back, Camilla. Aye, aye, captain. Just to explain, I've been... You've been on a ship. I've been on a luxury cruise liner, thank you very much. Lovely. I went on a seaborne voyage. I did speak on it. And would you believe the timing? because I had to prepare a, I was called a conversationalist. I took two of my three children. My son stayed at home very diligently, he told me, because he had some exams that he wanted to revise for. Liar, liar. Total liar. He had, count them, four Halloween parties to attend. I can't think, what a 15-year-old boy wants to go to so many parties with so many scantily clad female friends, Tim.

1:36It's a mystery. Check the bin, it'll be full of empty cans. Well, indeed so. So I took the girls with me and I had to do a little star turn on the sea day where I gave a speech. And then an absolute gift landed in my lap. The speech was on the Friday, Thursday night. The grand old Duke of York finally goes down the hill and doesn't come back up again. And the title was already, you'll love this, Royal Reckoning is the monarchy losing its grip. Oh, wow. And the audience was so fired up by this that it proved to be a huge success. So we riffed about Prince Andrew and related matters and Jeffrey Epstein and Megxit.

2:16Obviously, Harry and Meghan came into the fray. Two cancer diagnoses in the last few years. Whether the monarchy has a future. How badly damaged they've been by this scandal. And I think the scandal's probably now nipped in the bud. but to use the seafaring analogy, choppy waters last week, Tim, wasn't there? He is a common man overboard. And now we've got people. Also, it just gets worse and worse for him, doesn't it? We've got videos, voxpots, of people saying, we don't want him in Sandringham. Good Norfolk people saying, keep him away from our villages. And we've now got a debate, and I think this is probably a step too far.

2:52I mean, I've written an extensive copy about Prince Andrew's, sorry, Andrew. There was a meme going around saying, Randy Andy's the only title he still wants to hold on to, which I thought was funny. I've had many encounters with Andrew and I've always described his unique combination of ignorance and arrogance, which is quite a heady one. But there's talk now, let's take away his Falkland Service Medal. No. I think that's going a bit far. No. He did go up in those choppers and contribute to the military effort to save us from Argentinian rule on those islands. I think he should retain that. I know.

3:29I think it's ridiculous. They're going to be coming after his passport and his swimming certificates next. I just... His bagger awards. I think the point has been made and until the man has been in a court and has been proven guilty of something, let's stop torturing him. Can I just say as well, as I listened on the high seas to the podcast and how well everybody did... It did, didn't they? Everyone did brilliantly. I was touched by how much you appeared to miss me. I did. No, we really did. We really did. Well, I'm back. Because you have a lot of protein bars in that desk. Yeah, it's because basically, just to explain, Tim spends most of his working day eating all the food that I hoard in my little office cupboard.

4:06And I return to the Telegraph, Tim, to the newsroom, amongst a degree of excitement because Gordon Rayner, who joins us in the Daily Tea studio, has got a scoop that will blow a hot blast of air up your trouser legs. It is, wow, it is leading the website, Gordon, and it all starts with an internal memo at the BBC. Yes, so what I've got here is a 19-page, effectively a letter memo, written by a chap called Michael Prescott, who until June was an independent advisor to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, so they're the sort of arbiters of impartiality, effectively. He'd been on that committee for three years.

4:47He was appalled at what he saw. He felt that the BBC wasn't doing anything to address bias. And so in this letter, he has set out all the examples of bias that he thinks he saw during his time at the BBC and all the times they failed to do anything about it. And he's alerted the BBC board to this in the hope that they'll take action. And the one which is going to make global headlines relates to Donald Trump's words on January the 6th. That's right. So a year ago, a week before the 2024 US election, Panorama did a one hour special called Trump, A Second Chance. And Michael Prescott, who wrote this memo, watched the program, felt it was there was something a bit off about it, thought it was rather biased.

5:33And so he asked a colleague to have a look at it and see what they thought. and his colleague discovered that the BBC had taken the speech that Trump made on the day of the Capitol Hill riot and they had spliced different parts of it together to make it sound as though he had said something that he didn't. And they had also shown some footage of people marching on the Capitol out of sequence to make it look as if they marched on the Capitol after Trump spoke. In fact, that happened an hour before Trump spoke. Now, Gordon, in order to explain this, it needs to be heard, really. You've recorded a YouTube video explaining exactly how the clip was edited.

6:12Let's have a listen. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell. But Trump didn't, in fact, say this at all. The BBC spliced together two clips that took place 54 minutes apart. So let's go through it again. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. Now, see there, between Capitol and and, that's a cut. Here's what Trump actually said. We're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. It's different. It wasn't until nearly an hour later that he then said the second part of the BBC's version.

7:08We're going to walk down to the Capitol.

7:15And we fight. We fight like hell. You can watch that full video on YouTube alongside your Daily Tee. Tim, can you imagine what would happen to us at the Telegraph if we took somebody's speech and spliced something from the first five minutes with something in the last five minutes and pretended it was one continuous quote. What one sometimes does with interviews is you get quotes where you have remarks which are very far apart. And what do you do to bridge the gap? Because you don't want to put the hundreds of words in between. You use ellipses. So you show that there's been a break. Because otherwise it misrepresents what the person said if you don't make it clear that there is a gap.

7:57Having said that, what I would never do, including with ellipses, is put two quotes together that create a second meaning. Yes. So you might cut out words in between because the person is stumbling or fumbling or they go on to a detour. But what you wouldn't do, as has clearly happened in this case, Gordon, is take two sentences, put them together to create a whole new meaning. Somebody at the BBC has clearly said to themselves, I think Donald Trump incited the Capitol riots. Therefore, I am going to edit this or present this in a way that matches my worldview, not the view of what actually happened.

8:38And that, I'm afraid, is something that we have witnessed with the BBC time and time again. Isn't that what we're saying here, Gordon, really? Well, I can't think of any examples that are as egregious as this because this is done in such a slick way. There's no way this has happened by accident. Also, I think it's important to point out, speaking to Tim's point about how you make clear when there's a break, we're all used to seeing things where perhaps video is spliced together and there's some kind of a screen wipe or a white fade or something that makes it obvious that... Time has passed. Exactly.

9:11There is none of that. It is very, very slick, very carefully done. There's actually three different parts of his speech that they've had to put together to make one sentence. Yes. And there is no way you're going to spot that if you're a viewer and that is clearly deliberate. because they also cut away in terms of image. So obviously you would see the splice if you stayed with the camera on Donald Trump. But by cutting away from Trump to a crowd, it looks like the camera's just shifted rather than it's a long time later. A generous interpretation is they have lazily shorthanded it because the context of this whole discussion is the debate in the US around whether or not Donald Trump incited the January 6th riot.

9:49And this was a program being made about would Donald Trump be reelected? The point it wants to make is let us remember the controversy surrounding Trump, which is that he's accused of inciting a riot against the Capitol. So here is a shorthand way of showing him doing that. But of course, if you do that, and that's a generous interpretation, you remove all the caveats that were in Trump's speech. You completely undermine his argument where he says, I told them to march peacefully. I never incited people to do it and when they started and I saw what was happening I told them to come back you take all of that out generously it's shorthand but I suspect not also there's a dishonesty in the distortion of making out as if Trump is ever that concise if he wanted no but I've seen him speak live I think we've all seen him speak you're quite right I'm thinking back that was the most to the point I've ever seen him but literally a year ago this week will be the first anniversary of the Pittsburgh rally that I attended with our producer here, Louisa, and I couldn't believe in a way how rambling he actually was.

10:55So, of course, if you take any line out of any speech that Trump does, then you can always put it out of context. If you're taking three different lines from three different stages in a speech that is going up and down and around the houses and back again, I mean, the conciseness of making, he was speaking for what, an hour, Gordon? More than an hour. More than an hour. Turning that basically for editorial purposes into, we're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

11:31I mean, that's precisely the way to do it. If you actually want to create a documentary that gives a verdict to the viewer about Trump's guilt. I mean, surely we look to impeachment trials and whatnot for verdicts on Trump guilt. We're not meant to be getting a verdict on Trump's guilt or innocence from the national broadcaster that is supposed to be impartial, which we all pay for on a monthly stroke yearly basis. And I think counting against my generous interpretation is the second part of the story, Gordon, which is the footage they used of the Proud Boys. This is a racist militia which sometimes turns up and claims to support Donald Trump.

12:09On the day they march towards the Capitol, they are shown in the Panorama documentary marching towards the Capitol after Trump's remarks have been shown, giving the impression that they followed his orders. The reality is very different. Yeah. So the footage that is shown immediately after that quote that we're all talking about now, so it looks like it's cause and effect. That footage of the Proud Boys was shot more than an hour before Trump started speaking. The BBC actually reported that themselves in a timeline they did of the day on Newsnight. That's still on their website. We can make comparisons to another story that you and I covered, Gordon, back in the day.

12:46This was the famous Annie Leibovitz photo shoot of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Now, in that case, the BBC was accused of making it look as if Her Majesty had stormed out of the photo shoot after Leibovitz, who's a very famous American photographer, made demands of her dress. She's there in full regalia, she's there in ermine and a crown on and an exchange takes place where Leibovitz says, well, maybe we take the crown off, it's a bit too dressy. And the Queen, in her typically sort of sarcastic, kind of dry-humoured manner, turns around and says, too dressy, what do you think this is? And then the viewer is shown the Queen apparently leaving the shoot, like they've had a row.

13:28It later transpires that the actual footage of her apparently storming out was actually her entering the room. There wasn't a row. It was just a moment of humour and levity in the midst of, I think, probably the Queen being made to pose for different photographs over the course of a few hours. In that instance, the controller of BBC One, Peter Fincham, was forced to resign because it was found to be such a dishonest doctoring of footage that effectively editorial standards had been broken and somebody needed to take the rap for it. I've got to say that this is far more egregious than that. And we have a director general in Tim Davy who has presided over a catalogue of appalling editorial decisions.

14:13The first one is the Greg Wallace MasterChef scandal, which is really about personnel. In that case, staff knew about Greg Wallace's behaviour. They didn't act on it because he was the talent and they didn't want to criticise him. But also one thinks of the Hugh Edwards scandal. The BBC was still paying him. Another was the Gaza documentary Gaza How to Survive a War Zone, which had to be pulled from iPlay after it was found that the narrator was the son of a Hamas official. And it was later found by a review to breach editorial guidelines on accuracy. The BBC had to issue one of those embarrassing Blue Peter formal apologies.

14:48They do so well. And one which really touches upon Tim Davie personally is the Bob Villan story. This was during Glastonbury. This man came on stage and chanted death, death to the IDF. The BBC wasn't quick enough to cut it off. There was a debate about whether or not they should have broadcast it. But also Tim Davie was actually present in Glastonbury when this happened. And it remained on the footage for some hours afterwards. Gordon, come on. How many catastrophes does this man have to preside over before he takes vicarious responsibility for it? Well, I think this looks really bad for Tim Davy and possibly also for Samir Shah, the BBC chairman.

15:29Samir Shah hasn't been in the job that long, but this letter, which does mention, by the way, the Crowngate scandal and the fact that that did lead to a senior resignation. The letter makes clear that Tim Davy and Samir Shah were told about all of this and did nothing. So it may be that they might want to blame people who were further down the chain. They may want to blame the person who edited that panorama programme. They may want to blame Jonathan Munro, who is one of the heads of BBC News, who had said when this panorama was brought up, he said, oh, there's no problem, it's normal to edit speeches into short-form clips.

16:03Can I just stop you there? Jonathan Munro's name once again being mentioned in light of a BBC scandal. Let's please not forget Monroe's role in not dealing adequately with the Panorama interview that Martin Bashir did with Princess Diana. It would literally expose that BBC journalist, Bashir, for doctoring slips and checks that had apparently been paid to people for betraying Princess Diana. Like literally he did not act in the face of some of the most nefarious journalistic tactics employed. I mean, what Bashir did was just absolutely abhorrent. And again, Monroe's name keeps on coming up. The other problem with the BBC is these names keep on coming up about people who have presided over editorial disasters and they just get promoted.

16:54Yeah. Yeah, they fail upwards. I'd be very surprised if there aren't some senior sackings or resignations over this. And as I say, I think the fact that Tim Davie and Samir Shah had prior knowledge of all of this did nothing makes it very hard for them. What is the state of the BBC's own contract renewal? Charter renewal is 2027. And Lisa Nandy has said nothing is off the table when it comes to BBC funding. Realistically, is Labour likely to insist it moves to a subscription model or it loses the licence fee? Well, I don't know, but I'm sure Lisa Nandi will now be aware of all of this and I suspect that she will want answers.

17:37The tricky thing is that because it involves Trump, a lot of people in the establishment instinctively feel that Trump is fair game. Or, again, to be generous, that Trump himself tells so many lies that it's difficult to sift through them to pull out something that you can report without yourself in some way being contaminated by those lies. It actually goes further than that. If you walk into that building in Portland Place and you express a pro-Trump sentiment in the same way that if you expressed a pro-Brexit sentiment or a pro-right sentiment, most of the editorial staff would look at you with a mixture of barely concealed disgust and condemnation.

18:23I'm sorry, I've done a lot in the past for the BBC. I'm always happy to appear because I think they desperately need some balance in the people that they platform. But inherently, inside that editorial team, they are anti-Trump, pro-Democrat. You know, they were pro-Remain. We know that. I don't know why we keep on skirting around this issue of, oh, no, we're resolutely impartial. You can go and do a paper review for the BBC. and know exactly where the sentiments of most of the editorial staff lie. It's like this strange, it's not even an open secret, it's an open fact. But that's fine so long as they tell the truth.

19:06No, but this is the thing about it. You go to events, I've been to plenty of events with Tim Davey, with the Jonathan Monroes of this world. These people glide about like they are the sort of journalistic nectar to the gods, that they are a cut above everyone else. because don't you know we're at the BBC and you look at the quality of some of the journalism and you say to yourself, we're actually paying for this. And then the very same people at their dinner parties and at their events will be slagging off the Telegraph, slagging off the people at the Daily Mail. Well, at least we might actually apply some journalistic rigour that would mean that we wouldn't take a more than an hour-long speech and splice it into one convenient soundbite that matches our own editorial agenda.

19:51And by the way, at least we are honest about, yeah, we're a right-leaning newspaper. It's the dishonesty of we're resolutely impartial when everybody knows that on many different occasions they've proved themselves to be completely the opposite. This is what gets me. It's the hypocrisy of it. We're all above everybody else. You know, the media show, we'll opine on the state of journalism. The media show should literally just be dedicated to the mistakes the BBC makes. And by the way, the Trump, the panorama is just one of the things that are picked out in this memo in terms of anti-Trump bias.

20:25There are nine other examples that he gives. It would take a while to go through them all, but they are many. And as you can imagine, a lot of it is around not holding Kamala Harris to account and holding Trump to account an awful lot. Oh, surprise, surprise. Do you think Davey is going to have to go over this? I do think his position is going to be very difficult because, as I said, he knew about all of this and didn't seem to think it was a problem. And how you can not think that's a problem is impossible to understand. Also, why should Deputy Heads always roll? Yeah. Yeah. You're the Director General.

21:00Yeah. It's not just been one thing. It's been a string of calamities. It's all happened over the course of the last five years. We can talk about BBC Bias extending well beyond that. But the last five years have been an unmitigated disaster for the BBC. And if the Director-General doesn't take responsibility for that, I don't know who should. There's a culture problem and the culture is set by the man at the top. I agree with that. The BBC have given us a statement in response to our story. They say, while we don't comment on leaked documents, when the BBC receives feedback, it takes it seriously and considers it carefully.

21:35Michael Prescott is a former advisor to a board committee where differing views and opinions of our coverage are routinely discussed and debated. Gordon, thank you very much. You will be reporting further on this story, I have a feeling. I will. There's quite a lot more to come. And we await the response from the White House. Yes. Thank you. Coming up next, Nigel Farage has given a speech in the City of London laying out his economic agenda. But Tim, shock horror, the man who isn't like all the other politicians appears to have broken a few manifesto pledges.

22:18Tim, shall I ceremoniously rip off my reform wristband? OK. We get one weekly, don't we? It's like you're throwing off a wedding ring. I know, but it's weird, this whole reform... In fact, why don't we just keep the damn thing on? Because once a week... Just gather them up. We have to go to a reform press conference. I mean, they would wilt in the bath, but just give us one that will last. What I find interesting is you and I have discussed have they peaked too early? Are they peaking too early? Oh, my goodness, they're peaking. They're peaking. The only way is down. And then Farage comes out with this suggestion once again that there's going to be an early general election.

22:54Let's just listen to that clip. My own view is that in two budgets' time, the markets will actually force the Chancellor into what will be a genuine austerity budget, at which point the left in the Labour Party won't buy it. And it's why I still stand by my prediction that there will be a general election caused by economic collapse that will happen in 2027. Specific about the date and also doom-laden. Yes. So if there is going to be a general election in 2027, it kind of explains why reform are doing things from a week to week basis. Yeah. Just pitch rolling now. They're thinking for themselves, we don't have much time.

23:38Yes. We could be having to summon an entire cabinet in 24 months. Which they could not do right now, let's be honest. But then wasn't today all about, you pointed this out, as we left that nice building, where were we? In Cornhill. We were at the bank building or something it was called. It looked bankish. Right. People with bowler hats and briefcases and black umbrellas surrounding it. We felt very out of sorts because obviously we're the only... Everyone was really well-dressed. We're the only people in the square mile that can't do good maths. And everyone was well-dressed. It was all very glitzy, wasn't it?

24:11They've got their act together reformed. There's music. They were playing Mahler as we waited. And I said to you, wouldn't you simply die without Mahler? Which is a quote from Maury Littman from Educating Rita, one of my favourite films. So Farage does this whole thing. And I felt the whole thing, the thrust of it, we agreed afterwards, was now. This was a big economic speech. Indeed. I know I'm a political maverick, but I don't want to spook the markets like Liz Truss. So everything I promised in that manifesto of ours from last year, which, by the way, we didn't call a manifesto. We're different from other parties.

24:45So we called it a contract with the people actually no longer stands because we're in such dire financial straits that all of those tax cuts that we promise to get your vote in the summer of 2024 doesn't apply now because Reeves and Starmer have created an even bigger black hole than the Tories did. Therefore, what were a load of manifesto commitments have now become, what's the word, Tim? Aspirations. Aspirations. The party is aspirational. Just to remind people the scale of their ambition. at the last election the Reform Party pledged tax cuts that would have cost something like£90 billion. Wow.

25:23Most dramatically, lifting the income tax starting rate from£12 ,500 to£20 ,000. Which I liked. I thought that was a good idea. Expensive but sexy. I don't like it. Like a good pair of heels. They also set out plans to raise the higher 40p rate threshold from around£50 ,000 to£70 ,000. I like that one. Again, yeah. I like that one, I like. We all like that. And scrapping inheritance tax on estates worth less than£2 million. OK. In the course of this speech, he gave us his general spiel on why the economy is so bad, why we need to limit immigration, why we need to have more power, etc., etc. And there was a kind of a tax cuts are now an aspiration sort of moment.

26:02Yes. Because the key thing is now fiscal responsibility. They're going to inherit such a mess. Where have I heard this all before? It's such a mess. It's just terrible from the Tories. You've heard all this before. We've inherited such a mess that these things you say are now just aspirations. But he couldn't quite let go of them. Specifically, he said this. We want to cut taxes. Of course we do. But we understand substantial tax cuts, given the dire state of debt and our finances, are not realistic at this current moment in time. A question at the end asked more directly, so are you abandoning the£20 ,000 thing?

26:39No, we want to get there. We want to get there, but we'll have to get the finances straight first. So I have this strange game of sort of like telegraphy and tennis with Richard Tice, the deputy leader, which we'll listen to in just a moment, which sums up the dilemma that reform now founds itself in. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place, isn't he? On one hand saying, I'm different to everyone else and this is why. And look at my enormous, ambitious and controversial policy platform. You know, you can't come up with something radical. If you're constantly going to say Britain is broken, Britain's broken, everybody, it's broken, it's broken here, it's broken there, we can just imagine him saying it with a fag in one hand and a pint in the other.

27:17You have to suggest something really dynamic to change the system. And you and I have also discussed reform is a bit like the people who want to rip up the system. And the conservatives are the ones who want to ironically reform the system, but not rip it up completely, because by definition, they are conservatives. But Farage knows that the markets will move against him if he goes full Liz Truss, if he has the right ideas but the wrong execution. And they'll do that before he even enters government. Precisely. What he doesn't want is a six-week election campaign in which every poll showing reform is ahead leads to the markets panicking and Labour is able to say, well, you might hate us, but we can run the economy.

27:57So he's got to take that card away from them now by establishing reform as fiscally puritanical. So it's good politics when it comes to trying to become the biggest party in government. I'm not quite sure how it plays with the red wallers of this world. Yes. Who were Labour, then went for Boris in 2019 and are now switching to Farage. Yes. Because I would imagine, I mean, I quite like the appeal. He said, we are appealing to alarm clock Britain. And I thought that's great, isn't it? Because it's cross-generational, it's cross-demographical. Yeah, but I have an alarm clock. I just set it very late.

28:34Well, you're such a snooze button presser. I've never understood this. We're back to new labour and it's hard-working families. No, but it's talking about people who work... What if I don't work very hard? What if I don't have a family? Who's in it for me? But you do work, Tim. What he's saying is he's making an appeal to the workers, not the shirkers, be they be on minimum wage or indeed earning oodles of cash. Now, I think the one problem for his working man shtick is that he's there going, we need to make life a lot, lot easier for the rich. Yes. And then he lent into the minimum wage is too high.

29:08And by the way, no, we probably can't help people on their first 20 grand. For young people, he indicated he was open to lowering the minimum wage for young people. Did we listen to your single session with Richard Tice? It sounds slightly filthy. Also, can I just caveat this interview by saying, I don't know, is Richard Tice a masochist? He seems to enjoy our exchanges. Just have a listen and then we will dissect it afterwards. Richard Tice, Deputy Leader of Reform, thank you very much for joining me back on the Daily Tea. I'm listening to that and this is my impression, correct me if I'm wrong, that you and the manifesto pledges you made on tax at the last general election have just been thrown under a bus.

29:54Far from it. We've got aspiration to make tax cuts, but as Nigel said, and I've been saying for many months now, Well, we've got to cut spending first, cut daft regulation. You'll hear loads from me on Wednesday about that in my major Bloomberg speech. Then you can afford what we call performance-related tax cuts. We're the party of fiscal responsibility. We've always said that. I would just remind people, the very first page of our manifesto last July 24 talked about the savings. You do the savings first, but you have aspiration for tax cuts. Nigel said, we'll have some modest ones to start with.

30:27you have the aspiration, but because the state of the finances are in such a state now, and where they will sadly be worse by the time of the next general election, we've got to deal with that first. Hang on a minute, right? You sold that manifesto on the basis that it was a contract with the people that couldn't be broken. You said, we're not like the other parties. We're not going to come out with manifesto pledges that we can't honour. You have literally broken that contract with the people. You made one vow, which I remember vividly. I actually quite liked it. I think I wrote favourably about it at the time, that you were going to lift the threshold £12 ,500 to£20 ,000 for people on the lowest incomes.

31:05That was meant to take 7 million people out of a tax bracket. And Nigel talked about it today. No, he's basically, he's moved away from it. He says you can't guarantee it. So that contract that you signed with the public at the last general election isn't worth the paper it's written on, is it? Nigel, literally repeated today, that's our key aspiration. No, it's an aspiration now. He said he couldn't guarantee anything. Because of the state of the finances, because we've got to prove the savings first. Then, and alongside that, we do the regulation cuts. Then we can show that we can afford taxes.

31:35And also, we said, as Nigel said today, we can do it in steps. So we have that. You've taken that contract. You just torn it up, basically. You've said we can't guarantee anything we said last year. What we've said is that we will be the party of responsibility. We'll make the savings first. It was the first page of the contract last year. So we're reinforcing that point. Then when we show the markets we've done that, because no one trusts people to make savings, because everyone else has been so incompetent, then actually we can deliver on the growth and the tax cuts. You did put savings and tax cuts.

32:06What else did you pledge in that contract? You talked about stamp duty, you talked about inheritance tax, you pledged a load of stuff that you're now backing away from. Am I right or wrong? You're backing away. Once again, you're wrong. What do you mean once again? Because you're often wrong. No, I'm not wrong on this. You were wrong on QE when you attacked me last year. But the point is... No, I'm not wrong. You put stuff in a contract that has now been taken out. We put stuff in the contract. We said we'd make the savings. We've been right on QE and QT. We're right on the cost of net stupid zero.

32:39And we said we'll make the savings. We're starting to deliver savings in the councils as a way of showing we can deliver savings. When we make those savings, then we can afford the tax cuts. You have the direction of travel. And I think people understand that. They understand about fiscal... All right, you're suggesting I'm wrong. I am right when I make the following claim. You promised a load of tax cuts in your contract with the electorate that you've now had to abandon. Yes or no? We haven't abandoned the principle of cutting tax. The specifics. Richard, come on, let's not dance around this.

33:15I get why you're doing it. Many people listening and watching will agree with you. They'll say, but can we just agree? I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong when I say you put specific ideas in that contract and now you've had to abandon them. And the aspiration of those ideas are absolutely right. The timing of them would depend on the state of the finances because this government is wrecking our economy and it will get worse. So we'll have to sort that out first, get the economy growing, start introducing hard work and risk as an aspiration. Then we can afford the tax cuts, the sort of tax cuts we talked about, Nigel's reinforced today about scrapping inheritance tax, about lifting the threshold on before you pay any income tax.

34:01The timing of it depends on how fast we can cut wasteful spending. A lot of detail from Nigel on that. And then I think people will say, yeah, that's the right way to approach it. In the laws of right and wrong, let's put it this way. I think it's two ones to twice. No, it's not two ones to twice. Am I right in thinking then that what were tax cut commitments have now become tax cut aspirations. Yes. Right, so something's changed. To quote Theresa May, who said nothing has changed, something significant has changed because pledges you made in the contract have now become wish lists. A pledge card of commitments has become a wish list depending on the state of the economy.

34:46So something's changed, yes or no on that. Something's changed fundamentally. The key thing is the timing of the commitments to cut spending massively, much bigger than we actually, we've got to cut more spending than we said at the time, because this government has increased the spending. So we've got to do that first. When we've done that, we've satisfied people, we can do it. We've satisfied the bond markets. Then the aspiration of the tax cuts, many of which were in there, that's when you can deliver. But it's a question of timing. Just putting my legal hat on here, as you say, it's 2-1. Just the legal eagle in me says, and I did study contract law.

35:18Basically, you can't honour the terms of the contract you made with the people last summer, can you? I think we can honour the contract. The question is the timing. No, you can't. You can't honour the specifics. The question is the timing of it. The aspiration of achieving it is absolutely there. But it's about the timing. Are you personally affronted that you came up with most of these pledges in the manifesto that have now been torn to shreds? We've just agreed they haven't been torn to shreds. their aspirations and the commitment to cut spending is absolutely there that I talked about at the time you said to me at the time I couldn't cut those I couldn't make those saving cuts but actually I've been proven right okay this is this is what's happened right it's now for one if if the manifesto was a contract like a marriage contract it would have been a proposal I will marry you now you're basically saying yeah maybe we'll carry on dating but you know it could happen in the future.

36:14We could have a ceremony. We could not. That's what's happened to this contract. A proposal has become an aspiration. And I think from the electorate's point of view, that might seem like you are backing down on what you once promised. I've never been propositioned before live on air, Camilla. The reality is that exactly what we put in that contract, about cutting spending, an aspiration for tax cuts, it's about the timing. It's a hope, not a promise. It's an aspiration based on the achievements. It's what I call performance-related, okay? You get performance-related tax hours after you've saved a load of money.

36:49Why didn't you just make the manifesto aspirations rather than manifesto commitments? It's a big difference in the two words, isn't it? I commit to something, I aspire to do something. We're committed to cutting spending. We're committed to cutting daft regulation. You'll hear a lot more about this week. And then, when we achieve those things, we're committed to cutting taxes. The commitment is still there. The question is, the aspiration is about the timing. We shall be back for more tennis between Tice and Tomini at some point in the future. Is it real tennis or is it paddle tennis? I don't know where.

37:22I just, I don't know what. It could be pickleball at this stage. Richard Tice, thank you very much. Thank you. I think that was game set match, Camilla Tomini, obviously. Do you? I mean, I, thing is, I do just like trying to just serve hard at the man. and he's one of those players who just, you know, even if you hit him with a ball, he'd kind of go, oh, never mind. Yes, but the serious question is personnel issues within reform, right? So Nigel actually said, and this is the thing about him, he's always up front and transparent and he said, we don't have a cabinet yet, we don't have a team. He referred to, he said, our team is growing and he directed our attention to the MPs sitting in the front row.

38:00Well, he had four of his five MPs but he was missing one. Yes, where? Sarah Pochen. Where was she? Probably watching telly and doing a little tally of who is appearing on any different advert. The colour of the faces. So she wasn't there. But also there's this question of who is up and who is down between Richard Tice and Zia. Yeah, do we think that is the singles match, really, within reform? That is your sinner versus Al-Kharaf, to use a tennis example. Well, Richard is the very, very patient man who kept reform going when Farage wouldn't commit himself to it. including with some of his own money.

38:37He is a very patient and generous man. Farage then comes back and brings in Zia. Yes, his little protégé. Zia, who I think Nigel regards as his successor in some form. So now they are thinking about forming a government. They'll be having serious debates and contests over which jobs they should have. Yes. And the big one, of course, is Chancellor. And it does feel a bit like, if you're going to tear up Richard Tice's manifesto, that feels like that might be an internal victory for Zia. But can I say something in defence of reform? I want to pick on what Nigel said. Journalists have a habit, of course, of telling a story, because we've got to.

39:11That's the way we think about life. And we also tend to over-philosophisise. So we're always sort of philosophisised. So we look at reform and we say, where as journalists can we place it on a political spectrum? And is it sticking to that position or moving around? And what Faraj said at this press conference is, look, I've never changed. You know I'm an old, unreconstructed Thatcherite. You know I want a small state and I want low taxes. It's just that on a couple of issues I have altered a bit. So if you take welfare spending, he's in favour of abolishing the two-child cap on having kids for child benefit, right?

39:46But he says that's directed at people who are in work. And crucially British. And British. He doesn't think that indigenous Brits, if we can call it that, are having enough children, and he's right, because we're having a population crisis. He's worried about immigrants having too many children. And he says it's a cost of living issue because of the cost of childcare. But it's actually quite a controversial policy, that, that he's managed to kind of hide in the spectre of reducing welfare. It's nativism. It's natal nativism. And the second thing is, yes, I did say I want to nationalise steel, but I want to do that because, and this is where he did acknowledge he had changed, he has discovered the importance of strategic industries.

40:20But I remain a capitalist, he says, and I kind of take him on that. And I think sometimes the desire of journalists to impose a narrative on this of he was one thing and now he's changing. I don't think that's fair, actually. He also looked very comfortable in the environs because, as he said himself, he used to be a city boy. He was somebody who looked at Margaret Thatcher, probably watched Wall Street, you know, Gordon Gekko, stretching out those red braces and thought, greed is good, I'm going to cash in, and actually I think did pretty well, right? Yes. Then segued into politics, you know, in the era of greed not being so good and things going a little bit pear-shaped for Thatcher.

40:59And the advent of Tony Blair creates a European project that he decides to vehemently oppose. And I think it's journalists who see tensions between policies. I don't think many voters do. I think most voters understand, I'm going to nationalise this one industry to save it, but otherwise I'm going to cut taxes to encourage the wealthy to stay. I think many people get that. Where I disagree with him on is taking people out of tax, up to£20 ,000. I think as far as possible, everyone should contribute something. Yes. And I actually think it's almost like an extension of the benefits culture to say that because you earn up to a certain amount, you shouldn't have to pay tax and you take you out of it.

41:37Well, in that case, you end up becoming a recipient. You don't contribute anything up to£20 ,000. But that's just a naked appeal to the kids, isn't it? It's shameless. It's 16 to 18 voting. But I think it's bad for society to create... Because it further embeds the situation in which the middle classes are paying for the welfare state of everyone else. Now, I think even if it's a tiny amount, I do think people up to 20 ,000 should contribute something. The other thing as well, Tim, that I think it was designed to do was to say we're not socialists, honest. I mean, I don't think the criticism that Nigel Farage is a socialist works, not in light of the re-emergence.

42:14Any more than he hates Britain. Well, quite, exactly. Which is what Keir Starmer always tries to say. Despite the re-emergence of Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana and Polanski and these other, you know, Gary Stevenson-esque type wealth taxes, of course he's not a socialist. No. I mean, they're using the example of the two child benefit cap and, of course, his rhetoric around re-industrialisation. But again, we've discussed this before. This is him channeling his inner Trump and J.D. Vance. He's looking at what was popular in America. had this discussion with him, I told you, at the Thatcher dinner, where he wants to focus on faith, flag and family.

42:49That's how he's spinning the welfare stuff. Faith is quite hard for him to be convincing on, but let's see. Maybe he's going to increasingly find God as we approach the ballot box for the next time. And then flag, well. Yeah, that's easy. He's got that one sewn down. He's draped in it. He wears it on his socks. That's not a problem for me. It's probably tattooed somewhere. That's true. Again, I come back to this narrative issue. We in journalism are used to saying Boris Johnson captured the working class vote for the conservatives in 2019 as if no conservative leader had ever done it before. Yeah.

43:25As if there is no such thing as working class conservatism. As if you're working class, you always vote socialist. Just that was an exception because of Brexit. Well, excuse me, that's nonsense. Margaret Thatcher won working class votes. Disraelism is built upon appealing to the working class. Working classes don't mind capitalism as long as they sense it's working for them. That's reform's real pitch. It's nationalism. It's neither left nor right. It's about saying, we'll tear up the government. We'll redesign it to work for you in your interests. And sometimes that'll look a little bit left wing, sometimes right wing.

43:56But the key thing is it'll no longer feel like an elite telling you how you should live and making you pay for it. Kemi Badenock is giving her own oration on the economy tomorrow, which we may or may not cover, depending on its newsworthiness, Tim. Or when my alarm goes off. It's quite early. She puts everything a little bit too early. I don't know what point she's trying to prove, but it doesn't wash with me. Whatever happens, Tim will be awake for this podcast going out tomorrow at 5pm.

44:32Thank you.