Labour figures plot as Starmer insists he’ll win next election

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:15Camilla: Keir Starmer is insisting he can fight on and win the next general election. Has the Prime Minister finally lost his marbles? Not least because his enemies are plotting. Andy Burnham and Angela Rayner apparently have a pact. and our Ange could be the next Chancellor. And another attempt on the President's life, this time at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Some on the kind, tolerant left are saying he brought it on himself. Can the King and Queen save the day? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominy. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:56Camilla: Tim, it's a marathon, not a sprint. I say that bearing in mind that there are lots of people walking around today wearing their medals. Yesterday was your day. Why? Now just go home and rest. What happened? Sorry, what? There was a marathon yesterday. Oh, really? OK. I thought, am I supposed to be wearing a poppy? No. No. All right. Have you ever run anything close to a marathon, Tim? I do jog, but no. Do you? What's the furthest you've ever jogged? A strange question. We wouldn't even time it. I jog around Noel Park. That's quite a lot, actually. But do you use one of the old trackers? Like, do you care about your...

2:28No, I'm old-fashioned. I do it in plimsolls and a string vest. I don't use all these Google phones. That's too futuristic for me.

2:38Camilla: Basically, there was this thing called the London Marathon yesterday. Somebody broke a world record and ran it in less than two hours. And people are walking around today with medals on. Okay. Which is nice. And I'm saying it's a marathon. Good for them. Well done, then. It's a marathon, not a sprint, because we are going on our own journey this week. We're going on a road show. we're going to Cardiff tomorrow, Warwick on Wednesday and Worthing on Thursday. Most of the week's events are now sold out. Thank the Lord. Thank goodness. Isn't it amazing how many friends and family we can get to pack out our venues?

3:12Camilla: And tonight's event is in London. That's sold out. We will be grilling in a kind of Fiona Bruce and David Dimbleby fashion. Tonight, we're going to have Zia Youssef from Reform, James Cleverley from the Tories and James Murray from Labour, who is Rachel Reeves' right-hand man. Excellent. The only tickets I believe we have left, Tim, are for Worthing, where we're going to have a right royal ding-dong between Lady Colin Campbell and Phil Dampier, the latter being a former royal editor of The Sun, the former being a rather outspoken friend of the royals. So you can get them in the show description.

3:46We have a couple of updates on last week's episodes. First of all, Green Party Council candidate Mark Adderley, who was running in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood. Bear that in mind, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, not Judea and Samaria.

4:01Camilla: For the Greens, I should point out. This is in reaction to the Greens episode. Right, OK. He has been suspended from the party over anti-Semitic rants comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and blaming Mossad for carrying out terror attacks against Jews. I mentioned Mark Adderley in a column last week and when we had on Ellie Chowns... I mentioned some of his remarks from the past. Exactly. And we picked this up because previously the Green Party had been limiting itself mostly to asking people to take down controversial things they put up. I think it's interesting this close to the local elections after what I wrote and after what you said to Ellie Chans that they're actually suspending people now.

4:40Camilla: Yes. And in case anyone thinks that might be overblown, if you just take a little look at Mark Adley's Instagram feed, and I am picking in order videos he's put up. They have titles, pompous foreign secretary who relished the sound of his own voice so much he repeatedly lied about selling arms to Israel. Rachel Reeves, is she a racist? I'm a proud Zionist, says Reeves. Wes Streeting, who admitted Israel commits war crimes, allows techno-fascist software company that helped Israel kill people into NHS. And one about Steve Reid, housing minister who spends all his spare time smearing advocates of Palestine, is scared of...

5:26I don't know, you'd have to click the link to find out.

5:27Camilla: I'm bringing up a little bit of sick in my own mouth. My point is, he's running for, I'll repeat it, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood. Wow. But all these posts seem to be about Palestine. Yeah, and not about the environment, which is odd, isn't it? And can I also have a little, I had a few people contacting me when I was taking the fight to Ellie Chowns on the, what I perceive to be the racism of the Zionism is racism motion. And people saying I've mischaracterised Zionism is actually to defend the state of Israel and its existence rather than to be pro-Israel. I was kind of just, I was prefacing, I was trying to quite simply express what my perception of Zionism is.

6:09Camilla: The point is, I did take the fight to chance. And you have to listen if you haven't already. It's Friday's episode. Just have a listen because I don't think anybody has grilled the Greens quite as extensively as we did in that one hour episode. So there we have it. Also picking up from last week, we said that PMQs would be cancelled. Well, we said it might be cancelled. Yes. It now turns out it's not going to be because the government whips are probably not going to get all the legislation through by Tuesday night. So this week we will probably have a PMQ's Kemi versus Starmer, which will come off the back of Morgan McSweeney's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

6:45Camilla: And we're covering it all, even though we're on the road. We're on the road, but we're doing reactive live news. So don't worry. Exactly, yes. And in terms of reactive live news, the Prime Minister's come out fighting. Yes. Thank goodness, because nobody cares, Tim. Nobody cares about the Peter Mandelson scandal. according to the Prime Minister. He's got a very important job to do. He would much rather talk about shoplifting. Now, we might be talking about phone theft tomorrow when his former Chief of Staff appears before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. That is Emily Thornberry 3.0. We'll be looking forward to that, Tim.

7:20Camilla: And The Telegraph is exclusively reporting that the police do indeed want to ask Downing Street about that phone that was allegedly stolen by a man in a balaclava on a bike after Morgan McSweeney had a night out in London. But the Prime Minister's interview with the Sunday Times, it merits some consideration. It carried the headline, I will fight the next general election. Yes. And I looked at it puzzled thinking, is that really the best you could come out with? that is going to come back to haunt him again and again isn't it? Well he also believes that he can win. The Prime Minister insists that reports of a growing cabinet rebellion over his handling of the Mandelson scandal are just talk and said in politics you get this sort of thing all the time.

8:09What you never hear from are all the people who are supportive, loyal and just want to get on with the job and that is the vast majority of people in the parliamentary Labour Party.

8:20Camilla: Is it? Let me just remind people of some of the quotes that have been picked up so far, including by our own political editor, Tony Diver. Dead man walking. It's a case of when, not if. Time's up. He must go. I don't know whether there is this warm mood music anywhere in the Labour Party. But what we don't tend to hear from is Clara McGonigal MP for Scotland Outer Borough North, who thinks he's all right. Well, to be fair, I did have an MP on my GB News show. Again, got snubbed by the cabinet twice in a row. Couldn't get Darren Jones. Didn't miss much because clearly he was in defensive mode. And I had a chap on called Perrin Moon, lovely man, Labour MP down in Cornwall, making the point that people have got more on their minds with a cost of living and energy crisis than whether or not the PM misled Parliament.

9:11Camilla: Having said all that, we have got some YouGov polling just in saying that the public would actually prefer somebody else, anybody else to be prime minister. And that's the key thing. I don't doubt that the public is confused as to why Westminster keeps talking about Mandelson. But the anger about that story is symptomatic of anger at the prime minister's leadership. It was the same with Boris Johnson. It wasn't one thing. It was the cumulative total of all things. And eventually something happens that is the reason why someone has to go. But it's always an indictment of everything they've done before.

9:49Camilla: Around a third of the public, 34%, think Andy Burnham would do a better job than Keir Starmer. Only one in seven, 15%, think Angela Rayner would do better. Even less, 13%, say that of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, respectively. So they're tied. A quarter of Britain's, 26%, say Burnham would be a good or great prime minister. And most people agree that the Prime Minister isn't doing a good job, regardless of him insisting that he is doing a good job and that there is nothing to see Keir on Mandelson. By the way, can I just ask a question? If you are that enthralled to the process and you are a believer in the rule of law and you like to follow the rules, why not just volunteer to go before the Privileges Committee?

10:40Camilla: regardless of the outcome of Lindsay Hoyle's decision making on this why wouldn't you have said to the Sunday Times this is a way of getting ahead of the story I've got nothing to hide I'm whiter than white and shouldn't he be cognisant of the fact that he is quite good at obfuscating he is quite good as you said last week of sort of boring the public to tears he could have volunteered himself that would have been the best line going into Monday well of course Boris did allow things to go to Privileges Committee in the hope that that would kill it and the opposite happened. He would also argue that we've already answered all the questions through the interrogations of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

11:18Why do you need to repeat this process with the privileges won? I'm not unsympathetic to that. I personally also feel this story is burning itself out. But the new story is that Labour MPs won't let it go. Not what do journalists think about it. I think we've asked all the questions. I think we've had all the bad answers. McSweeney really is the last big player to have their turn. After that, what more is there to know? But the point is, is that, as I say, it has reminded people in Parliament of why they don't like Keir Starmer.

11:54Camilla: Well, Tim, it does look as if he's one step closer to getting that grilling because the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has allowed a vote on whether the Prime Minister should appear before the Privileges Committee. although with a large majority you need quite a significant backbench rebellion for this to be allowed. I think 79 Labour MPs have to vote for the Prime Minister to be put on the rack. How likely is that to happen? I know we've heard from Carl Turner and an MP with a surname Brash and others off the record but 79 of them. And the interesting question is will that vote be whipped? And presumably it would be.

12:31So if it were whipped and you're going to come out and vote for the PM to go to the committee, then you're going to lose the whip.

12:37Camilla: And you're going to be suspended ahead of a local election, not the greatest look in the world. So it feels unlikely at this stage that this will still proceed. Keir Starmer wants to move this on, and we've had a hint of what his strategy will be, which is he's reported to have said that he wants the next election to be against reform, a debate about what kind of country this is. Now, that's really interesting because the implication of that is, I'm not going to run on the economy. No, I'm not running on my material record. I'm going to turn it into a vote on reform. Yes. And he's gambling that there is a majority of people in this country that can't stand reform.

13:16And he's also gambling that they would choose to vote Labour to block them.

13:22Camilla: That's daft, by the way, because they might vote Green to block them. This is naive. You know, there's a story in the Sunday papers, it was in the Mail on Sunday, saying that if he gives 16 to 18-year-olds the vote, he's going to shoot himself, not just in the foot, but in the face. Almost want that to happen. Yeah, because that caucus... They've got to learn. See, like children, Labour MPs have got to learn. There are consequences to their actions. There are consequences. So the polling is suggesting that all of those teenagers, or the vast majority of them, will go to the Greens. And by the way, if they don't, Tim, they'll go to reform if they're the other side of the ideological divide.

13:56Camilla: So that's stupid. Second of all, the other reason he can't pin everything on the economy. Well, obviously, we're in kind of a state of economic collapse with some people now predicting a recession. We're being told to wear hair shirts, won't see any improvement, according to Darren Jones, until eight months time. And that's if the war ends. Also rumours in the papers. What's the next reset? The next reset involves getting rid of Rachel Reeves. Right, right, exactly. Yes. I mean, honestly. But I also think the gamble of who does this country prefer most is reminiscent of Ted Heath in 1974 and his election, which was who runs Britain?

14:32And the answer from the public was not you. Not you, please. And I just suspect there's still this strange aura around the prime minister. He still seems to believe that he speaks for the country and he kind of gets this country and the country gets him. that if he puts it to a vote, the country will go, yeah, yeah, my nation is defined by you, Keir Starmer. I look at you and I see myself, Keir Starmer. I don't think that's how many people are thinking. Now, Labour tried to release an ad and the BBC and ITV tried to censor it, in which an actress read out quotes by reform officials. And it has since been put up by the Labour Party.

15:15And people like Wes Streeting and Chris Bryant said on X, I never thought I'd be so shocked as I am seeing this ad, you know, shocked by their own ad. It's so performative, isn't it?

15:25Camilla: These are two people that do not think before they tweet. She has a pint and she's sitting in an empty pub and she reads out these quotes and she gets steadily angrier and angrier. The funding of the NHS is a total failure. The French do it much better with less funding. There's a lesson there. If you can afford it, you pay. If you can't, you don't. It works incredibly well. I do not want it funded through general taxation. It doesn't work. It's not working. I think we're going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare. It's highly likely that the COVID vaccines have been a factor, a significant factor, and the cancer of members of the royal family.

16:16Depression isn't real. Drives me mad when I see outfits full of black people, full of Asian people, full of people that, you know, basically are anything other than white. London has become a third world sh**hole. Fact. People from other religions should eat bacon for a month to prove their Christian sincerity and credentials. I'm a racist and I'm proud of it. Now, the problem with it is that, first of all, she has the classic Labour face. Right. Do you know what I mean? What do you mean? Angry face. Yeah. Whenever they hire a woman to represent the party, they always look like that woman in line of duty.

17:01Yes. They always have this, I'm not mucking about, I'm sick of mucking about face. What do you mean?

17:07Camilla: Vicky McClure? That's it, Vicky McClure. Right. I've got a lanyard and I'm not afraid to use it. Exactly. Give me the answer. And she just has this classic Vicky McClure face. Right, yeah. And some of the lines she's reading out are very funny. What are they? Because it's like, I've had enough. Britain's broken. So she's parroting... Well, it's funny in part because she's saying things that are obviously said by red-faced white old men. But it's a woman trying to say it instead. So she's impersonating a gammon boomer. Right. There are other things she says where I'm sitting there thinking, yeah, I agree with that.

17:37Camilla: It's your little guilty pleasure. Like reforming the NHS, et cetera. Is that really so controversial? Could we make the NHS more productive? Right wing bigot! Exactly. And then, of course, there are some quotes which are just unfair, either because the person was punished for saying them. So there's the man who said of Grenfell Tower, people do die. And so the party said, well, thank you, we'll no longer have you as our housing person. And she gets angrier and angrier. And then, of course, at the end, she's sort of, and rest. I don't believe any of what I've just said. But you should know that there are people who do.

18:12Every word you've just heard was spoken by Reform UK politicians, senior figures, advisers, candidates, councillors, MPs.

18:21Camilla: There's only one way to stop reform. Vote Labour on Thursday 7th May. And I was watching this thinking, if Zia or Nigel see this, they should immediately hire an actor and they should get him to read out emails between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. Yes, why not? Yum, yum. Yeah. Just do it. No fun for Petey. We can ask Zia Yusuf about that attack ad. Yeah. And indeed, James Murray. You take my point. Labour is gambling on, A, everyone hates what reform really thinks. Yeah, they might hate us, but they hate reform more. They really hate what reform thinks. Actually, there might be a significant number of them in this country who agree with what reform has to say.

19:02But secondly, that they like us. They don't like them, but they like us. No, because there are many, many reasons to dislike Labour people.

19:11Camilla: And also, if you look forward to the narrative over the next few weeks, which we'll obviously be covering in intimate detail, this is the story of May the 7th. I can already tell you what it is. Story number one is, can the PM survive? Story number two is Labour bloodbath. Story number three is reform rise. Story number four is Greens' rise. Cammie Batenot's got less to worry about than she thinks. We can run almost up to 15 with other parties too because SNP played everyone's going to do well. The Tories' worst night is already... We already know it's happened, OK? So as far as the Tories are concerned, it's they have lost Wales and Scotland.

19:50Camilla: I had briefly forgot they exist. That is down page two. Why is the PM thinking he is in any position for any kind of revival at all? Somebody did say this on my show. a couple of weeks ago. It's like the dead parrot in Monty Python. This parrot cannot be revived. So who are the new pirates in town? Angie and Andy. Can I just say it has now been confirmed by Andy Burnham's people that he did not wear a transparent rain bonnet to Angela Rayner's house that Friday night in Manchester. He said it was just a really weird trick of the camera. So it was just an optical illusion that made him look like Hilda Ogden.

20:31Camilla: Yes. Although I bet Angie wears one of those bonnets if she leaves the hairdresser and has spent quite a lot of money. But by the by, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? I'd do the same. So Andy and Angie are now apparently, according to Tony Diver, our political editor, in talks to do a Blair-Brown pact. Right. What's interesting about this is this is being reported as if Rainer's the junior partner to Burnham. Yes. Does she really need to be? No. No. The idea is that Burnham would run to replace Keir Starmer, which he can't, while Reyna would campaign for him and be given, quote, any job she wanted in the cabinet.

21:07Camilla: Well, she's already been deputy prime minister. What other job can she take that doesn't look like a demotion? Oh, my gosh. Is she going to sign up to be chancellor? That's going to be chancellor, isn't it? What? With respect, I say this as somebody so functionally enumerate that this morning I couldn't calculate what somebody who ran a marathon in two hours were running in miles per hour. And then I was like, oh, it's 13. But on telly this morning, on this morning, I said it was 11 miles an hour. That's how bad I am at maths. But I do have a GCSE in it. Can you be chancellor if you don't have GCSE maths?

21:40Camilla: I'm just asking for a nation. I'm asking for Carol Vorderman. I'm asking for Rachel Riley. Carol Vorderman. I mean, it's not like take two from the top and four from the bottom. It's all done for you by officials. All Angela has to do is hold up a box and read out the papers in Parliament. I think she can do that. Again, I feel a question coming on to James Murray. Yes. James Murray, could Angela Rayner be the next Chancellor and is it OK that she hasn't got a GCSE in maths? Please do answer. Anyway, that's for tonight. Right, interesting. Also, reports of the weekend suggesting that her tax probe has been delayed.

22:13Camilla: She wanted to be cleared ahead of the locals. She could then strike immediately afterwards. It's looking unlikely at the moment that she can do that. So she's slightly kiboshed. And there are questions around, does she pay the full amount, the 40k, or does she just pay a fine? Yeah, I hear that rumours of Bade not reshuffling after the locals are well wide of the mark. She's not reshuffling anyone or anything until 18 months out from the next general election. Why would she move people around at their nest of comparatively singing birds right now? Nobody's having a hissy fit. All of these criticisms, by the way, of reform and indeed restore being hard right, far right, have kept all of the lefties and the Tories happy.

22:53Camilla: Because even if they do leave the ECHR, nobody's going to point at Badenock and say you're a racist and a bigot. I also hear Streeting was holding court in Strangers Bar last week. Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on this from Hannah Spencer speaking to Joe Politics? I'm really uneasy about, and I noticed this the other day, when you can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes. and everyone's going in to vote. Some people have been drinking in between. There's a room where I walk past and I double back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink. But again, that's a job.

23:23I can't imagine if a cleaner did that or someone working in a bank had a few drinks and then went back to work, a bit like smelling of alcohol. That wouldn't happen. And I think there's been so many cases recently of questionable and dangerous behaviour from, allegedly from MPs, with staff, because this culture of a really unprofessional and worrying setting where people can just drink alcohol and then while they're in work, it's like life doesn't work like that. And when I say that, that is what I find very out of touch about that place. It's things like that that I mean because I just think the vast majority of us that have come from backgrounds of normal jobs, that's not how the world works.

24:02So why does it work in somewhere where arguably the most important decisions are getting made?

24:07Camilla: I mean, Hannah Spencer should try coming into the average newsroom or indeed any bar in Fleet Street. Look, I'm not a drinker. You're not a drinker. But yeah, Parliament is awash with booze. What can we say? I mean, so is the world. So is Britain. Hannah, step into a pub sometime soon. What is this puritanical? People have pointed out the paradox that she's uncomfortable with people drinking, but her party wants to legalise heroin. Exactly. So if you're shooting up with some crack or whatever you do with crack, do you smoke it, shoot it? I don't know. That's fine, according to Hannah Spencer. But for God's sake, don't have a Lambrini in Strangers on a Friday night.

24:39Exactly. But also, isn't Parliament supposed to be convivial?

24:42Camilla: Well, I think you need to. Isn't that the point of it? Don't you have to be permanently drunk to be an MP and cope with it? When we were interviewing Ellie Chowles last week, I was doing my best to be nice and be balanced and objective. But when I heard this, actually, it put me off the party for life. I loved how you were last week, by the way. Because I was being so horrible to her and you were good copping as I went further bad. Right. I basically went rogue and you were trying to maintain a relationship with the Green Party. But I thought Greens were all about live and let live, libertarian and drinking turnip wine.

25:11Camilla: No, you can't. They actually come from that same historical tradition as everyone on the left, which is puritanical and boring. No, that's right. They just want to tell us how to run our lives. Yeah, and if you think a man can't be a woman and vice versa, you're out. But if you glorify October the 7th, you're fine. So they're happy for someone in the chamber to be a man with a beard and a dress, shooting up crack. But if there is a whiff of gin and tonic on his breath, He's out. Now, coming up next, it's a serious topic. We're going to speak about the attempted shooting on Trump, but also perhaps reflect on your column where you point out there were some journalists at that White House Correspondents' Dinner who took the opportunity to nix some champagne and others that just carried on eating through the drama.

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27:18On Saturday night, there was a third attempt that we know of to kill President Trump. He was sat down for dinner with the White House Correspondents Association at the Washington Hilton Hotel. The suspect, identified as a 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen, tried to rush into the ballroom with a gun, was tackled and taken down by security and removed. Now, the incident has raised serious concerns about security for the president and also ahead of the royal visit. But partly because it was an event for journalists, I think reaction to it was unusual. Yes. Right. Had this happened to regular punters, then I think we'd all be talking about the shock and the drama and the trauma.

28:11But as I wrote in my column, the thing about journalists is that if a bomb goes off, everyone else rushes away from it, but journalists run towards it.

28:20Camilla: Along with the emergency services, basically. Along with the emergency services. Just chasing them with a notebook. Right, exactly. And of course, the first thing they did was pull out their phones. They got under their tables, but they pulled out their phones and started reporting live from events. Including our very own Connor Stringer, who's our Washington correspondent, so he's under a table filing, live blogging. Exactly. The vice president was bundled up before the president fell over. By the way, what's all that about? Why was Vance taken out before Trump? And Trump falling over and Melania's face.

28:50Camilla: It's all... Feels a bit like a house fire, doesn't it? Do you save the dog or the kids? I tell you what, though, the video age. I mean, to have footage of all this. Yes. It's just quite captivating. As worrying as it was, it is captivating to be able to see this play out in more or less real time. You can see when it happens, you can hear the banks and you can see that Melania is concerned by it. The president isn't. The noise could have been anything. And then security rushes them out. And then as someone wrote, you got to see how important you really were by whether or not security took you away.

29:23Yes. And so one uncomfortable vignette was Robert Kennedy being rushed away by his security. and his poor wife, Cheryl Hines, running behind in her high heels. Completely unaided. I do want to say because people called him ungallant. Actually, the security details stopped and then involved her in it too. He's a big man.

29:42Camilla: Why don't he just carry her on his shoulders? Come on, Robert. Come on, Nate. Exactly, exactly. The other thing about journalists is that as well as wanting to be at the centre of any story, because of our exposure to death and disaster, we have all developed a strong vein of irony and black humour. So Barry Weiss says that when she was under the table, she overheard someone saying, are you going to finish that salad? Which I think you would say, because I've seen you at some of these things. At the end of the day, if the Stanley plate isn't cleaned, we don't need to reference the time that you ate three flapjacks in 15 minutes.

30:20Some American commentators were horrified to see journalists. The British. to see journalists either finishing their meals or a large number of people picking up the bottles of champagne and wine and slipping them into their pockets as they walk down. Why let it go to waste?

30:37Camilla: You've paid a lot of money for a ticket to this thing. Tim, I admire that ingenuity. Also, by the way, if you are filing all throughout the night, not least if you're on a UK publication, right? So you're awake. You're meant to be asleep. London's awake. they're going to be demanding copy from you for the next 8 to 12 hours. Yes. Why not have a bottle of Chardonnay and a little, you know, seared tuna salad alongside you for when you're doing it? What's the first rule of reporting? If you can eat, eat. Yes, because you never know when you'll be able to do it again. If you see a toilet, use it. If you're offered a bottle of water, take it.

31:13Camilla: Have you got a pen? It's basic stuff. If you're at a royal funeral or a wedding, you know, and you pass a KFC, you go in there while you can. You go in there. Because you'll be locked up for six hours by angry women in fascinators who won't let you out of the exit again. No, indeed. But I think also because this is the third attempt on his life, I wonder if we're getting used to this. And it's a little like when a fire alarm goes off. How many people run to the doors? Nobody here, I can tell you that for a fact. They assume it's a drill, or if there is a fire, that it's not going to affect them and they've got time to collect their belongings and go.

31:50Camilla: So I'm on my way into GB News yesterday morning, see the Trump stuff. Producer Katie calls me, look, we're going to probably have to roll on Trump. I'm there thinking, well, we've been rolling on Trump since 3.40 when it happened, all the way through to now 9.30. We've already had two attempts, one including him, just, you know, his ear was grazed. There was blood, Like there's no blood. No one's actually been hurt apart from, of course, the copper. Thank goodness that they were in a bodysuit. And then I'm thinking, hang on a minute, Camilla, this is an assassination attempt on the president's life.

32:25Camilla: Of course, we have to continue rolling. But that kind of internal monologue for me demonstrates precisely what you've written today. And that is that, yes, we are becoming more conditioned to these sorts of events. And we've got some institutional memory here because we've recently lost two MPs. We've lost David Amos and Joe Cox. By the way, I'm not condoning normalisation of attacks on politicians. But let's be honest, combined with Charlie Kirk last year, and you make the point, Erica Kirk is at this event and needs to flee in tears because she just needs to get home. I mean, how? But also, if we have a lockdown and then PTSD every time a car backfires, we're not going to get anything done.

33:06For society to function, we do have to live with risk.

33:10Camilla: But I also don't like the normalisation of the conversation which goes as follows. Because he's divisive and comes up with some crazy rhetoric. Oh, he brings this on himself. Then, I mean, it's only a matter of time before he's killed. No, no. No, stop this. Come on. That's gross. That's gross and not true at all. And it was genuinely sad to see Erica Kirk being walked out of the building crying, saying, I just want to go home because that poor woman has lived through this once already. Another detail of this which might have got missed is Donald Trump had previously refused to attend White House press correspondence dinners because they were so rude about him.

33:44And one might argue that some of the things that have been said in the past actually add fuel to the radicalising fire. Although we can't have it both ways.

33:51Camilla: We can't say that his right-wing rhetoric doesn't expose him to danger and left-wing rhetoric does. That's true. And I'm not in favour of censorship. People decide to do this stuff because they're nutters. And I've always felt that he should have gone to those events because it looks like he's humourless, which is ironic because he's probably one of the funniest presidents we've ever had. But he agreed to go to this one on the understanding that there would be no stand-up comedian. So there was a mesmerist instead. What's a mesmerist? A mesmerist is the kind of person who looks at you and goes, I can tell you your aunt's name was Lydia.

34:21Camilla: Oh my God, like Zach Polanski or something. Exactly, yeah. So he had planned to give a speech in which he was going to tear into the press. But because they had just been through this awful experience together, he decided not to and said we're going to do this again and what I say next time might be quite nice. But there was an uncomfortable encounter on 60 Minutes afterwards in which an interviewer said this to him. The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this.

35:00I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. I'm not a pedophile. Do you think he was referring to you? Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. And I wanted to ask you as the most experienced and beloved journalist in the room, was it right for her to read out what might be the potential assassin's words to his target?

35:49Camilla: Not before a police investigation has been carried out, I wouldn't say. I mean, we're subject to different rules. But do you think it's also just distasteful? It's a bit distasteful. I don't think any question is too unsavoury to answer, provided it is within the confines of sort of morality, decency and legality. Yes. So you have to be punchy. But I think there's actually it's less a question of taste and more a question of timing. Yes. We're saying this is an attempted assassination on the US president, and we believe that to be the case. This guy's still being investigated. He's a 31 year old Democrat teacher.

36:23Camilla: I mean, I looked at him going, a teacher? He's a teacher of the month. Goodness me. Teacher of the month. Teacher of the month. Yes. He could have been going after Vance. He could have been going after Melania. Yeah. He could have been trying to make a statement about freedom of the press. Yes. We don't really know. So for her to then come in and start citing his manifest, it's just too premature. Well, I think journalists should be encouraged to ask whatever they like. But I did wonder if it failed a taste test, because if any other member of the public were, say, attacked by their husband, you wouldn't say, well, you say that, but your husband says you're a complete cow and you had it coming.

36:58How do you respond to that?

36:59Camilla: Also, they think he's fair game because he's so outspoken. Yes. But there have been other outspoken political leaders. Yes. You know, any person running to be president should be equally fair game. I think that's the difference as well. People take liberties with him like they used to with Boris Johnson because of the nature of their character. Exactly. Whereas you have to basically treat everybody with equal vigour. Yes. And although he might have been the prime target, other people would very probably have been hurt. Yes, of course. OK, so we're injecting now two septuagenarians into this scene.

37:35Camilla: Queen Camilla, King Charles on a flight as we speak due to land in America afternoon their time. So tonight ours. Questions over whether they should have gone ahead with the visit. What are people thinking, by the way? Are they going to go ahead with this visit? You keep calm and carry on. Of course. For goodness sake, these people have got emblems on tea towels. We didn't get where we are today, not going out to American visits that have been planned for weeks in advance. And every little detail is written down in a tiny little book, by the way. Second of all, I've done royal tours to America.

38:05Camilla: My God, you think it's difficult to get into stuff here. Yeah. You are intensely, this is why the Mandelson vetting failure is so funny. just to cover the trip you have to answer intimate questions about your life then you get your i visa yet more intimate questions then you get to america you try and get into the white house that is like a five-hour process involving a hell of a lot of waiting a lot of sniffer dogs a lot of people speaking into their cuffs a lot of people on walkie-talkies a lot of suspicious looks then you're put behind one rope then you move to another area the security around it is so tight I wouldn't imagine they've done that many tweaks.

38:47Camilla: It was always going to be tight. And let's be honest, a lot's riding on Charles III, isn't it? He's the one who's gone out there to save the special relationship with the Donald. And this is the other thing, just to bring it back to domestic matters. The better this trip goes for the King and Trump, the worse the outcome for Starmer. because Starmer has tried to forge a reputation, globally at least, for being this very capable international statesman who can lead coalitions of the willing. And in the early days, who would have thought it was a Trump whisperer? I'm sorry, mate, but you've lost that role to a similarly strange bedfellow.

39:25Camilla: Let's be honest, what on earth have Donald Trump and King Charles really got in common? But for reasons unexplained, despite one being an eco-warrior and the other wanting to drill baby drill, probably in the backyard of Highgrove, frankly. They get on. Charles maintained a correspondence with Trump between 1.0 and 2.0. Trump really appreciated that because obviously he was rather on his downers in that period. And they're close. So if it's a huge success and the king rescues the special relationship, it's going to make Starmer look like even more of a dud. Oh, you've left this to a man in his late 70s who's not meant to interfere in politics to patch this up across the Atlantic.

40:07And expectations are high because Trump, when asked by the BBC whether or not the forthcoming visit could help repair the relationship, said absolutely the answer is yes, adding I know him well, I've known him for years, he's a brave man and a great man. Now if we were a republic...

40:24Camilla: Perish the thought. Can we not talk about republics on a telegraph podcast? I know, but if we were a republic, President Rayner or President Bill Oddy or whoever, I don't know, So President Biden would not be able to have that kind of relationship. The appeal, I'm afraid, is not just Charles the Man. It is the office. That's what's so attractive and romantic about him. It's not Charles. And if we got rid of this, we'd lose that, wouldn't we? Indeed we would. God save the king, Tim. Now, we're off to London later and then Cardiff tomorrow. We're on the road. Do tune in because we're going to be covering what we hope is another box office.

41:01Camilla: How can we say that a select committee is box office? It sounds so weird, doesn't it? But Morgan McSweeney speaking tomorrow and we're going to be listening. We'll be back at 5pm.

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