MPs put Starmer on trial as Trump rolls in

0:03Camilla: The Telegraph.

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1:50Camilla: Starmer's on trial in Parliament, Tim. MPs on both sides of the House dissecting his appointment of Peter Mandelson. But did any Labour MPs have the balls to call for his resignation? Speaking of balls, I have interviewed Graham Linehan, who speaks to me from Arizona about his arrest, his tweets, and how his war against trans activists really has destroyed his life. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

2:30Camilla: Tim, the week isn't getting any easier for Keir Starmer. It's all kicking off in the Commons. We've got righties attacking him over the appointment of Peter Mandelson. We've got lefties attacking him over the appointment of Peter Mandelson. Although crucially, no one appears to have put their head above the parapet on the Labour benches and called for him to actually resign over this. So as he prepares to meet Trump, landing in Blighty any minute now, maybe it's not been a bad day after all. I'm just still worried about his career right now. I don't know about you. In order to make some political spectacle out of Keir Starmer's troubles, the Conservatives decided to call for a debate, which is called an SO24, which when Labour was in opposition, it did all the time.

3:19Yes. And it's kind of pointless, but it's an opportunity for MPs to stand up and make devastating speeches. And importantly, to invite members who are on the government benches to stand up and make speeches too. So here was an opportunity for everyone to rake over the coals of Mandelson, lay out all the evidence and see if any Labour people had the balls to say Keir Starmer needs to go.

3:44Camilla: Turns out not many did. Not many did. There's barely anyone on the Labour benches. First up, the man who is responsible for bringing the motion, David Davis. Firstly, was Peter Mandelson ever an appropriate character to appoint as our ambassador? No. We'll get to that year later. Secondly, what was the procedure for vetting? Was it properly followed? And why has it gone so horribly wrong? Thirdly, what's happened in the last couple of weeks to lead to the demise of the former ambassador? Who made the critical decisions and why? And fourthly, what do we do now? How do we make this government tell the House and the nation the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

4:33Which in itself would be a novelty for Lord Mandelson.

4:36Camilla: Keen to brush off the rejection she suffered from her own former Conservative colleague Danny Kruger. And now also Maria Caulfield. Who? Former Tory MP who also worked as a nurse during Covid. That's right. Apparently her husband defected before her, by the way, so she's now in the reform camp. trying to recover from mass defections, defection watch. Kemi Bainock thought she'd hammer home her advantage that she gained at PMQs last week in calling for Mandelson's scalp and having it delivered on a plate the next day with her own intervention in this debate. The Prime Minister needs to do three things.

5:13The Prime Minister needs to come clean about what he knew and when he knew it. Not send his junior ministers to cover for him. The Prime Minister needs to publish the Mandelson-Epstein files in full. The Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. But the Prime Minister, Mr Speaker, is not here because he is hiding from Parliament, hiding from questions. And I know that he is a busy man, but confidence in him and in his government rests on him being able to account for what happened. And so far, no one is taking any responsibility.

5:54The Labour benches were very sparse. That's not a surprise. The best way to handle this kind of debate is just to avoid it and then it looks like an opposition talking shop. But there were some left-wing critics of Keir Starmer. Shock horror. Shock horror who came out to speak, including Jeremy Corbyn. Oh, love him. Whose party, we have been assured, will have a name by October. Your party. It's not your party, your party. Or Red October, as we are now calling it. Here's Jeremy Corbyn speaking. Prior to the appointment of Lord Mandelson, there was obviously not sufficient due diligence done. And on the day before he was dismissed, apparently there were a lot of emails available to the Prime Minister, which he either wasn't given or didn't read.

6:32And so we find this odd situation where the British ambassador to the USA has to be dismissed in full glare of international publicity because of what his behaviour had been in the past, which was apparently very well known to a very large number of people who should not have supported his appointment in the first place.

6:51Camilla: And, Tim, your favourite Labour MP, no longer in the deputy leadership place... Down but not out. Down but not out. Your TV wife, Emily Thornberry. She put in her pennyworth, and it's worth pointing out that she is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. My committee first asked for the opportunity to question Lord Mandelson at the end of last year when rumours first surfaced of his appointment as ambassador to the United States. And we continue to ask, after his appointment, was confirmed. Indeed, the Minister may remember our exchange on the 14th of January in this chamber when I asked him to allow Lord Mandelson the time to come before my committee before he leaves for the United States to allow my colleagues to hear directly why the Prime Minister has appointed him.

7:36These requests were made more often and privately after that

7:42Camilla: and in the eight months since, and they have been turned down. If Lord Mandelson had appeared before the committee, he would have faced a range of questions which would have highlighted issues that needed to be considered properly and couldn't, in the rush to appoint him, perhaps have been overlooked in the way that it would seem to have been. Speaking of the deputy leadership race, have you seen the latest polling? My girl Bridget has fallen well behind of Lucy Powell, who is a whole 17 points ahead, apparently. Yes, and I'm moving from thinking that the race is a total stitch up by number 10 to have two pro-Starmer candidates running to thinking, actually, Lucy Powell is a more oppositional candidate than I thought.

8:24Camilla: She's a Burnham beard. She is. And this is precisely because the people who are most critical loyalists, let's call them, seem to be lining up behind Lucy Powell and following them are the members. And that could make the race a lot more interesting than we expected. We're going to speak in a moment to Ben Reilly-Smith to outline just how much trouble Starmer really is in and also dissect his relationship with his chief aide Morgan McSweeney, who, of course, is getting a lot of the blame for the Mandelson-Farrago. But before that, can we just talk about Paul Ovenden? Yes. Now, not to be confused with the Overton window we spoke about yesterday.

9:00Camilla: Although, can I just, you know, sometimes our readers are very, very good. Can I just quote Mart Ralph, who writes, the Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. So from now on, could the Ovenden window be the term used for the latest scandal-ridden apparatchik or minister in the Labour ranks to be defrenestrated? Now, we say that because Paul Ovenden was a big Labour name. He was behind most of Keir Starmer's speeches. Yes. He has been forced to resign because it's been discovered that eight years ago he played a game of shag marry kill involving diane abbott now sorry i'm laughing at this because the idea which one was diane abbott i'm not sure and i think if we speculate we too could be forced to resign right okay since when close the curtains can i just start that oven and window can close that oven and window immediately in what world has playing a game of shag, marry, kill for a laugh been a resignation offence?

10:07Only the world of politics. And this is why so many people won't go into it because heavens, can you imagine if anyone should happen to get access to our WhatsApps?

10:18Camilla: Oh, no. We wouldn't last five minutes. I think I might actually be guillotined if that happened. So it's partly that, but it's also that a group of people within the Labour Party are taking a revenge. Yes. And this is the thing about Westminster is when people can smell blood in the water around a leader, then they start to take chunks of flesh off you. He lost Angela Rayner. He lost Peter Mandelson. And now he's lost this man whose name. I mean, Overton Window just sounds like a Robert Ludlam novel. I always think that about Overton Window. There's something quite unreal about these people. But the loss of him is not it's not a question of did he deserve it?

10:54It's a question of how will this hurt Keir Starmer right now? Well, and just to say, remember, Diane Abbott, who's at the centre of this, and it seems very unpleasant things were said about Diane. And I feel very protective of poor old Diane. Keir Starmer wanted her out as a Labour MP at the last election. And it was only because she kicked off a big fuss and everyone said, you can't get rid of Diane. Like she's a beloved old retainer. It's only because of that that she hung around. So these people like Emily Thornberry speaking in that event, this is someone else who was dropped for preferment.

11:25These are people who are seeking revenge.

11:27Camilla: I know, but it does bring out the absolute humorlessness of the left. Nadia Whithome. It does. Oh, God love her. She thinks this is the most disgusting thing she's ever heard. Oh, yes. Has she ever watched an episode of The Day Today? Yes. Or indeed The Thick of It. Wake up. Come on. For goodness sake. But the central charge is that the number 10 operation is hypocritical, that it pretends to be feminist. but at the heart of it is a butch, macho culture of people like Morgan McSweeney, you know, a red-haired man. How dare him, a ginger, a ginger. And that Starmer has always had a problem with women and that's why women tend to lose their job rather than men.

12:10Camilla: The other reason why this comes back to bite Starmer as well, by the way, is he's quite happy for Peter Mandelson to be appointed as ambassador to Washington despite everything that was known about Epstein. and now we're getting into the weeds of what he knew and what he didn't know. Let's be honest, we can both agree he knew enough. The appointment in the first place was controversial. He defends him on the Wednesdays. He still defends him when he knows everything he knows. But, oh, no, if you've played a game of shag, marry or kill, I'm sorry, but it's curtains within minutes for you. It's absolutely preposterous.

12:43Once again, his judgment is being questioned and I don't think that can be separated from the question of how effective he is as a policymaker Because while all this was going on in Parliament, what really mattered today was the news that flights going to France to return asylum seekers in the much-heralded one-in-one-out policy contained no asylum seekers. Yes, there are more people. So it's likely to end up being a none-out, one-in policy.

13:10Camilla: There's more people going in and out of Downing Street right now than there is in the France and England deal. I have to ask of the human rights lawyers and the charities who are behind this obstructionism. I can understand it in relation to Rwanda because that government was regarded by the UK as dodgy. So there's an argument for saying you're deporting people to an unsafe place. But France? If you can't deport someone to France, then the implication is that you must say yes to everyone. Anyone who can get here should stay here. We can now infer that that is the position of the human rights lobby and charities, because that's what they pulled off here.

13:47Camilla: Well, let's find out whether both Keir Starmer and indeed his right hand man, Morgan McSweeney, can stay. Our political editor, Ben Riley-Smith, joins us. We've just plucked him from the newsroom briefly to comment on these recent events. Tim and I have been discussing all of the calamities that Keir Starmer's had to deal with. How much trouble do you really think he's in? Well, he's not in a great place politically, but I think two things can be true. One is he is not about to be ousted as Labour leader. You've got to step back. Not a single one of the 400 plus Labour MPs is on the record telling him to go.

14:21when you look at the rivals who could try and take his place. Andy Burnham would need a by-election to become an MP, to become Labour leader. There is no imminent prospects of by-election. Even if there was, there are whispers of some who'd have to beat reform, so that's a few steps away. Angela Rayner was often touted as the person who'd step up if Starmer was ousted. She is now on the outside and wounded by the tax scandal that the Telegraph revealed. Also, the mechanism in the Labour Party for getting rid of a leader is really hard. So the Tories, as we know well from the 14 years, have this secret no confidence letter.

14:54Back in the day, you just needed 15 % of MPs to put in a letter anonymously to trigger a vote of no confidence. Labour doesn't have the same mechanism. Officially, to challenge a leader, one person needs to come forward and needs to have signatures from 20 % of Labour MPs on record. So that means 80 Labour MPs need to sign a piece of paper backing someone else. We're not near that point. But at the same time, Keir Starmer is in a really bad place politically. And some of these discussions are starting to be had behind the scenes. You know, right now they're hovering around 20 percent in the polls.

15:29They won 34 percent of the votes at the elections. About one in three people who voted Labour last year have gone elsewhere.

15:35Camilla: Yes. The lead from reform is real. It's big. About a third of the electorate consistently in polls say they're leaning that way. Starmer's personal poll ratings have just dropped off a cliff. I think it's the biggest drop ever in personal approval ratings from a prime minister a year, a year and a bit in. And the question that a lot of Labour MPs are starting to ask is, is Keir Starmer the man who can lead us through and into the next election with success? And particularly, I think where it's becoming so barbed is the question, are we accidentally going to hand the country over to reform? That makes it a lot more barbed, that leadership question.

16:14So no, he's not about to be ousted today, but you are seeing these discussions. And over the six, nine months, it's going to play out a lot. And you can't see what is imminently going to improve for Starmer.

16:24Camilla: All right, then. Second question. If Keir Starmer isn't ousted, will his closest aide, Morgan McSweeney, be ousted? And what impact could that have on his premiership? Well, that is another big question that is being asked right now. It's not hard to understand why. Morgan McSweeney is very close to Peter Mandelson. He championed that appointment. We reported last week that Sue Gray, his predecessor as the Starmer's chief of staff, was never planning to put Mandelson in Washington. But I don't think anybody knows, critics or allies, that it was Morgan who championed putting Mandi out in Washington.

16:58That has clearly backfired spectacularly with his having to be forced by the prime minister over his Jeffrey Epstein links. But that doesn't, again, immediately mean that the prime minister will be willing to sack Morgan. If you look back at the last half decade of Labour politics, the Starmer project, if there's one person who's as central to that success other than Keir Starmer is Morgan McSweeney. Remember, I think one thing you've got to remember about the prime minister is he is not instinctively deeply steeped in politics, parliamentary politics. He only became an MP in his early 50s. So his whole career was away from Westminster being a lawyer.

17:35So he does need to rely on someone who has politics much more instinctive in their fingernails. And that's really who Morgan is. So at a lot of points in the run up, trying to get the party in the position where they could take advantage of that spectacular Tory collapse before the election. And since victory, trying to work out how to defuse political issues. If you look at the reshuffle a week ago, that was clearly Morgan led on some of those discussions with the prime minister. You could see his allies getting into key posts, Pat McFadden in work and pensions, Siobhan Ammood in the Home Office.

18:10So he is really absolutely central to this project. So even if he should share some of the blame about the Manderson appointment, it's going to take a lot for the Prime Minister then to sack him.

18:20Camilla: Ben Riley-Smith, thank you very much indeed. Now, before we get on to your brilliant Graham Linehan interview, not everybody is happy with Danny Kruger. No. Sylvia Coley, a regular contributor to this Daily Tea podcast and listener. Now I get it, she says. Mr Kruger didn't get his man, she means Robert Jenrick, in the leadership election. He is a poor loser who only gives loyalty when he is with what he believes is the winning team. Well done, Suella, who recently stated she will not defect. He is a totally self-serving, dishonourable man, happy to kick his leader and his voters in the teeth without being a visible positive supporter at all in the past year.

19:02He is not my idea of a Christian, and I am so glad he is not my MP. She made reference there to Rob Jenrick, who, of course, recently got on a spitfire to commemorate the Battle of Britain. When the anniversary of the moon landings come around, I presume he's going to be projected into space by a giant catapult. But on the subject of Danny, publicly, a lot of Tory activists and a handful of MPs have gone down Sylvia's route of saying, well, he's exposed himself. He was worried because a poll suggested that he might lose his seat. This is really just about getting ahead. And now he's allied himself with Farage.

19:35He never really was one of us. I think that's a big mistake to say that, because the truth is that he is missed from the party. He is someone who did have a future in the party. I'm sure he could have held his seat. He held it last time. The loss of Danny is something which privately from the Tory MPs I have spoken to in the last 24 hours, it is something that they are mourning.

19:56Camilla: They're not so much angry about it as they're really, really sad because they know they've lost a good one. And we'll see more of him and he will give some much needed heft to Nigel Farage and reform. Coming up next, you speak to Graham Linehan, who fittingly is in the US as Trump is about to touch down on UK soil, no doubt to make the case for freedom of speech in the UK.

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23:06Camilla: So you interviewed Graham Linehan. Last night. Who is someone I have interviewed before. Father Ted creator, co-creator. And the IT crowd. All round comedic legend. And he was drawn into the transgender debate because an episode of the IT crowd was accused of being transphobic. He then went down the rabbit hole of arguing with transgender campaigners. I think it's fair to say that it has destroyed his life, whatever you think about what he says. He's paid a very personal price for it. He lost his career. He lost his wife. and on September the 1st when he touched down in Heathrow he was arrested by the police over some transphobic tweets.

23:41He is now living in Arizona which is where I spoke to him and I'm just going to let Graham Lillahan speak for himself.

23:53Graham Lillahan thank you very much for speaking to us it's a real pleasure to have you. Before we start how is your health now? It's good I've got some interim beta blockers and blood pressure things that will take me to my first my first appointment here so you know I'm just gonna I'm gonna take it seriously now and keep an eye on it my mom has lived with it for years so has my dad or so did my dad he's gone now but you know it's just one of those things it is one of those things that you can control and take care of with pharmaceuticals you know so uh i'm going to be doing that okay well speaking of stress i'd appreciate it if you could talk us through what happened to you on september the first of this year sure i uh had to come back because i was standing trial uh because another trans activist has accused me of something i can't talk about that unfortunately until the trial is over This is you had to come back to England, to London.

24:55Right. Yes. So the police would have been aware that I was traveling. And the plane landed. And when it stopped, people tried to stand up, but they asked everybody to sit in their seats. So that's very unusual. You know, usually the, you know, deboarding an aircraft happens so quickly. The crew seem just as eager to get on with their day as we do. But this time we were just sitting there for a while. And then and then they called my name over to over to announcement thingy. And I sort of immediately knew what was happening, collected all my stuff. I'm very clumsy. So I, you know, that was the worst part of it.

25:34You know, I was collecting all my stuff in front of an audience. And then I just kind of went around the corner and they were all there, you know, and I want to make it clear a couple of things. First thing is the police at Heathrow are armed naturally. They didn't send armed men to arrest me. It's just Heathrow police are armed, you know, as they should be. But it was still a shock because it felt like a bunch of stormtroopers had turned up, you know, because they've got all the body armor on as well. And there were five of them. so you know to go to go from writing father ted to to five policemen turning up to arrest you at an airport is you know the the surreal aspect of it kicked in quite quickly for me but um i was thinking it was all quite jolly until they actually said i was going to be arrested and i was so tired because i hadn't slept on the plane because i never sleep i can never sleep on planes.

26:35I always think I'm falling through the floor. But they just kind of explained to me very civilly that my passport had been flagged up because I was wanted. And then they told me that I was under arrest. And that's when I really, I lost it. I was so angry. You know, I mean... And just to say, Graham, did they tell you specifically what you were arrested for? Yeah, they originally said it was just about the one tweet, the one about where I say something like, if you see a trans identified male at the women's toilets, make a scene called the cops. And if all else fails, punch them in the balls. Joke about women, comparative heights between men and women, apart from anything else.

27:20And they said that one. And I was so angry because apart from anything else, it is just basic safeguarding advice that a father would give a daughter. In fact, I found out later that Queen Camilla's mother had given similar advice and it was in her biography. So I was being arrested for something that Queen Camilla's mother was able to say quite freely. So it was that that really made me angry. And then I found out later that there were two others that I was in trouble for. One that said a photo you can smell, which was an overhead shot of trans activists. and I hate trans activists don't hate trans people but I hate trans activists because I've seen what they do to women at Let Women Speak events and so on and I said a photo you can smell is just an insult just a you know I wish one of my funnier tweets had gone viral but um but uh but the third one was the craziest one of all because someone said well that's been unnecessary and I said I hate them homophobes and misogynists and I don't know why that's even in the list.

28:28It obviously proves I dislike them for what I believe is their homophobia and their misogyny. So it's such a strange thing to be arrested for. And I think it's quite... I'm breaking bail conditions, by the way, by speaking about this one, because they simply would... They amended the bail conditions from you can't go on Twitter to you cannot talk about the victims. but there's no victims the tweets weren't aimed at anyone they didn't ask anyone in they they weren't about anyone and so we said who we what victims you know and um they just doubled down they said you're just not allowed to contact the victims so we we said well we gave them 24 24 hours and they never got back in touch with us and we said well we're ignoring these because the arrest was illegal and the bail conditions are absurd.

29:20So that's where we are now. Okay. When you were arrested, you were taken to a jail and put in a cell. I really recommend people read your substack about that because it's very tragic, but also very funny. And you talk about getting a good night's sleep. Yeah, that was great. That was like, we have this phrase in the gender critical movement, the process is the punishment. Like Sandy Peggy is going through it at the moment. It's not the result that counts. It's making her suffer as much as they can. It's accusing her of being a racist. It's all that stuff. So the process is the punishment. And the person who reported me, who I believe is Lindsay Watson, who's been behind a number of recent arrests, including an ex-police woman who was arrested on his orders.

30:05And so the process is the punishment is like the ultimate revenge. But like the cell was actually better than Premier economy more leg room stretch out and so uh then i went into the cell and i slept i slept till 10 p.m and they they they even came in to do my interview but they thought lovely let's let's let him sleep and uh and so i spent possibly spent a few more hours in there as a result of that but uh i still feel that the aim of the arrest was the arrest itself it was basically put me in a cell for eight to ten hours and maybe then he'll think twice about tweeting you know that's that's essentially what it was and the experience made you very unwell and you ended up in hospital yeah i i just i got checked by the nurse and you know i think i think by this staged you know it was such a weird thing because every all the policemen i dealt with not all of them but most of them had this big smile on their face because i think because they it had spread around that i wrote father ted you know and um and so you know they were all very nice very uh uh polite and um it just wasn't a bad experience in that sense uh they were very you know and i don't blame them for any of this.

31:36In fact, the main thing I took from all this was embarrassment. They seemed embarrassed. You know, I think they know that something's up, something's going on that means they're not really doing policing, you know. And I felt that throughout. So this nurse just checked my blood pressure. And it was so high that he had to do it manually just to make sure. They got me to hospital. And then quite soon after that, I got my devices back and my bail conditions, which were that I wasn't supposed to go on Twitter. So I went into the place where I was supposed to be resting. And I just turned on some transcription software and described everything that had happened in the last few hours.

32:31And fed it into an AI and got a first draft back of that piece that you saw in my substack. you know uh and then i asked it to ask me questions one after another to make sure that i covered every single angle of what happened and described everything you know so that a a reader would understand it you know so it asked me a bunch of questions i'm talking to the ai and then the nurse comes in and says what are you doing he can't be working you're supposed to rest you know But I knew if I didn't get something out that like one of the guys who's been targeting me for the last eight years would get something out saying, I'm delighted to announce that a 57 year old comedy writer has been arrested for, you know, harassment of trans people.

33:20And basically that would be the version that would spread before I'd had a chance to tell the real story. So so I got it out and it was instantaneously everywhere. I've never had that kind of reaction to a post. And I kind of knew immediately that everything was going to change, you know, for me at least. If I think of many of the brilliant things you've written, Father Ted, the IT crowd, they very often dealt with institutions which have institutionalized madness, in which people behave in self-destructive or abusive ways, but they have built a culture around it whereby it seems normal so in the case of father ted and the catholic church and i'm a catholic you know i know we do this we internalize our own theology so the stuff the outside world thinks looks absolutely mad makes perfect sense to us so it becomes sex starved people drinking far too much tea and talking about jesus and and so one could argue that your life has become one of your own comedies you're now trapped within one of those institutions dealing with people who have internalized institutional madness.

34:32Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, my God, that's just a perfect way of, of describing it. You know, when I was on the BBC, it was a, it was a fair interview, but every time I, I was talking, trying to talk about the physical reality of what was going on, I was corrected, you know, like I would say, these are men or males. And there was a trans woman. It was like, well you know but they're men and basically there's sort of this ring of protection put around these people that's not unlike the ring of protection that was found around the priests in boston for example a social worker told me there's nothing worse you can do for safeguarding than creating a sacred class you know and that's kind of what the catholic church learned it led to a sort of humbling of the church, which possibly might have been just what it needed.

35:26You know, and I think a similar thing is going to happen here to the LGBT community, because I think they're going to realize that their empathy and their feeling for outsiders has been weaponized, not by good people, but by very bad people who take advantage of kindness. All these people are very, very convinced of their own goodness for standing up for their friends who they know and they love and they think this person would not hurt a fly why would anyone object to them in a in a women's toilet but the problem is that his entry into the women's toilet holds the door open for everyone with bad intentions and for some reason they can't see this and they're still convinced of their own goodness you know and i think as you know i think you're right i think it's an institutionalized madness and unfortunately Unfortunately, like my institutionalized madness was completely made up.

36:21It was silly. We liked priests and we didn't want to insult them and we didn't want to hurt their feelings. We didn't want to attack central tenets of belief. It was crazy stuff that didn't have any tethering to reality. And the unfortunate thing about this is there's nothing I can do to make this more surreal. Is there a distinction in your mind between the trans activists who may well take a very militant radical approach and want to change the whole of society. And those who are genuinely struggling with their gender identity, whatever the biological or psychological cause of that is, they clearly do exist.

36:58We might not agree with their self-definition, but they do exist. Sure. And how do you feel towards those people? The problem, again, is that we have this wide category called trans, and it covers too many people okay so it covers people who genuinely have dysphoria but it also covers people who are in the grip of a social contagion and you know those two things are both true but there's also another group which is the uh which is the nice uh you know trans guys who like dressing up in women's clothing just as people did when going to David Bowie concerts and so on and they're playing around with things and they're experimenting and again that's all valid but they're in this group with these dangerous men, some of the men who had me arrested this week and have been using the police for years for this type of thing.

37:48They're in this group with dangerous men and they have nothing in common. A young girl who's been convinced to cut her breasts off because she's been told by adults that she will become a real boy if she does that has nothing to do with these predatory men or even the nice gay guys who like to dress up. You know, these groups have nothing to do with each other, but they're grouped together. And the people who really do need help, you cannot see the wood for the trees, right? You cannot see who needs help within these groups, because they're all claiming the same levels of victimization, the same levels of, you know, mental issues and so on.

38:26And it's true of some of them, and it's not true of others. And I just think, I mean, there's an organization called Genspec that I'm very heavily involved in. And, you know, they are an absolute lifeline for parents who are trying to maintain contact with their kids while their kids are absolutely full of this idea that their lives will be magically wonderful if they start taking testosterone. I've spoken to one of my friends, a guy, Keith, and, you know, the first time I met him, he was in despair because his daughter was disappearing before his eyes, you know. her facial the testosterone was making her and he knows more than she does about it because they don't tell these kids about it like he knows that her life will be shortened that she's got like a four times greater chance of having a heart attack that her throat won't be able for the swollen vocal cords so she'll have a sort of raspy kazoo voice so people are doing a very very bad thing which is they are trying to keep this kind of information from the people it most affects you know and there's still just such a lack of knowledge about what's going on with gender medicine so yes i hope that proves that i have enormous compassion for people who are uh in this fight and i think that the real trans health care is going to happen when this movement is over and people wake up to what's really been going on uh graham a lot of my irish friends say to me they can't believe what's happened to graham lina han because they always regarded you uh as someone on the progressive left or centre in Ireland, a country which has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and now they perceive you to have moved to the right.

40:08Do you see your politics changing, have changed, and have your friendship groups changed as a result? Oh, yeah. No, I'm in touch with no one in my whole life. Yeah, I have been hanging out with people who I don't agree with on other issues like abortion. But as I said to someone else about Trump, really the lowest bar that one can cross, not just as a politician or a human being, is to know that men have a willy and women have a winky. You know? You know? That is, surely that is something we can expect from our politicians. And yet, when you ask them what a woman is, there's like 10 minutes of bumbling about because they really don't seem to know the answer.

40:56You know, I want to know what reality is so that I can build on that so that I can write comedies that subvert reality. But if you're saying that up is down and black is white and male is female and left is right, it's going to create chaos. It's already creating chaos. Comedy writers are being arrested at airports, you know, like it's a chaotic movement. And Stonewall have been lying to the police for, you know, however long that it's a protected characteristic, gender identity when it's not. And, you know, it's just insanity that has to be addressed and talked about properly. And I really want people to realize that you're not being kind by using preferred pronouns.

41:42You're confusing already confused people. You know, you're not being kind by encouraging people to get hormones, especially teenagers, because puberty cures dysphoria. You know, it's been proven again and again. And if you want to see puberty proving dysphoria, there's a brilliant example in Kevin and Perry, the Harry Enfield sketch about the incredibly rude adolescent. And the very, very end of that, he had sex for the first time. And when he comes down the next morning, he's wearing a crisp yellow shirt. And he's being very polite to his mother and father. And the irony is he's transformed into a cherub.

42:20He goes from a monster to a cherub because he's grown up. Yeah, he does. He does. I know the one you mean. But I guess if I want to know what's motivating you, my question is you have suffered so much in career and personal terms. Why do you do it? I don't mean that in an aggressive way because, I mean, I'm speaking as a coward. If I, like most people, came up against the opposition you faced, I would go, fair enough. I would rather live my life, have my dog, have some privacy. Why don't you just walk away? Because then my daughter won't be safe. I need to know that society is going to do the job of safeguarding that it has been doing for 100 years, ever since the suffragettes won it.

43:03I need to know that when she makes a fuss, when she calls the cops, that she won't be arrested. I need to know that like you know she's going away to college I need to know that men won't be able to follow her into every private space she has that's why I do it and and there's another reason I do it that's kind of more mundane but quite funny what it's basically that like I didn't notice that kind of uh offices were becoming victims of sort of HR and and uh things like that. I didn't notice that grievance culture was taking over institutions and colleges and places like that. So when I came up against it, it had already been embedded in British society to some extent.

43:50And I didn't realize what a beast I was up against. And I also thought that once people realized that what was going on, they would join in because, you know, as I always say, you know, like they're hurting children they're hurting children and they're they're destroying their lives they're destroying children's lives by removing their sexuality it's like something out of a philip pullman novel you know and so i you know i just don't understand why people don't take it on you know i mean i know it's dangerous but the more of us there are the safer it is you know but following uh the killing of charlie kirk are you are you worried for your physical safety uh no i i have a gun now and uh i no i'm only joking i just wanted to give people who know me a heart attack i can't i could never buy a gun i'm so clumsy i cut myself about three times a week so if i had a gun i wouldn't i wouldn't last a month it wouldn't last a month no i'm i'm you know there's nothing i can do about that you can't live your life in fear there's a great quote i saw the other day someone said it to english people they said even though you don't have free speech Act as if you do, you know, and I think that's how one should go through life.

45:04Just, you know, we may not have free speech. We may be threatened by all these things, gunmen and police and airports, but I'm going to act as if we do. And I'm going to carry on as I always have. And do you think you will return to the UK? No, I think I'm done with the UK. What I'm hoping to do is get some source of kind of like, I can't talk about it too much, but I'm hoping to kind of become a sort of useful figure to the US in talking about free speech. Because I think it is really in crisis in Europe and in the UK and in Ireland. and I'm happy to be used to, you know, make the case for, you know, us all talking to each other the way Charlie Kirk did, you know.

45:57Will you miss Britain? Will you miss not being able to come to Britain or choosing not to come to Britain? No, because it kind of died for me, you know, when my friends abandoned me, you know. The reason I loved it was because of the people, you know. so uh once that all disappeared of course you know i've made loads of lovely friends but there's something sickening about walking through parts of london that i used to know so well so basically and having a feeling of dread in my stomach that i might see someone i knew in the old days because like my first question would always be why did you stand up for me where were you you know so i don't want to get into long you know arguments with people on the street so it's better i go here and you know just start things again graham linnerhan thank you very much thank you

46:56Camilla: wowzers he doesn't hold back does he graham this is what i found when i interviewed him and it's quite difficult. You basically let him say his piece there because if you do interject, he does take it quite personally and he feels that the world is against him, understandably so. As you have documented with him there, he has lost a great deal as a result of his own attempt to stand up for women and girls. And his experience with the media is one of being ambushed and put on the spot. And so when I was speaking to him, I was conscious that I could have at various points criticised what he said or put the other line.

47:38But I think if I tried to do that, it would have been a very different kind of interview. So I was keen just to hear what he had to say. While he was speaking, there were things I disagreed with.

47:48Camilla: Where I'm on his side is as follows. I don't think people should be cancelled for misgendering. I don't think generally people should be cancelled at all. I think he should reserve the right in a free and open society to express his views as freely as he wants to. Agreed. In accordance with the realms of the law. However, sometimes he has gone off the reservation. Sometimes he has tweeted stuff that is grotesquely unpleasant. And I actually think you lose the argument. I made this argument with Boris Johnson on the niqab. Okay, let's have a debate about whether we think Muslim women in the UK should wear full top-to-toe coverings with just their eyes exposed.

48:30Camilla: But let's do it in a polite manner. Let's not use phrases to describe them, ridiculing, like letterbox. You then lose, as Thatcher said, as soon as it becomes personal, you've lost the argument. I think at times Linehan has gone too far. Well, I like free speech. I think we face a binary choice increasingly between do we want speech to be censored, in which case to some extent we can be protected from our own actions as well as other people's words, or do we want free speech, in which case you have to accept there are consequences of speech. Otherwise, it's not free. So in the same way that he is free to say what he has said about trans people, they're also free to say what they've said about him, as long as it doesn't border on violence.

49:09You could argue that's a race to the bottom and everyone being rude to each other. So be it. I mean, maybe OK. But in a way, Linehan, who I enormously respect, and I think that came out of the interview, because to such a large extent, he shaped the imaginations of our generation. We're both Catholics. Father Ted, right? Yes, of course. It's come to define British Catholicism, Father Ted. So I respect him enormously for that. And I see him as a casualty of the culture wars. He was someone who took part in it. He was someone who gave as good as he got on many occasions. He has really suffered for it.

49:42And I think it is a lesson of how much one can be destroyed or self-destroyed by these culture wars.

49:50Camilla: But I also have admiration for people who stand by what they believe in. Yeah. If in doubt, he's doubled down. Yeah. And I'd like to caveat my earlier remarks by saying, by the way, he has had to encounter grotesque unpleasantness from the other side. Oh, he definitely has. So many videos as well of trans extremists literally shouting in the faces of women, shouting at feminists. Yes. I mean, I've been on the receiving end of all this. I'm a TERF. I'm a transphobe. I'm this. I'm that. Because I stated fairly on that I didn't think men were women and women were men. The people who get left behind or worse caught in the middle, and we kind of touched upon it on the interview, are young people who genuinely, for whatever reason, I don't know, and I don't believe the trans activists know, but for whatever reason have doubts about their gender.

50:39And those people also get caught in the culture war, forced to make a binary choice, told they're bad whatever decision they make. I just wonder sometimes if we should all just calm down, quiet down and leave kids to be kids without adults getting involved in their very, very difficult transition from child to adult.

51:00Camilla: Yes. Linehan's argument will, of course, be adults have involved themselves far too much. And he's right. Said to confuse children. He's absolutely right. Basically gay and lesbian children. Do you think you were born in the wrong body? Yeah. But that is, I mean, this is a podcast for another day. We could do a whole episode on that. But it was a good interview and it was good to hear Graham in his own words. We will be back in Windsor tomorrow for Donald Trump at 5pm.

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