Prince Andrew vs The Palace: Inside the 'Siege of Royal Lodge'

0:02The Telegraph

0:09The siege of Royal Lodge continues. Royal Editor Hannah Furness tells us if Andrew will stay or go as the scandal continues to poison the monarchy. And as the budget looms, is this Chancellor really so stupid that she's planning to make us spend tens of thousands of pounds to stay in our own homes? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. I'm making my debut, Rachel Johnson.

0:45With Camilla away in Turkey, I asked if I could co-present with a royal princess. Unfortunately, Fergie was otherwise engaged. She said, sorry, darling, jolly busy. Can you lend me a fiver? In her place, in her place, I've got the next best thing. Another political dynasty. I'm joined by the broadcaster and journalist Rachel Johnson. Thank you very much for being here. Oh, hello, Tim. It's lovely to be here. I had a present for you, but I left it behind. Do you know what it was going to be? Two peppercorns. OK. Get it? No. Oh, Hannah will get it. You better introduce Hannah. What's that a reference to?

1:25Prince Andrew's rent. Oh, I see. Oh, my goodness. And that would have been so good, but then I would have been dumbfounded on an arrow. Yes, it wouldn't have worked. It might not have been so good. But thank you for so brilliantly and effortlessly raising the subject of the top of the programme, which is Prince Andrew and the Royal Crisis. We're going to listen, first of all, to a clip. King Charles was heckled while visiting Litchfield Cathedral. How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein? Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew? Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew, Charles?

1:58So it is believed that the person heckling was a member of the anti-monarchy group Republic. But Rachel, what does this tell you? What can we read into it about what all this is doing to the reputation of the royal family? When I heard that heckle, I did begin to think, are we hearing the distant rumble of tumbrils? Is the public fury over Prince Andrew, the Duke of Hazzard, the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality? Or is this a more existential problem for the monarchy? Is it a French revolution in the making? And I think if they don't manage to put a lid on it, it could become existential.

2:39Because I just don't see where the Prince Andrew problem stops. I don't see how it goes away, especially as we will discuss the latest proposal, which is he gets out of one royal lodge and he gets back into two with his former wife, Fergie. There doesn't seem to be a day after scenario. I don't see a horizon here, especially if he is housed multiply in Windsor Great Park. Yeah. OK, well, to discuss this and bring us up to speed is Hannah Furness, our Royal Editor. Hello. Hello. Thank you for joining us. What is the latest in the Andrew saga? Well, Rachel has summed up the problem beautifully there of what is the next thing?

3:24there always seems to be a next thing with every day that comes. The status at the moment is Prince Andrew is in a pickle. The public is putting extra pressure on him to leave Royal Lodge. The police are negotiating with him to provide some sort of other accommodation to get him out of this 30-bedroomed mansion where he has a lease with the Crown Estate that is almost cast iron. They cannot turf him out of there even though they want to. He has to agree to leave. So there There are talks going on behind the scenes where they are providing suggestions of what he might do. He is saying, no, they're going backwards and forwards, and they're still at stalemate as far as we know.

4:00OK. What is the building actually like inside? Is this one of these royal buildings which sounds great but is actually a horrible pile? No, this has got a very long royal history. So Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, lived there for a very long time. Princess Elizabeth, who went on to be Elizabeth II, had her playhouse in the gardens. If you read back through our archive, which I've been doing this week, it's full of these glorious reports of, you know, the roses are in bloom at Royal Lodge. It's around the corner from Windsor Castle. This is a very important property, despite the fact it's faded in our lifetimes.

4:33Am I allowed to throw in a massively name dropping personal anecdote? My husband was the godson of the Queen Mother and he used to play at Royal Lodge when he was a little boy. when the queen mother had to have the grandchildren over for lunch i.e charles and anne he was always summoned to go with his siblings and he said and so i said well what was it like and he said well it was it was enormous and i don't remember it terribly well but he did remember the playhouse the wendy house but he said that only the royal children were allowed to play in the wendy house and he wasn't allowed into the wendy house he was the son of a courtier and so i mean he was roped in because the queen mother didn't want to have to entertain charles and anne and then i said well did you play with prince andrew and he said no i don't think i think prince andrew was too young right so i think you know he's already distancing himself from this story allegedly didn't play with prince andrew so the thing about this house one of the important things about this house is that it is enormous so although there is no real taxpayer a funded element to this.

5:41There's no real reason why Royal Lodge has been whipped up in the public imagination as the centre of what is a much bigger scandal. If we're talking about Geoffrey Epstein, anything Prince Andrew may or may not have done when he was a trade envoy, the money, these are some quite serious problems or potential problems. The Royal Lodge thing is really small fry, but it's captured the public imagination who can see this 30 bedroom house where not only he lives but Sarah Ferguson the former Duchess of York who hasn't worked for the royal family since 1992 when they separated lives there as well. Work is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

6:16Yeah I don't think either of them are doing a lot of heavy lifting. And when you have the public who are living in their own cost of living crisis why should we be funding is the phrase we keep hearing even though it's not technically true a prince who is by any measure in disgrace. Can I ask a stupid question? Well, I cannot see how the problem of Prince Andrew is solved by taking away one royal residence and giving him two. Yes, that encapsulates very neatly where we are. One to him and one to Fergie. And also, why should she get anything, Hannah? That is the question. And by giving her something, they open themselves up, this is my opinion, they open themselves up to far greater scrutiny.

6:57So we've already got Parliament saying that we want to ask some more questions. Public Accounts Committee are going to do so. The National Audit Office, which has already signed off on these rent deals back in 2005, would like to have another look at it. If you start giving somebody who hasn't been a working member of the royal family for decades her own property on the Crown Estate, so she would have to have her own lease agreement and presumably have to pay rent. but you're completely right that it opens them up them all up all of the royals and all of the staff and all of the loyal former courtiers who live in these houses to much greater scrutiny than they've been under for a long time does he have a big staff in that building he doesn't have a big taxpayer funded staff i mean he must have some staff i can't imagine he picks his own socks up off the floor yeah like the rest of us do no but i guess what i am inching towards is are we kicking a man out of his home, which he's lived in much of his life.

7:52And this is just a cruel act. And additionally, an unnecessarily cruel act as someone who, let's remember, has not been found guilty in a court of law. He hasn't. And it is a gesture, I think. It would be a gesture to show that somebody is doing something. But you're quite right. Moving him from Royal Lodge to Frogmore Cottage, which seems to be the front runner. It changes nothing, really. He's still in Windsor, where he is going to be at the centre of the court and the future court. Prince William, we know, is going to base his life in Windsor. It keeps him on the Crown Estate, so there is still scrutiny over what rent he will have to pay.

8:28The refurbishments sometimes appear in the sovereign grant reports, which is arguably taxpayer-funded money. It doesn't solve a lot of problems, except it is some sort of action for a public that seems to desperately want some action now. And what do you think the palace is thinking? I mean, what do they want to happen in the next few months? Do they want this all to go away? They don't just want it to go away. They need it to go away, don't they? Rachel is totally right in that this is becoming, it's getting the feel of an existential crisis here. It's not so much the detail of where he is, what he's done.

9:04It's this picture of can the king do anything about troublesome members of his family? He's been trying to get him out of Royal Lodge, or his aides have for a very long time now. It's become the siege of Royal Lodge in tabloid speak. And they don't seem to be able to do it. And there is a real sense of frustration about looking like they can't do much about it. But also this heckle, the members of the royal family are very regularly heckled by Republic. They like to turn up at public engagements with banners. It is their absolute dream to have a heckle videoed and put on our front page. But there is a sense that somebody needs to get a grip on this quite quickly.

9:42Hannah, is there any truth in the reports or the speculation that was raised by Emily Maitlis in the News Agents podcast? And of course, Emily, listeners will know, did the famous sit down with Prince Andrew for Newsnight, which led to him stepping back from his own working status as a royal. And she suggested that the Yorks had been threatened with the stripping of the titles from the two princesses as part of the sort of Dirty Tricks campaign to win the siege of Royal Lodge. Is there any truth in that? As far as I'm aware, the princesses are being quite well looked after by the palace. The king's people and Prince William's people are both talking about how the princesses have done nothing wrong.

10:22They don't want them to be scapegoats for anything that their parents did. they were they are facing some questions because of course they were adults themselves in some of this epstein era toing and froing i don't think there are any crisis meetings i don't think william is personally telling his cousins threatening them with stripping their titles because they have a personal relationship as well as anything else the palace have been quite keen to make it clear that the girls aren't going to be collateral damage in this and that it is about the duke first and foremost and also the duchess because she is also her emails have also dragged her into this very recently the problem we have as journalists is that of course a lot of this stuff happens behind closed doors and people are working very hard not to tell us about it the problem the palace has is that when they sit down with prince andrew and say look what else is coming we need to know what we're dealing with so we can deal with it is that they don't get a straight answer because he doesn't remember or he says he doesn't remember or you'll have seen in Emily's Newsnight interview, he says one thing and then a couple of years later you have an email showing something completely different.

11:29Is the problem also in it just thinking about that heckle? Yes, you're absolutely right. Republican demonstrators heckle the monarchy all the time and we don't normally report on it. The issue here is that what he precisely said, have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew, is for the first time a good question. Normally, activists like that just ask nonsense questions. But this is actually a question that a lot of people are asking, aren't they? And is that how this turns into, as Rachel said, this existential crisis, that this is not just about one rotten egg within the royal family. This is about how the royal family organises its affairs, what it tolerates, what it covers up.

12:06It is raising these much bigger questions about the royal family. It is. What you don't want, what the monarchy he doesn't want is for hecklers to be heard as the voice of the nation. So if it's a heckler asking a question and people at home are thinking, yeah, good point. It's a lesson for us in that we need to be doing our jobs and asking those questions too. But the idea that, yes, you've gone from just a couple of years ago when people would heckle the king, I think the general public feeling was, this is a man with cancer. He's only just reached the throne. What are you shouting at him about, come on.

12:40And now I think we are moving into territory where they're starting to feel like real questions. And that is a difficult position to be in. And there is an element here now, I think, of duty of care. Because if you frame it like that, if you're sympathetic to Prince Andrew, which some people still are, this is one man who is under an enormous amount of pressure in public and in private. And there is some sort of duty of care, both on a personal level and on a level of keeping him slightly within the fold and in control, in inverted commas, and being seen to take action to secure his future in a sensible sense, rather than being cast out and having to get money off more billionaires, which is arguably going to cause a lot more problems further down the line than taking the hit and keeping him in a smaller, less grand, more manageable property.

13:29Before we get too sympathetic, we should add, he has had opportunities to cooperate with the American authorities and has not taken them. Plus, I don't know if you saw Rory Stewart on the BBC talking about this, and he scoffed at the whole discussion and said, why are we talking about Prince Andrew when there are so many things going on in the world, which is a classic super elite opinion? Let's not talk about royal stuff. Let's talk about the situation in Sudan, etc. I think what the error that he committed at that point was to cast the issue as being all about Andrew and the royal family. When it's not, it's about child grooming and sex trafficking and whatever his relationship to that might be.

14:08And he, discussion of him, is a way of opening up this discussion about what the hell is going on that rich people are able to access young girls and to move them around the world. I mean, I don't know if you read Virginia Dufresne's book, Rachel, but that's what it's really about. Sex with Andrew happens three times in the book. Allegedly. Allegedly, and it's difficult, stomach-churning stuff to read. But what really matters is the story of what happened between the G4A and the other girls. The focus has always been about the rich and famous and powerful men who've been treating these girls as supply and not on the girls and the supply itself.

14:47And we've seen that change with the grooming gang and the way that the victims have been sitting there next to the leader of reform or giving interviews and finally the focus is on them. But then the focus shifts again and you see that photograph that's been discovered of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew at Royal Lodge or Fergie in a row at Royal Lodge. Like something from Madame Tussauds. Something from Madame Tussauds. But, you know, it's the really ground zero of this story is the fact that Royal Lodge, two were in prison, Harvey Weinstein is still alive, Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, And Prince Andrew so far has not, as Tim said, has not gone to have his day in court in the United States.

15:33And he should be made to say what he saw and who he saw and when he saw it, because otherwise this is not going away. So Prince Andrew's allies have always pointed out that Prince Andrew, they say, was a very tiny part of this very big machine, exactly as you explain. and that throwing his name in there is a tactic from lawyers and campaigners to keep this in the public eye. He was kind of an easy win because he couldn't really answer back as a member of the royal family. There's a sort of counterfactual world where if we go back a few years, maybe he could have gone to America. But you could imagine how that would have been, you know, the son of the queen in court testifying.

16:15Even if he said helpful, right things, you can sort of understand why that didn't happen, even though it should have done and possibly there'll be much more pressure for it to happen now but Andrew's allies have always said that he is just being he's a red herring or a scapegoat for many many more powerful people who have abused these girls and have taken a much more active part in their trafficking and their sexual abuse and they have always urged people to widen the net and use other names and other people to actually get justice yeah but you see when his allies say he couldn't speak for himself because he was a member of the royal family.

16:52He did. He sat down for an interview with Emily Maitlis and he said it all. And he said a number of things which have now been, well, he said one thing, one important thing about how long he knew Epstein for and how long they've been in contact for, which has been proven to be untrue. So he can't retreat behind I'm not allowed to speak because he has chosen to speak just on his own terms because he thought it would go well for him. Yes. And that is sort of the crux of why this has come up again now and why the last few weeks have been so frenetic, is that once this email came out that showed that Andrew was in contact with Epstein after he'd said on Newsnight that he had cut contact because he was so honourable, it opened him up to what else has he said that is immediately disprovable if you have the right email.

17:36Yes. Rachel, you're a member of a famous family. I have to ask the question. I'm rolling my eyes. Right. OK, but you are. Is family loyalty really important? Of course it is. How could you even ask? Right, okay. So is some of the behaviour we've seen here actually motivated by people? From the king, I think, downwards. I think he's head of the family and he's king and he's head of state. I mean, imagine. So he's got to navigate this extraordinarily difficult path. I mean, the Peter Morgan analysis of all this, you know, the crown, right, author, would be that the crown is always paramount. So everything the king does has to protect the crown and the succession.

18:20Nothing, nothing can impede Prince William succeeding and then Prince George succeeding. That is the. And so I think you've got to see King Charles's actions through that lens, not the lens of he's an annoying brother, but he's my brother and I love him despite. Okay. King Charles cannot think like another sibling. He has to think like the king. And I think, you know, he's going to be making some very tough decisions that some in the public will think he's been too harsh on Prince Andrew. And, you know, why is he Cain enabling him like this? And you can never treat a sibling like that and get away with it.

19:04So he's really stuck between Scylla and cribbed is here. The public want to see justice. They don't actually want to see justice for the victims. They want to see Prince Andrew suffer. And he's also got to make sure that this goes away enough that the crown is secure. So it's a terribly difficult path he has to tread. And the public sympathy for this has changed with each generation, I think. I think it's very easy for us as outsiders to understand the late queen and her son, that dynamic. She wanted to protect him. She didn't believe any of it. She took some tough decisions. So he got rid of his HRH, but he stayed in his home.

19:41We're now at the brother level, where there's still some understanding of this relationship, as you explain it, of loyalty to your younger brother and seeing the personal and the public as different. As we get to William, I think the narrative now is that everybody expects and wants Prince William, who has nothing to do with this, really. He's just the next king to take much tougher action against his uncle than the mother or the brother figures have been able to do. And does Queen Elizabeth II's actions or lack of action, is that going to change her reputation? I don't think so. I think there has been a lot of conversation this week blaming the late queen for what is happening now.

20:22And that is understandable up to a point. this was happening in her very late reign she was very elderly prince philip was very elderly and let's not forget prince philip at one stage would have been the one to take the much harder family line internally he was the one that said fergie as she was then is out of the picture and then as he got older and when he died she has come back into the picture charles's court charles's aides have been around in these years. They have had an insight into all of these negotiations. I don't think we can draw an exact line between here's what Queen Elizabeth did and here's what King Charles is doing.

21:02It's a little bit more free flowing than that. Can I suggest something crazy? Do you think we're going to see an enter stage left from Harry and Meghan? Because that, to my mind, is the only thing that could blow this off the front pages. They're coming back. Right. OK, now we've got a new royal story. Now the royal family needs Harry and Meghan to do something fantastically silly to distract. Is that what you're saying? While Camilla isn't here, I will say that everything they've ever been accused of looks small fry compared to this. And they might reasonably ask, hello, why did we feel compelled to leave the country?

21:38Why were we not able to get security when all we ultimately did was made a Netflix documentary? Yes. I mean, they are apples and oranges, aren't they? They don't have security. They don't have full-time security because they live in California. If they were in the UK, they would have security, as they did when they were here. True. So it's not a natural comparison or a fair comparison there. I know that people are frustrated about Harry and Andrew both being lumped into this Dukes of Hazard title when what they are accused of doing are two completely different things. You know, Harry might be a little bit...

22:07His pronouncements in spare and on Netflix are extremely damaging to the monarchy in a very different way. but he's not involved in the sorts of things Prince Andrew has been accused of being involved in with Epstein. There's a complication here in that Frogmore Cottage, where Prince Andrew may yet move to, is the former home of Harry and Meghan. That's right. They paid£2.4 million back, having renovated it and then left it. So now if he does move there, there is going to be this strange link between the families. That's hardly fair. They paid to renovate it and then the really bad uncle moves into it.

22:40Gets to move in. so I'm reliably told that they are very happy to be far away in California and well and truly out of all of this I should think if they're paying attention to it they will just be relieved Hannah what are you hearing about the interpersonal relationships now for example we saw the Duchess of Kent's funeral the fact that Prince William kind of recoiled and didn't want to talk to his uncle. I mean, what are you hearing about how good are relations between Charles and Andrew, and Andrew and William, and all, and so even if he did get his wish of two properties in Windsor Great Park, how would it work emotionally?

23:25Yes, the thing, you have to see this through the prism of the fact that this is a royal family, which is not the way that we might see our families of getting around the kitchen table, negotiating, having a chat and coming up with something. This is done through AIDS. It's done by telephone calls. It's done sometimes one person in Scotland, sometimes somebody in Windsor. The King is frustrated with this whole situation. William has never had a great deal of time for it at all. So William's relationship with Uncle Andrew now is, as far as I'm aware, almost non-existent. They all live in Windsor, but they're not popping around for tea.

24:01The optics of the Duchess of Kent's funeral, you know I was there watching them on the steps and it was partly true as far as I could see it that William didn't want to speak to his you know Andrew kept trying to get in the middle of William and Catherine to have a chat and they were both very kind of polite nods and then try and move away there was also the element there that I'm told Prince William was very keenly aware that this was a family funeral and not a sort of royal circus and everybody was behaving in a way that you would behave at a funeral except for the then due conductors of York who looked like they were at a cocktail party sort of at a competition winner's day out to spend time with the royal family they're kind of mingling and giggling and chatting and Fergie had to be dragged away to the car because she looked like she was having such a good time on the steps of this funeral so what you saw in those clips was a pretty fair representation of the interactions between the family there and William did not want to be seen giggling with Prince Andrew.

25:02I'm sorry but The lower she sinks, the more I just love Fergus. Hannah Furness, thank you very much. Thank you. Coming up next, the mansion tax. Rachel Reeves' latest wheeze to take your money.

25:28Rachel, we have a budget coming up. The Chancellor is low on money. She hasn't yet proposed stealing children's piggy banks, but among her many bright ideas that she's said to be considering is a mansion tax. How do you feel about that? Listen, I mean, I remember when the Lib Dems tried this and then they had to pretend, you know, it was just a joke or something. In the same, you know, they had to pretend they'd never thought of it. They never meant it. Apart from telling farmers they can't hand their farms on to their sons and daughters who've worked the land for generations. I can't think of a more unpopular tax that she should be considering.

26:09An Englishman's home is his castle. And if she's asking people to pay a per annum tithe to the treasury for the privilege of living in their own homes, I foresee a peasants' revolt. I foresee a poll tax crisis and riots on a scale that she would not have foreseen. She may think to herself, it's only for mansions for properties over 2 million. We need to find out the data, how many properties are over 2 million. But beyond that, this has caused a complete paralysis in the property market. You know, she has this unerring ability to suggest things and which managed to gum up and sort of destabilise the economy in ways that you and I couldn't even think of.

27:03Yeah. To what end? I mean, I think Rishi Sunak was dead right when he said in his debut column for another paper at the weekend. I won't be reading it. You cannot generate growth by raising taxes. Yeah. Yeah. She's got to cut spending. Yes. She can't seem to, she can't do that. Well, they tried with the welfare reform and the left of their party said you can't do it. It was a minor tinkering. It wasn't even welfare reform. It was doing a couple of things. What, winter fuel and what was the other thing? Disability allowances. And they've been under ceaseless pressure to bring back a winter fuel and also to abolish the two child cap with benefits and things like that.

27:45So it's every time they do try and find a few pennies here or there, They seem to pay a big political price for it, one they feel they can't afford. They've got to go ahead and do it. Look, Xavier Millet has just been re-elected in Argentina and he's got rid of whole departments. Yes. And he's returned on a landslide. They should have a look over there to Latin America, take a leaf out of his book. Was he re-elected at the weekend? Yes. I missed that. Where have you been, Stanley? Okay. Right. Okay. Well, that's interesting because he is the experiment. He is the right-wing experiment in actually just cut the taxes and cut the spending.

28:19We are so far from a Xavier Millet type economy here. But we don't need to do what he did. No, but you know... Because things aren't as bad here as they were in Argentina, with a historically insane inflation. But it's about optics, you see. If you accept that her real master is the bond markets, right, not the backbenches, then she could just be a lot cleverer and she could do something around spending, get it through. They've got a huge majority. Cut spending, reassure the bond markets that way, reduce the debt interest burden that way. Then you enter a virtuous cycle, not a doom loop. I mean, I'm not an economist.

28:59Even I can see this. Yeah. Do you think you'd have to pay the mansion tax? Me? That's a subtle way of asking how much your house is worth. I'm going to have to leave the country. We're in a very fortunate position of having bought a house during a kind of property dip in 1992, three, which is now worth, I kid you not, Tim, 10 times what we paid for it. Wow. It's probably made more money in its lifetime than I have. Right, right. And you can see why she says that's unearned income, but it's a property asset I have not realised. Yes. And the very fact and threat of a mansion tax means that I probably now can't sell it.

29:39I'll probably now sell it very badly into a falling market. Property experts are already saying she's turned the property market into a, and I'm quoting, a stagnant swamp. So just the idea, the suggestion of a mansion tax has completely caused paralysis in the property market. Nobody's selling, nobody's moving. And I've heard people are saying, I'm just going to sit tight like you are probably in your mother's house. Yeah. I'm going to sit tight and I'm going to sit this government out. Yes. Because if reform do what it's promising, which is reverse the inheritance taxes, would never introduce a mansion tax, then it's worth hanging on for a reform government.

30:25Yes, yes. You see, I also don't trust valuations. I don't trust how much council taxes. I don't trust the way the councils banned your property. so I'm in exactly the same position my mother bought house we at a modest price in the early 90s it's now worth they people say it could be worth a million which was it wouldn't quite be the mansion tax but it is a shell it is a shell it's falling down if you if you close a door too loudly a window falls out my mother the other day had a new boiler installed because she was told the other one any day now was going to explode the first time she turned it on the new pressure was so high that it burst all her pipes oh sounds so stressful but you rate you the other thing she could do is a re-rating of of all the properties right right because the argument is there that there hasn't been a revaluation of the bands since the early 90s yes 30 something years right okay how do you do that how do you do that i mean do you do it by right move i mean they don't have the data because my house last changed hands in 1992 right are they going to go on the you know the rating of 1992 or the rating of 2025 compared to other houses is it to do with location is it to do with size is it to a footprint is it to do with postcode you know how are they going to do it yes do you think it's a vote winner saying i'm going to fill the black hole by making people who live in expensive houses pay tens of thousands a year out of taxed income to stay in their own homes.

32:05So my first point is I'm saying I don't think the government's idea of what is an expensive house necessarily reflects the reality of how people are living because it doesn't reflect their income. I mean, the second thing is you use that phrase, unearned income, which is something the left is obsessed with, this idea that there are lots of people sitting on these massive assets that are doing nothing. But actually, they got the asset in the first place. They usually worked very hard in order to get it. And as you very sensibly said, they haven't realised it because you're living in it. Because most people buy a house not for the purpose of selling it on.

32:37Or if it's a farm, you're working the land. And you're hoping to pass it down from one generation to another. And you've got to keep it exactly as it is. But it's exactly like a farm because you're not actually a farm. The annual profit of a farm, I think it's an average of 1%, right? Yes. It generates a profit of 1%. of the, you know, you don't make money by being a farmer. You don't make money by sitting in your own house either. No, no, no, no, precisely. And then there's the final point. You mentioned Englishman's home is his castle and Englishwoman as well. If the government imposes this tax, what it's doing is taxing you for the right to live in your own home.

33:14You're paying the government a sum of money in order to have the right to stay living in your own home. And it hasn't worked in other countries. Right. I mean, I think Spain out of the EU is the only one who's retained any vestige of any kind of wealth tax. Yes. The other ones, France abolished the wealth tax in 2018, Germany in 1997, Sweden in 2007. And the others have got a kind of a modest, they get a modest performative revenue from it. Spain is always the outlier because it is a left-wing government. It's a relatively popular one. It survived COVID, which is very unusual. But what people forget is the prime minister is very good looking.

33:55That's very important. And that's worth like a million votes. You say that, but I don't know what he looks like. I mean, is he like Justin Trudeau? Has he got a Katy Perry type girlfriend? Yeah, but Justin Trudeau also survived against the odds. And I'm telling you, it's worth 5 % or so in the polls. So Kirsten Armagh, poor Kirsten Armagh. He's doomed. He's doomed. Although it didn't work for Rishi Sunak, who I thought was quite good. He looks like a Mr Whippy. Sorry, who worked for Rishi Sunak? It didn't work for Rishi Sunak, who I thought was quite good looking. But am I the only one who thought that?

34:27Because my joke when he got elected was I said Britain isn't ready for its first good looking prime minister. Yeah, that didn't work because it's... Because he isn't. He looks very healthy. Yes. He is tiny. Oh, he is microscopic. People don't realise that until they see him in real life and fall over him. Well, I did see him in real life last week. I saw Camilla at the same event with Rishi. Yes. And he was all kind of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited about his new gig and his new charity and getting children to do maths or whatever it is. Yeah. Very important. Yes. Very important, yet boring.

35:04That'll get him out of poverty, do algebra. Which party are you with right now? I'm not with any party. Good, OK. I'm with the Johnson party still. That's better than the one you were in, because you were associated with the Lib Dems for a while, but that's ended. That's a lot. Oh, my goodness. Right, okay, that was a long time ago. I then did something even more embarrassing, which is I joined that doomed entity called Change UK that my brother, who was on this podcast and was so funny, rather as he calls it AI and Chachabiti, he called it Change UK. Do you have a Change UK? Yeah, I do. There were some extraordinary personalities involved in that.

35:42Chukka, Anna Soubry. Anna Soubry, that's right. No. Which Heidi? Which Heidi was she? But yeah, it was a Heidi. You're quite right. There's always a Heidi in any liberal organisation. It was doomed from before. I mean, doomed from the beginning. Right. And it was one of those ones where, you know, the most annoying thing people say to you if you're a journalist is, well, at least you'll get a column out of it. Right. So I joined this doomed party that was already fighting like rats in a sack in 2019 or whatever it was to fight the European elections that it should have never happened. And I did get a book out of it.

36:16Right. But then I contend that Boris actually announced the first lockdown in March 2023 because my book was coming out four days later. Right. And he thought, I've got to get the bookshops closed. I've got to make sure Rachel doesn't have her launch party. Is that how competitive the family is? Oh, yes. You might shut down a country to kill your sister's book. Yeah, to kill the book launch. Did you see his interview on this programme? I did. I did. Yes. Well, I can't say I saw it, but I did listen to it on a dog walk around Wormwood Scrubs and I thought it was highly entertaining. And also, where's my cocoa?

36:53Yeah. No, you weren't offered cocoa. I thought he was actually offered coffee, but it turns out he was indeed offered cocoa because the machine wasn't working. And that particular thing, for some reason, went viral in Pakistan. I don't know why, but it's given him a second lease of life.

37:09But while we're discussing... He was so pleased with the cocoa. He was, wasn't he? Kind of toddler. Yes. I mean, I would have been pleased with Coco too compared to the coffee offering. Had I known I'd have put marshmallows in it. I'd have put marshmallows in it. While we're talking third parties, your party, not your party, but the your party. Oh, yes, the Corbyn-Sultana party. The Corbyn-Sultana party. Jeremy Corbyn is appearing in a panto this year. Oh, which one is it? What's it called? The name of which escapes it. Here we are. The former leader and now, this is what it says on my script, former Labour leader and now leader of your party, Jeremy Corbyn, is swapping the Commons for some Christmas fun.

37:48He's set to make an appearance as the Wizard of Oslington at the dragon-fused Christmas panto Wicked Witches, which will be at the North London's Pleasance Theatre. What do you think of that? Well, I mean, it just shows that the arc from Glasto to Panto Yes It's tighter and shorter all the time Would you do it? I would do it Oh goodness me, I can't I'm so sad I haven't been asked to do Panto I've done reality TV I mean obviously I'm waiting for celebrity traitors But I think he's pre-recording his outing isn't he? I want to go and see him on stage and everyone, you know, for Jezarella or whatever it's going to be So he's not taking the risk of actually physically appearing on stage He's one of the most annoying expressions.

38:38He did once dress up as Santa Claus, didn't he? Yeah, no, he has done that. So he has a sense of fun, Jeremy Corbyn. Oh, I'm taking your word for it. No, he does. I think he does. I think it's the kind of fun that Puritans in Massachusetts in the 17th century would have. But nonetheless, he does have a sense of fun. Well, he likes growing marrows and making marmalade. Yes. I mean, he's got a lot going for him. But this is a gift for sketch writers. which I am one, because it's a lazy thing, but we can come up with new left-wing titles of pantomimes. Oh, there's a very good left-behind joke. He's left behind you.

39:16No, he's behind us. That's very good. That's very good. Boom, boom. But I was thinking, obviously, Snow Red and the seven vertically challenged gentlemen, because you can't see. Oh. Right. Instead of... That's terrible. Instead of Mother Goose, Big Brother Goose, and I thought Puss in Jackboots. Sort of Stalinist, right? Got it, got it. OK, got it. I fear Zahra Sultana will sue. Rachel Johnson, thank you so much for coming in. And I hope we can do this again. And Camilla in absentia, thank you very much for having me. Thank you.

40:06Thank you.