Starmer's integrity in tatters over Mandelson sacking

0:03Camilla: The Telegraph.

0:09Yesterday the Prime Minister said he had confidence in Peter Mandelson. Today he sacked him. After a string of scandals, is Keir Starmer's reputation in tatters?

0:19Camilla: And after the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk, what does it mean for freedom of speech? We speak to somebody who knew the father of two. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey.

0:43Camilla, yesterday in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister was asked if he is standing by Peter Mandelson, the then UK ambassador to the United States. He said this. Mr Speaker, let me start by saying the victims of Epstein are the forefront of our minds. He was a despicable criminal who committed the most heinous crimes and destroyed the lives of so many women and girls. The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He's right to do so. I have confidence in him and he's playing an important role in the UK-US relationship.

1:20Camilla: But today, Foreign Minister Stephen Doughty said this to the Commons. In light of additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister has asked the Foreign Secretary to withdraw him as ambassador to the United States. The emails show, Mr Speaker, that the depth and extent of Lord Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment. In particular, Mr Speaker, Lord Mandelson's suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. And in light of that, Mr Speaker, and mindful as we all are of the victims of Epstein's appalling crimes, he has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect.

2:11The implication, Camilla, is that something broke in the last 24 hours that would have radically changed the Prime Minister's mind about Peter Mandelson. So let's dig into what it might have been. Well, what did he know, what did we all know, when he said he had confidence in Mandelson? He already knew that Mandelson had a business relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This newspaper, the best newspaper in the world, revealed that Epstein had broken a£1 billion deal with Lord Mandelson over the sale of a UK taxpayer-owned business after Epstein had been convicted of child sex offences.

2:50Camilla: And while Mandelson was in the Cabinet. Right. In addition, the House Oversight Committee published a collection of birthday best wishes from 2003 in which Mandelson refers to Epstein as my best pal and it contains the immortal words yum yum. So Starmer knew on Wednesday when he said he had full confidence in Mandelson that he had made some profound mistakes of judgment. What actually changed in those 24 hours to go from thinking Mandelson was on the ropes to getting rid of him? Well, on Wednesday night, a new slew of emails emerged written in the wake of Epstein's 2008 conviction for prostitution with a minor.

3:34So bear in mind, this is Mandelson communicating with Epstein after Epstein has been convicted of prostitution with a minor. Mandy wrote, quote, I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. That's a hard thing to read, by the way.

3:57Camilla: Yes. He continues, you have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release, and be philosophical about it as much as you can. Mandelson offered Jeffrey Epstein advice on how to salvage his reputation. Some might infer from the messages that he was lobbying on behalf of Epstein. I want to add that Mandelson has proclaimed that he was misled by Epstein. He has expressed his profound sympathy for Epstein's victims and has regretted continuing his association with Epstein for too long. But here is my question. Do the documents that came to light on Wednesday night materially change anyone's impression of Mandelson and whether or not he should have been the US ambassador?

4:44Harriet Harman has said this on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast.

4:49Camilla: Well, I think he's right to sack him. I wish he'd never appointed him, but now he's gone. I think it's really shameful that Peter Mandelson didn't actually resign. I think he should never have put himself forward for that job, knowing what he, Peter Mandelson, knew about what was likely to come out. So I think it's been a horrible, awful episode, and the important thing is to move on now. So the mother of the house there, with all of her experience and wisdom, is hitting on the nub of the issue, and I think this is how the public sees it as well. As Rob Mendick, who broke this story for The Telegraph, told us on the podcast yesterday, these emails were all quite readily available.

5:31Camilla: There is a whole cache of documents that has been in circulation both online and in newsrooms, the length and breadth, not just of this country but the world, about Epstein and his associations, notwithstanding the Epstein files that everyone wants Trump's administration to publish. so all of this stuff is knocking around any self-respecting journo in fleet street could tell you the following things that mandelson had a close relationship with jeffrey epstein that he maintained a close relationship with him after he was convicted that mandelson had a reputation for being the so-called prince of darkness that he was a master of the black arts of politics, that he had already twice had to resign from government amid reports of various scandals, one to do with mortgages.

6:26Camilla: When Mandelson was appointed by squeaky clean Keir Starmer, the man of decency, I don't know if you know, Tim, but he was a former director of public prosecutions. Oh, I thought he was a toolmaker or something. Yeah, no, apparently his father might have worked in toolmaking in some capacity. So this upstanding, I am fronting up a government of service out with the Tory scum, back to basics. Let's get back to basics with good old-fashioned Labour decency. Yes. Alarm bells started ringing. Peter Mandelson was the question on everyone's lips. Yes. Why was he appointed? what was revealed to the Prime Minister in his vetting, which the rest of the world didn't already know, and as I say, nothing that came out over Wednesday night, as fascinating and as incriminating it was, really added much more to what was already known when he described himself as having confidence in Peter Mandelson.

7:28So this is why it's no longer just a story about Peter Mandelson.

7:33Camilla: No. It's a story about the man who appointed him and why. The man who appointed him keeps on suggesting that everything he's doing is in the service of the country, when in fact it's just in the service of Keir Starmer. And we've seen this repeatedly. We have discussed this. We know he appointed Mandelson because he wanted to keep the Blairite New Labour wing happy. Perhaps also, as we've discussed, there was a sense, a little like Epstein, that Mandelson knew where some of the bodies were buried. There's also the returning of favours, because Mandelson increasingly popped up as Starmer was transitioning from leader of the opposition to prime minister.

8:17Camilla: There was backscratching. I don't get it. His integrity now is shot to pieces, agreed. The Prime Minister and his reputation for doing the right thing now looks ridiculous. His judgment is also shot to pieces because of the following sequence of events. The day before Angela Rayner resigns, I backed Angela Rayner, even though she has admitted to tax avoidance. Again, at that point, we knew. At that point, we knew. We knew, yes. The Telegraph had reported all this stuff. The public had been able to discern from the very first moment. On the doorstep, no Labour MP could answer a constituent who said, but hang on a minute, hasn't the Deputy Prime Minister avoided tax?

8:59Yes.

9:00Camilla: And justify it. But for some reason, Keir Starmer needed to hear this from a civil servant in the same way that he needed to hear more emails from released by the Sun and Bloomberg, I should add. The procedure. And then we have this week, so that was last week, I back Angela Rayner. Next day, Angela Rayner resigns. This week, we have I back Peter Mandelson. The next day, I sack Peter Mandleton. And we are probably expected to admire him for acting so swiftly. This is what he will say. I can hear it right now. I have obeyed the code. Procedure has been followed. Yes. I didn't need to hear it from Laurie Magnus.

9:35Camilla: I decided this for myself. Yeah. Wow. Can we just reflect on the list of Labour calamities since Starmer took power? because some of them I'd forgotten, and a lot of this is going around on X, but it is an interesting period in politics. We had people like Andrew Marr and others revelling in the election of Keir Starmer. The grown-ups are back in charge. Thank goodness, Tim. Thank goodness the left said we can have a period now of stability after the chaos and confusion of Boris Johnson. Within a month there were riots in Southport. We've got Rainer having resigned. We've got Mandelson sacked.

10:12Camilla: That came after Tulip Sadiq resigned. Don't forget Sue Gray had to resign at the beginning of all this. We had Louise Haig, who has withdrawn herself from the deputy leadership race this week, resigning over an alleged phone fraud. Roshana Ali, the homelessness minister, she resigned. We've got the Chagos debacle. Let's not forget Donagate and Lord Ali. We're in the middle of an economic doom loop that's so bad the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been found in tears in the House of Commons. Did she have a row with Angela Rayner? We'll never know. We've now had a revelation that the new policing minister once called for the police to be defunded.

10:47Camilla: We're in the middle of a tube strike that the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, doesn't seem willing to address as we all try and make our way into the office. And it's taking us hours. We've had Keir Starmer sacking three aides now, one in the summer who may or may not have been accused of bullying. We don't quite know. we've got guilt yields at an all-time high higher than they were after Liz Truss's disastrous mini-budget and let's just go through all of the U-turns welfare cuts, winter fuel the definition of a woman the grooming gangs islands of strangers you forget this stuff you forget it all but when it's actually documented sorry to say something slightly controversial but it makes Boris Johnson's administration seem positively sane.

11:40Or perhaps normal. Maybe it's always like this. And part of the problem is that Starmer tried to establish in our mind this very high standard that he would obey in contrast to his predecessors. And actually, no politician can. But that's the problem, is that he set himself up.

11:57Camilla: Yes. That's the biggest U-turn of all, isn't it? Yes. His U-turn from being whiter than white to someone who's made all these mistakes and is associated with so many dodgy people. In the case of Mandelson, it's worth observing that in mad Westminster world, he is looked upon as some kind of god who can fix anything and do anything. Not anymore, though. He's finished, isn't he? At the centre of the new Labour project. I think the kind of people who get to decide who are the adults in the room, in the pundit class or within Westminster itself, the people who define who mature leaders are, they think Mandelson's fantastic.

12:34They forget, as you say, he had to leave government twice. But when Labour then went into the Miliband period and the Corbyn period, when it, depending on which way you look at it, went really left-wing or rediscovered its principle, Mandelson's return was seen again as part of the adults re-entering the room. It's not just the general election. It's before that. It's the build-up to that. This whole sense that finally the sane, mature people are running the Labour Party. And why? Because Peter's involved. Yes. And again, this whisper goes around the press and goes around Westminster. Well, Peter likes him.

13:06Well, so what?

13:08Camilla: Yes. It turns out he's actually not the next messiah. He's just a very naughty boy. He's a very naughty boy. And I am praying today that this is the last we ever hear of Peter Mandelson. Well, do you think his career is over now, isn't it? I think it has to be. If the Duke of York's career is over, then surely Peter Mandelson's career is over. That would be fair. And I think the tone of the emails to Epstein go well beyond what he braced us for. And I think contradict the idea that he was just spun along. Because here he seems to actually be engaged in some of the spinning, one might say, by giving Epstein tips on handling his reputation.

13:50but I have a horrible feeling that actually Mandy will be, I don't know, running the Bank of England within a year's time.

13:57Camilla: He might pop up at the Tony Blair Institute or be heading up a think tank. The next Labour Prime Minister, whoever it is, and let's pray it's a woman from the north. Yes. Whatever idiot Prime Minister it is next will decide that they need Peter to be in charge of Britain's nuclear programme or to represent us at the UN or to be the first British person on Pluto. But there will be a role, I have no doubt, in public life for this, ma 'am. Can we talk about Peter Mandelson's interim replacement? Yeah. A man called James Roscoe, who would you believe? I know. You know. I know him quite well. So James and I used to hang about together because he was the deputy head of comms for the late Queen in Buckingham Palace.

14:38Camilla: And here's a funny little tale for you, Tim, because there's a link to the Duke of York. I remember being on a job with James Roscoe where Prince Andrew was very rude to him. And I think the phrase he used to this communications guru was, when it was raining, get me an effing umbrella. Wow. And that didn't go down very well with James Roscoe, who is a very smooth-talking, very good-looking, very personable and charming former diplomat who then went into communications. Funny enough, I think he worked in comms for Gordon Brown. who I can't imagine he liked very much, then went back to the Foreign Office.

15:21Camilla: Then he was poached from the Foreign Office by the Queen's Communications Secretary, Elsa Anderson, went to work for Buckingham Palace for some period and then went back to Washington. And I knew him and worked with him. Did he get him the effing umbrella? I can't remember, but I remember him really resenting being told to get an effing umbrella. It was said that unpleasantly. So he will have no truck with sort of associations to Epstein. So Prince Andrew can't sweat, but he can get wet. Indeed. And so I think that's a safe pair of hands in Washington because he was the charge d 'affaires. He's got experience.

15:58Camilla: He knows what he's doing. He can handle comms. Really, really crucial. He's also married to the former Radio 3 journalist Clemency Burton-Hill, who has written extensively for this newspaper about suffering from a near-catastrophic brain tumour and rehabilitating over the course of time and how it's affected her personally and their two sons. So the other thing about James Roscoe is, my goodness me, he's had a very, very difficult period in his family life and good luck to him in Washington, I say. He could only be an improvement because also Mandelson's supposed skills as ambassador rested upon contradicting things he'd said before about Donald Trump, because he's one of those.

16:42Camilla: Yes. I hate him. I love him. And also then just praising Trump in the most embarrassing way possible. Obsequious. Although Trump loved that. Didn't Trump make a little thing in the Oval Office? Of course Trump liked it. Yes. We all know the way to his heart is just to tell him he's an amazing person. Was it at the Oval Office or Turnberry? I'm trying to think. When was the occasion where it was Donald, Keir, Donald, Keir, and then Trump was like, And this guy, this guy, even Trump could see that Peter Mandelson was a bit of a bloody player. That's the thing. You can't kidder, kidder, Tim. Talking of replacements, Tim, I'm so sorry, but your TV wife, Emily Thornberry, the woman you were personally backing for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, has pulled out of the race due to a lack of support.

17:26I gave Emily the kiss of death. What can I say? Your endorsement. In the end, she only had 13 MPs behind her, which really surprised me.

17:35Camilla: Unlucky for some. It really shocked me. The race is obviously going to be between Bridget Phillipson, who, as we speak, already has 114 MPs. Does she? And is easily over the threshold to go through. Versus probably Lucy Powell, who, as we speak, is nearing the threshold of 80 and then will probably go through. To my mind, that's a confected race. And it's going to be, as we said, it's going to be a northern off between two northern women trying to pretend they're more working class than each other, etc. It's just tedious. Yes. What they're probably not going to do is debate ideas. But we'll see.

18:06Lucy Powell might gamble that her best bet is to play Gaza, is to talk about wealth taxes. She might do. Or else, as I feared, this is a choreographed race by number 10. And Emily would have just been wonderful.

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19:07Camilla: The words, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I was walking into the studio and thought, I can't really believe this has happened. I couldn't really believe what I was seeing last night. and the visceral nature of opening a video, seeing that just heinous act of wanton violence.

19:32Camilla: I don't know. And we've now got quite a lot of rhetoric around how worried we should all be on the right. I mean, how worried we should all be in general to express an opinion in public that others may disagree with. Yes, I know the UK isn't America. OK, we don't have the right to bear arms, thank goodness. But we've had political assassinations here in recent years. Sir David Amess. Joe Cox. Joe Cox. Look, of course, we know that words don't kill, people do. But how disturbing is this, Tim? We are hearing from the Wall Street Journal and others that law enforcement officials say that messages of transgender and anti-fascist ideology appeared on ammunition inside the rifle.

20:22Camilla: So let's be in no doubt at all, yes, this was a political assassination and it appears as if Charlie Kirk was killed because of his opinions and his beliefs. You and I get our fair share of abuse on social media. People are pretty bloody nasty. Not for the first time in recent years. I've sort of reflected on what I'm saying. My husband has quite often said to me, you know, you do have to be careful. And I'm thinking, oh, I don't really want to live in a world where me and what I regard to be my fairly moderate views need to be careful. Every Sunday, my mother says to me, don't write about Israel.

21:07And I see where she's coming from. I think I saw it on a train because the videos of the shooting were inescapable and were released within minutes of it happening. By the time I got home and was sitting on the set, he had died. It had been announced that he had died and the president had put out a statement. I think a lot of us were in shock and you and I were sharing messages and I was sharing them with various other people. because he's young, he's 31, he's the father of two, because his whole thing was about civil discourse, you might not, as some people on television felt the need to say, agree with everything he said.

21:51There's always a caveat before showing sympathy towards conservatives. But his whole point was, I will come to you and I'll have a discussion about it and we will leave, shake hands and maybe I'll change your mind. So to target someone who really was about free speech and engagement just felt particularly cruel.

22:12Camilla: Yes. In the arena of a university campus. Yes. Where his sole purpose proved me wrong. Only a few weeks before, South Park had produced a very witty satire of him, showing him, as he always used to do, sitting with a bottle of water and saying, change my mind. And he laughed at it. It didn't drive him mad. So this was, as a character, this felt like the wrong person for this to happen to. But there is also a part of us as people who are conservative and are involved in ideas and debate of a feeling of, oh, the arena has just turned really awful. Yes. and now anything's possible. And I'm not saying it's about it happening to us.

22:59I don't feel under personal threat. I'm not enough of an ego to think anyone cares about what I write. It's more just, it's the worst thing to admit, but I saw that and I thought that's going to happen again.

23:13Camilla: And Jeremy Clarkson, who, let's be honest, isn't a man sort of prone to hysteria, has tweeted, you know, he feels worried now about what he's going to be writing and how people might react to it, which I think is significant. But surely the whole thing about Charlie Kirk as well, which is to be admired whether you agreed or disagreed with him, was simply his willingness to have an argument publicly and to have a debate and to voice opinions, but to foster the spirit of debate in young people for whom for far too long many of them have felt silenced. That's the whole point. You know, my son's reaction to this last night was quite telling, really, because I said Charlie Kirk's been shot.

24:00Camilla: Of course, he immediately sees the footage. And I do think we have to have a conversation, not least as it's the anniversary of 9-11 today, about how desensitized we have become. Oh, yes. To seeing really very violent imagery play out before our very eyes. And I think it is something that happened when the Twin Towers came down and it was on video and we were watching it in real time. that we now appear to have an appetite to see things happen. And I'm not comfortable with that, and I wasn't comfortable with my children, 16, 15 and 12. Think of how hard it would have been at the time, or in the decades afterwards, to see the Zabruda tape of Jack Kennedy being shot.

24:41And the way in which it's treated almost like a holy relic.

24:44Camilla: Yes. By contrast, this video is up instantaneously and unavoidable. And there's an argument to be had for we have to see this, We can't close our eyes to what is happening. And it was the same with the footage of the murder of the Ukrainian refugee Irina Zarutska in North Carolina on that train. Oh, yes. I was taught in journalism school, so to speak. There was an example given of a boxer that was killed in the ring. Do you put the photograph of him dead on the front page? No, you don't. Tell, don't show in a way. But back to my son and I said to him this morning, what are your feelings about this?

25:22Camilla: And he goes, well, it's scary. He says, I think it darkens my generation. I said, well, what do you mean by that? And he obviously appreciated somebody trying to encourage young people to be free with their thoughts and their opinions in a public arena. That's not something that my children had witnessed up until that point. And there has been a debate about the erosion of right versus left in schools and in universities. This idea that if you happen to be a right-leaning child, that you can't really speak up because most of the teaching profession are left-leaning. That does filter into teachings in class.

26:08Camilla: It does. It filters into history. It filters into English. It filters into assemblies. You know, that's filtered down to the next generation. It's not just something we've had to deal with. So Charlie Kirk and my daughter wasn't a big fan of his, didn't like his evangelising. They just appreciated somebody having the courage to stand up on behalf of them being able to express a view without being cancelled, without being told to shut up, without being told that their opinion didn't count because it wasn't of a kind of, you know, naturally left-leaning disposition. And that's why his organization that he founded, Turning Points USA, used to go to universities and debate with students.

26:51Now, the big context of this is until about 2008, 2010, conservatives in America felt they were losing a lot of elections. And they couldn't understand why, because they felt they had the strong arguments and they felt they had nailed the economic argument in particular. But there was still a illusion to people like Barack Obama, who they thought could never get elected because they thought he was left wing and a socialist. Whether you think that's fair or not, that's what they thought. And a theory began to develop, promoted by a provocateur called Andrew Breitbart, that the problem with conservatives is they had been targeting electoral races and trying to win contests.

27:26They hadn't actually been looking at the culture that shapes the minds of the voters. So Charlie Kirk was part of a movement of cultural conservatives, who we can call Marga, attached to Trump, who decided that what they needed to do before they ran candidates for election was to challenge the culture, be it what Hollywood produces, what's shown on TV, what's shown on the internet, or what's taught in schools. So Turning Points USA would go around campuses exposing kids who might not hear it to conservative ideas. Now, it should be acknowledged that what Kirk did was controversial because some people felt what he was actually trying to do was shut down liberal voices on campus by naming and shaming left-wing academics and by so doing, frightening them out of doing their job of teaching.

28:21So some people are really quite against Kirk for that reason.

28:23Camilla: Yes. We should also acknowledge that, of course, Democrats and left-wingers get targeted for violence too. And right now, conservatives are naturally feeling very vulnerable. But I think any of those projecting this idea that there is a specific war against conservatives and liberals not, I think that's a big mistake. I think that's very misleading. The problem is, is that everything's turning violent and nasty. It's not just that conservatism is not a protected characteristic. It's not like an ethnic minority. There's no attempt to persecute conservatives. But that is how it is perceived by them in part because of the double standard of how people react to it, that when conservatives are shot, there's always this instinctual sense of, well, maybe they brought it on themselves.

29:07And I think that reflects two things about the left. One is that sense of virtue that you don't check your own privilege. Left-wingers don't check their own privilege. They don't check what they're saying because they're good people. They can say anything. They can say the most horrible, nasty, and sensitive things, but I am saying it for the right reasons. Like I noticed Kevin Maguire, journalist who used to be at The Mirror, very helpfully pointed out that Charlie Kirk was against gun control and was shot by a gun. Oh, well done. But again, I'm so virtuous. I'm going to step into the situation and use it as an opportunity to remind people of how right I am.

29:46And the second thing that characterizes so many on the left is a prioritization of politics over everything else, including interpersonal relationships. So the first thought is not, this is just a human being's died. That's bad in and of itself. It's, what does this mean politically?

30:04Camilla: This is the other thing I object to when it comes to some of the absolutely appalling and disgusting comments that have been made by people who disagreed with Charlie Kirk. I don't agree with them, but... But no one in their daily life does that. Can you imagine being invited to a funeral to deliver the eulogy and opening with, I just want to make it clear that I didn't like this person one bit. But it's sad they're dead. But by people who, by the way, claim the moral high ground, bask in their own progressiveness. These are the least tolerant people on earth. I suppose all of us exist in echo chambers.

30:37But, you know, commentators on the left. Imagine revelling in the assassination of

30:43Camilla: any commentator on the left. It's an unthinkable premise. I wouldn't do it.

30:53We're now joined by Greg Swenson, the chairman of Republican Overseas. Greg, I know that you met Charlie Kirk a number of times. Could you describe his character to us, give us a sense of the man? Yeah, Charlie was just a really decent human being. He was passionate about his faith. He was passionate about politics and conservative politics. And he was persuasive. You know, he enjoyed making the argument, making persuasion of especially of young people his priority. You know, he was great, you know, obviously focused on universities and sort of Generation Z and did a really great job with with not only communicating and converting people to conservatives, But even he liberated existing conservatives that were basically closeted in these universities and even some of the corporations, you know, for a lot of the kids, you know, first jobs right after college, they couldn't admit in the workplace that they were conservatives or voted Republican.

31:57I mean, it was just a really difficult time. This is a few years back. But he's done a really good job liberating those students and really bringing them into the conservative movement. Greg, can you explain to us, why did Charlie Kirk choose to go to universities? What was the thinking behind targeting young undergraduates and trying to expose them to opinions they might not have heard? Yeah, the interesting thing, and it's a great question, the interesting thing is no one else had ever tried it, really. I mean, there was loosely defined organizations, you know, college, Republican clubs that nobody ever went to.

32:34But I think it was because in high school, he and many other students started to understand that even the high schools were really co-opted by the progressive left. And it probably a remnant of the 60s when the students of the 60s ended up being the next generation's professors and administrators. And so it probably started in high school. And I'm sure his he didn't go to university, but I'm sure his friends that were attending the universities, especially in the Midwest and the Big Ten, probably were coming home with stories about just how how illiberal the professors and the administrators were.

33:11And there was just a lack of tolerance for any diversity of thought. And I think that's what really drove him. And he started reaching out that at the time they were they were kids that were his age. and he had some real connectivity. And so it was a really interesting movement and it really did turn out to be the most successful conservative movement ever directed at university students and people in their 20s.

33:38Camilla: Greg, up until the second presidency of Trump and indeed the re-emergence of Nigel Farage in the political scene in the UK, the term young conservative used to be a bit of an oxyboron. We know that Charlie Kirk wasn't initially a huge Trump fan. He came towards his way of thinking over the course of time. But how influential do you think he was in the young MAGA movement and in Trump's re-election? Because we did witness a surge in support among the young, and particularly young men. That's been put down to podcasters like Joe Rogan, but also social media figures like Charlie Kirk. Can you try and quantify his contribution in that sense?

34:25Absolutely. I mean, I can't necessarily put a number on it, but surely Charlie was probably the most influential. That doesn't mean that the Joe Rogan podcast wasn't meaningful and Barstool Sports. You know, there are other communicators, especially male communicators that had an influence. But it was definitely driven by Charlie at the university level. And as those students graduated from university every year and got into the workforce, they sort of carried that. And, you know, I can I can even explain I have two children in their 20s and my daughter works at Goldman Sachs and couldn't admit at work that she was a conservative.

35:02And that was two years ago. That's changed. And I think even at the universities, it was really difficult. So, see, in many ways, he helped expose the bias at the universities and the bias in the HR departments of these big companies and also, you know, gave permission in many ways for the students to come out of the closet in terms of being a conservative. So I think he had a long lasting effect on those students. And now those students, some of them are in their late 20s and early 30s. And they've really started with Charlie. And my daughter is probably a great example of that. Do you think that young people now are going to be more prone to expressing conservative views or more afraid?

35:46Camilla: I mean, Tim and I have been discussing for this podcast, what does this mean for people on the right? Should we be worried? I mean, the last thing Charlie Kirk would want would be for it to shut down debate. And yet we seem to be entering a different sphere now that you can be gunned down in public for expressing a view that others disagree with. Yeah, it's really difficult. I don't think the latter will happen. I think there will be more free speech because he was such a great advocate of it. And he did it with a smile on his face. And he did it in a way where he embraced people who didn't agree with him and made the argument.

36:25And he was very persuasive. So I think, if anything, that will continue. I don't think anybody wants to go back to the dark days of censorship and cancel culture, which we had in America. I mean, I know we talk about it a lot in the UK right now. But four years ago, it was robust in America, both cancel culture and censorship and collusion between government and government agencies with the media companies. It was a really troubling time. So I think the memories are short. And I think these young people are smart enough to know that the best way to manage that is have the argument, have the debate and be persuasive and not be afraid.

37:05Have some courage. Greg, I think a lot of people don't appreciate how much the conservative movement is a family. And so many people have taken this killing very personally. I didn't know him. I knew people who did know him. But I feel as though I did know him. Is that a fair reflection of how conservatives have taken this killing? Yeah, it really is. I've never seen anything like this. I think I'm not exaggerating here when I say that I think this might be a Martin Luther King Jr. level assassination. assassination because, you know, I can't think of a more famous political assassination since Martin Luther King Jr., you know, of course, prior to him, JFK.

37:43But this is a real movement because he was so popular and he was really nice. And he wore his Christianity, his faith on his sleeve. He wore his conservatism on his sleeve, but not in an obnoxious way. I mean, maybe some people thought he was obnoxious because he was willing to answer questions and to make the argument, but he did it in a very Christian way with a smile on his face. And in many ways, he participated in this common sense revolution, which we've definitely seen in America. And I think we're seeing it in parties of the right, like Reform, here in the UK. So he was very much a part of that movement and good for him.

38:22And I think that, if anything, I don't think there'll be a pullback from that. Yeah, there's some safety issues. And I know people in the cabinet and, you know, who have full-time security staff and even the spouses have that. And so it's unpleasant. But, you know, when we've had a history of political violence in America, I mean, the founding fathers really hated each other in many ways. Their rhetoric was much worse than what we have today. And then, of course, you had Lincoln, followed by McKinley and others that have been assassinated. So, you know, I think this will pass, but I do think that the common sense revolution and the diversity of thought is here to stay.

39:03And I think that's partly due to the courage of Charlie Kirk. Rex Swenson, thank you very much.

39:10Camilla: We'll be back tomorrow, 5 p.m., with an interview with Michael Gove.

39:26Thank you.