Trump's ‘disgusting’ diplomacy derails peace plan

0:27The Telegraph Burnham might be slipping back into Parliament by way of a by-election. It's Keir Starmer's worst nightmare. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:51Tim, we need to talk about Trump again. We've basically covered the Donald all week, but I think it is merited because he has now come up with his Board of Peace. The Board of Peace. Tim, what's your understanding of the Board of Peace? It's a movable feast, but the idea is it was established to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza. But it seems to have evolved into a sort of shadow UN, a peacekeeping force, which might contain the membership of not just Tony Blair, but Vladimir Putin. And for that reason, European leaders are staying out of it. including Keir Starmer, who has said no, and Kimi Baden-Ock says he is right.

1:33It is a board very much under the thumb of Donald Trump, who can remain chairman of it for as long as he likes, and he can veto any decision he disagrees with. He introduced the Board of Peace by talking at some length about the wars he's started, but also the wars he's ended, some of which, of course, have ended so well that they've already started another one. And there was a wonderful moment in the speech when he turned around and looked at all the signers to the document behind him, a mixture of monarchs and alleged war criminals. And Tony Blair. And Tony Blair. Well, no, he's not actually on the Board of Peace.

2:06He's on like a subcommittee of the Board of Peace. But Trump looked at all these strange people in their funny hats and said, I like all of them. Usually two or three I hate, but I like all of these people. Well, that might be because Keir Starber wasn't there. Alistair Heath joins us on The Daily Tea again to discuss the latest in Trumpland, editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Star columnist, your latest offering, Trump's imperial delirium could trigger a catastrophic chain reaction, is currently going great guns online and we are going to link that column to our show notes so everyone can enjoy it.

2:42That's quite the prediction, Alistair. I mean, do you think it is that grave? Because let's be honest, things have changed since Tim and I recorded yesterday's podcast about Trump. He signed some kind of deal. This was all about the art of the deal, Alistair. You're taking him far too literally, too seriously. This is just how he operates. And actually, he's kind of reverse ferreted because he knew that in the end, he couldn't conquer the other Western leaders and get Greenland for himself. Well, I think something has changed dramatically. I think there's a rupture in the world order. In reality, it's just really a recognition that the emperor has no clothes.

3:25The so-called liberal international order, which is this weird technocratic word that was concocted a few years ago, that really just meant Pax Americana after the end of the Cold War, when America was the only hegemon, a period that lasted for probably less than 20 years, from the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the start of the financial crisis. That Pax Americana is gone. We now live in a multipolar world and different superpowers are fighting it out. And America, while still extremely powerful, thanks to Silicon Valley in particular, is actually in relative decline, obviously, because in 1990 it was the only superpower.

3:59Now there's also China and so on. And America itself, their budget deficit is too large, their current account deficit is too large and so on. So they've got problems too, big macro problems. So the point is the world is in a very different place. And Mark Carney made a speech in Davos, which lefty groupies lapped up and said was the best thing they've ever heard for 30 years. which basically was his exposition of two things. One, the case for left-wing nationalism, which if you're a left-wing Canadian who's only a prime minister of Canada thanks to Donald Trump, makes some sort of sense. And secondly, really, a justification for sucking up to China and Qatar instead of America, which I think is totally wrong.

4:39But the point is, this is why I still think the thesis in my piece remains correct. The world orders, the fact that big left-wing leaders now openly say that the era of American hegemony is over, which is something I didn't say before, and therefore we should suck up to China instead or do some other stuff, I think is very dangerous. I think clearly you need to move on from the fact that America is the only superpower, but the answer is not to get closer to China. And if someone's stupid enough to start launching some sort of concerted economic attack on America, for example, selling American government bonds, as some people have advocated, you could easily have a real economic war and a complete disintegration of everything, which would dramatically hurt every country, trigger another recession, all that sort of stuff.

5:24So I do think we're in a very difficult place, a very dangerous place, even though Trump, as we recall this programme, has U-turned effectively on the Greenland thing or claims he's got some sort of deal. Who knows how long that will last? Who knows when he'll start trying to get it again? You know, the world's in a difficult place because the left-wing elites no longer think that they need to, you know, profess their allegiance to the liberal international order. And in practice, that means that they're starting to turn to other places like China and Qatar and so on, which I think is quite dangerous.

5:56Yes. So now he appears to have agreed to something on Greenland, which sounds not unlike the proposal cooked up by the Telegraph's very own David Blair. Who was in this studio. Explaining it a couple of days ago, that US bases would be treated as sovereign territory. So in effect, he has bought Greenland, but he's bought the bits that US planes are sitting on. Maybe, by the way, but nothing's really actually been signed. Right. And I'm just quite sceptical of this whole thing. You know, it may be that Trump's just pretending to pull something off. Maybe what he's got was what was already on offer before.

6:30Right. Or he has actually achieved the scenario you've just depicted, but I'm not too sure the Danes are aware of that yet. Right. He, of course, previously said that the Chagos deal was a good one. Then he said it was a bad one. I'm sure he'll now say it's a good one again. He has said, I'm going to take Greenland. Then he comes up with a deal. Is the point about Trump that he just continuously escalates things because he regards himself as being in a kind of a rolling negotiation with the world? It's difficult to know what you've agreed with him because when he decides it's in his interest to, he will tear up that agreement and start all over again.

7:04Yeah, maybe. But you know what? I'm getting sick of Trump. And the point is, I think Trump's done some very good things. The war on woke, bombing Islamist Iran's nuclear power plants, supporting Israel, fighting anti-Semitism in America, taking on woke universities. Quite a lot of good stuff, very important stuff. Also terrible stuff. I think the way he's blowing up the Western alliance has gone too far. It's dangerous now, it's bad. The way he threatened Britain on Saturday was terrible. You just don't go around threatening trade sanctions on your friends. That's wrong. Yes, there's a lot of things wrong in Britain, but you shouldn't go around trying to bully us and threaten sanctions on us.

7:42The situation is now so bad that I think no conservative party in Europe can now defend Trump anymore. Everyone has to criticise him because there's a clash of nationalisms here, right? You know, you can be America first, that's fine. You can be France first, whatever. But when America becomes imperialistic and tries to tell everyone else what to do and threaten everyone else and tries to, you know, destroy jobs in Britain or France or whatever, that's a problem. You can't be British. and be America first. That's right. That's absurd. That's right. It's OK to... Look, my position is Trump's done some very good things, but he's doing some terrible things too.

8:16And, you know, I'm just kind of sick of the whole thing. I think the Greenland thing was just one step too far. It was quite disgusting. And also constantly attacking Denmark. You know, it's wrong. But, but, but, when you say it's the end of the Pax Americana, isn't that a Trump time-limited period? I mean, presumably, worse could still come J.D. Vance He's even more isolationist. Could be problematic, but he's more of an intellectual. And he doesn't do this kind of big gambit and then climb down. I mean, there's a reason Trump's been nicknamed Taco. Trump always chickens out. And that does seem to be his approach to everything, right?

8:52Ask for the earth. And there's a conspiracy theory behind that, right? That in fact what Donald Trump is doing is he is purposefully creating crises that crashes the market so that his friends can then buy low. and then when he inevitably chickens out, the market rallies and his friends can then sell high. Yes, this has happened throughout this entire threatened tariff war that his mates on Wall Street appear to have benefited. And it is the flip of the conspiracy theory that the Democrats in Congress are just doing insider trading all the time, which is why people who don't have many skills or talents are incredibly rich.

9:28I think Trump is a symptom of the end of American hegemony. I think American hegemony ended in about 2008 when Bear Stearns went bust. Suddenly, the whole so-called macro order around the dollar and the Fed and all that sort of stuff collapsed. That technocratic worldview, the central banker as king, perpetual growth, all that collapsed. At the same time, America's foreign policy post 9-11 in Iraq and Afghanistan was in tatters. Then Obama came along and Biden came along and they were a disaster. They were incredibly weak. They allowed Russia to spiral out of control. They empowered Iran. American hegemony ended in 2008, not because of Trump.

10:10And the next US president may be someone like J.D. Vance or someone like Marco Rubio, or it could be someone like AOC. We don't know. The whole thing is spiraling out of control. The short period after the Cold War is over, and it's incumbent on European and all Western, any country in the world, to become much stronger, spend a lot much more on defence, think about supply-side vulnerabilities and all that kind of thing. And, for example, you see Israel. Israel is now talking to Greece. Israel is talking to India. Countries are diversifying because they know they can't rely on just this one American superpower.

10:47Now, the key point here is that there should not be an excuse to go and suck up to China. There is no moral equivalence between even an angry America that's lashing out and China. This is very important. I think Mark Carney has made a terrible mistake here, and I fear that a lot of others are going to make the same mistake. You can still be Western and pro-liberty and pro-democracy, even in an era, a post-American era. So take a stand against Trump, and we'll discuss that because we've had Mark Rutter make the point, you know, you said that we wouldn't support America if America came under attack.

11:20Can I please remind you of the NATO troops that were killed in Afghanistan defending Bush's mission, etc., etc.? We get all that. I think that exchange gets to the heart of why I'm cynical about much of this, because those NATO countries shouldn't have been involved in Afghanistan. I know, but they were. They were led by the nose by America. And there is Ritter supposedly standing up for the West. And what he's actually saying to the emperor is, we would die for you. That to me is not standing up for the West. But we either have a situation where right-minded in both senses of the word, countries in the West do club together and form some kind of alliance against wrong-minded countries like Russia, China, North Korea and all the rest of it.

12:03But the other thing that's happened is, of course, this European rejection of the Board of Peace, which I suppose is a way of standing up to Trump. Except Orban. Victor Orban was one of the signatories to the Board of Peace. So that's why I tear my hair. I'm tearing what's left of my hair and there's basically none of it later. But I'm tearing it out. Because again, I think Trump is messing up a golden opportunity here. Yes, the UN is a rotten system. The post-1945 order is obviously dead, right? Because you can't freeze the world in 1945. He's right. So what he's trying to do here, he's trying to set up an alternative UN.

12:42That's clearly what's going on. But as usual, it's all Trump-esque. And it's some weird mix of East India Company and kind of some Trump-related project and this and that and the other, and it mixes everything up. And it's not going to work in the sense that it's not going to become a sustainable alternative to the UN. And it's a tragedy because you need a sustainable alternative to the UN. I think you need to rebuild the international order, right? The old order is dying. People clinging on to certain elements of it, like the entire UN infrastructure, right? It's a complete farce. People are clinging on to it.

13:14We need an alliance of democracies. I don't know what we need Exactly. I would suggest an alliance of international democracies from all over the world that cooperate on certain things and that push certain broadly defined common goals like, you know, freedom of the seas, free trade, you know, respect for private property, respect for independence, those sorts of broad issues. Led by whom, though? Because traditionally, what's happened here, and you made this point earlier in the week, excuse my French, you know, the Pax Americana and the special relationship works really well until the US president turns out to be a dick.

13:51You literally said that to me. Not on air. Well, I know, but let's just say it like that. Because what's happened here is, as you say, we all had mixed feelings about this guy anyway, but compared to the alternative, which was a demented Biden or an underqualified Harris, OK, here he goes. it all works perfectly well. I mean, maybe I'm being far too pro-blighty here, and maybe I'm being nostalgic, by the way. Maybe I've got Thatcher and Reagan in my mind or whatever, even Blair and Bush. But surely this only really works, let's set up an alternative UN, if you have a US president that isn't being difficult and egotistical and maniacal, and you have a UK prime minister who's actually in the room.

14:38So why is the Western world flailing about? Because those two positions are occupied by people who, for different reasons, aren't fit for the role. Alistair. Yes, but I mean, first of all, the fact that I'm becoming quite critical of Trump doesn't mean that I'm somehow pro-Democrat or something in America. I think Biden was a catastrophic calamity and I think Obama was a terrible, terrible president. So, you know, it's just reality. That's the reality on that front. I think if you're an alternative UN, right, that's different from being an alternative alliance of middle-ranked democracies, for example.

15:13So an alternative UN, you do need to invite all the despots and the nutters, which I suppose is what Trump's trying to do. But I just don't think his project's going to work. It's not a real project. It's too much about him. It's too much about ego. It's some sort of semi-privatised corporatist UN, you know. So it's not going to work. In which, by the way, he is the chairman of the board and he gets to choose his successor. To be fair to him, we should say the Board of Peace is actually there to manage the situation in Gaza. Well, it started off like that. I'm not sure. I think the Board of Peace becomes an umbrella organisation with these subcommittees allocated to different countries.

15:49So, for example, one of them's for Gaza, one's Venezuela, you know, that sort of thing. Maybe Iran, if there's regime change in Iran. Also, he's charging a billion dollars per country to join. Yeah, OK, there's a hefty entrance fee and you probably get stamped on your hand as you go in. So you can always come back later. But to be fair, he has got Middle Eastern countries that might not otherwise have invested in this to get involved. And that is the point of the board. That's the immediate point of the board of the piece. And I think we should also think about what would have happened if Kamala Harris had won.

16:21Would the world order be in a better place right now? It would be catastrophic. It would be just as much a disaster plus woke. Yes, yes. It would have been a catastrophe, yes. No, no, I mean, she was surrounded by anti-Western zealots and fanatics. And one of the issues I care about is Israel, and that would have been a catastrophe. Iran, an utter, utter catastrophe. I think Trump did an incredibly good thing for humanity when he bombed Iran's nuclear sites. And I'm looking forward to whether he's going to do something in the next few weeks again when it comes to Iran. right? So Trump is not all bad, that's not what I'm saying, but I think he's behaved abominably on a number of issues.

16:55And I think, you know, this will be the moment to reconstruct the global architecture. And he's failing because his ego is so crazy that he's now trying to do this border peace thing. But if Tony Benn were alive today and in the room, he would say what you're arguing for is what the left has been trying to build since the Second World War, which is a multilateral world system where every country has an equal weighted seat at the table. and that it's actually right-wingers like us who've consistently blown that up by insisting on the right to go our own way and say Iraq or Afghanistan or tell poor countries what to do.

17:28I'm not quite making that argument. Is it our fault that the UN hasn't worked because we've just not taken the idea of poorer countries having an equal say seriously? No, no. I think the UN can't work because not every country has the same values. I think the fundamental error that Westerners, even me in the past, have made is to believe that everyone aspires to the same thing. That was one of the gigantic intellectual errors that was made after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I made that error. I thought that bringing China into the WTO and all that sort of stuff would lead China to become not just rich, which indeed that worked, but also more Western, more democratic, more liberal, all that kind of stuff.

18:06Less communist. Exactly. That has failed disastrously. And as we saw with Hamas, as we see with many countries, not everyone wants the same thing. I think it's a terrible error and Trump sometimes makes that error. He'll say stuff like, you know, everyone wants the same thing. We all want peace and stuff. No, not everyone wants peace. Not everybody wants a particular conception of democracy. There's more than one conception of democracy anyway. So the UN will always be divided. What I'm advocating is, A, let's be realistic. There's going to be several superpowers. These superpowers are going to do anything they want.

18:36Nothing we can do about it. However, there should be some sort of countervailing force, maybe some sort of loose alliance of middle-ranking countries that can agree with each other. There might be two alliances, right? One for the pro-Western people, one for the not pro-Western people. But as an anti-status quoist, in a way, as Trump channels his inner Francis Rossi or anti-Francis Rossi, maybe it's a good thing. Although the way he's gone about it is extremist and, as you say, you called it disgusting. Maybe the sort of shaking of the global tree when it comes to actually re-evaluating the world order has ultimately been a good thing, Alistair.

19:18Well, clearly the status quo has to change, but I just think there would have been a great opportunity for a slightly more constructive approach, shall we say. I disliked Mark Carney's intervention at Davos because of its extreme hypocrisy and also because of the way he totally distorted, in quite a shocking way, what Vaclav Havel said to justify Canada sucking up to a communist China. I didn't particularly like that. But the point is, Carney, nevertheless, his analysis is still very interesting and worth reading. And we are at a moment of rupture, as Carney says. but I'm concerned that we don't have the right leadership in America to try and make the most of this moment.

19:53What about leadership here? So speaking of sucking up to China, the super embassy on the Royal Mint site, as we know we've discussed it at length on this podcast, has been green-lighted by Keir Starmer ahead of a visit to Beijing next week and Japan, presumably because he wants to be able to say to President Xi, oh look, I've got you a big shiny new super embassy with a spying dungeon underneath it in the centre of our capital, right next to the cable. Does it say that on right move? Drinking the city of London. Along with the other specs. Ta-da! Ground rent, two bathrooms. Spying dungeon. Spying dungeon.

20:29Well air-conditioned. See Telegraph for Blueprint. It's very well air-conditioned. Floor plans, courtesy of the Telegraph. I can only assume they're doing a lot of laundry in the basement because it's such a lot of air conditioning. Can we just have a discussion? Because I heard some lefties on the radio this morning saying it was great that Starmer wasn't at Davos. You know, he's managed to keep his hands clean. And I just thought, well, no, hang on, a better politician, the best politician, would have gone to Davos very visibly, had behind closed doors bilaterals leaked out and claimed total credit for the Greenland climb down.

21:05Starmer doesn't have the intelligence. I didn't agree with Mark Carney, a lot of what he said, but there's no denying his intellectual power. Keir Starmer cannot deliver that kind of public speech. It's almost what is the point of him being there? There's no point. I mean, Starmer's a dud, right? I mean, let's face it, everybody knows that. He's a complete disaster. I know he's a dud, but he's played this week really badly. Yeah, I mean, people think he's... The left will think he's played it well, but he hasn't played it well. In any case, this Greenland thing's not over, as far as I'm concerned.

21:33It may easily kind of crop up again. The point is, we've got Trump flailing around, damaging a lot of things while fixing a few things, And you've got Starmer, who basically is stuck. He has no ideas. He doesn't understand the world. He's sitting in Britain. Britain isn't working. I think it's broken, whatever. That's a separate argument. There's not enough economic growth. He doesn't know how to get economic growth. So what does he do? He sucks up to the Chinese. He sucks up to the EU. He sucks up to random people. What you need is a drastic change in domestic UK policy in a whole range of areas, including energy.

22:04Trump is right on that. To reboot the UK economy, right? That is a very important thing now. not just for living standards in Britain, which is the core reason, but also for reasons of geopolitics. No one is going to treat Britain well if we are so poor and so weak. No. Are we going to see some kind of Chagos U-turn, Tim? Probably. I'm confused as to where we are on Chagos. The US president liked it, now he hates it, possibly because he's being G'd up by Nigel Farage on the issue. And now where are we? Yes. I did LBC last night and I was sitting in the green room waiting and I could see Ian Dale taking a call from someone who was sort of saying, well, I think what Trump's doing is this.

22:43And as I said to the producer, no one right now knows what Trump is doing. Not even Trump. Including Donald Trump. So the last person in the world who can tell you what Trump is doing is John from Barnstable. We love John from Barnstable. Lovely man, I'm sure, but trust me, he does not know what's going through Trump's head. Now, we've mentioned Starmer on the world stage. Let's think about his domestic future in the UK as Prime Minister as it emerges that Andy Burnham, da-da-da, of impressive eyelash fame, could have a route back to Westminster.

23:29Camilla, everyone assumes that the strongest challenger to Keir Starmer within the Labour Party would be Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham. The problem is he's not in Parliament. No. But it now looks as if he has a route in. Andrew Gwynne, the former Labour MP who was suspended over abusive WhatsApp messages last year, is now expected to give up his Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton, which Mr Burnham could then contest for Labour. Alistair, this is surely Keir Starmer's worst nightmare. Yes. This is a seat that I think Labour will probably win. Reform will try very hard to win it. But when you look at the figures, it'd be a very, very uphill struggle for reform.

24:17I mean, they might just about put it off, but I suspect Labour will keep that seat. So therefore, there's all sorts of nightmares here for Keir Starmer. First of all, the decision of Guignard. Can he somehow manage to block him from standing in the seat? What's going to happen in Greater Manchester? what will the public in Manchester think of the mayor resigning, which I assume he'd have to do if he selected. Thank you very much. You know, you're supposed to be serving as our mayor and you love being our mayor and suddenly you want to go off to be an MP. Why? Because you want to challenge King Starmer.

24:46It's quite hard to say that sort of message. And then you're going to have the mother of all battles in the seat. So I think major issues for Labour, major, major issues for King Starmer and for Labour here. I was just going to give some stats on the seat. So it was a very strong Labour win in July 2024. 50.8 % of the vote. The population has a high proportion of residents working in public admin, education, health, elementary and caring roles. Which is a typical classic Labour voter. Reform came second. Reform came second, but something like 15 % of the vote. That's order of magnitude. But normally when there's a by-election, it's a referendum against the government and that would favour reform.

25:25But voting for Andy Burnham will be a referendum against Keir Starmer because everyone will know that what you're doing is sending a left-wing alternative into Parliament. Yes. I mean, there are some kind of aiding factors here, which is the slight arrogance of a man who thinks he can just stand down from being the mayor of Greater Manchester. So there's some kind of balancing themes here, but it's going to be quite hard. Reform might gain 15 points, even 20 points, but I think it's going to be quite hard for them to win, which means he's likely to win. If he's selected for that seat, I think he's likely to win.

25:58He might not be selected by the NEC, right? Yes. He might not be. So we may be putting two and two together and making 22. But imagine the row. I mean, imagine the row. I mean, Starmer's just so desperate to save his seat that he somehow manages to get the NEC to block this guy. And Starmer lost the deputy leadership contest. Lucy Powell won that. She's an ally of Andy Burnham. Yes, instead of Bridget Philipson, right, who was the Prime Minister's pick. And that's the first order implications. The second order implications is If you are a person who wants to be the head of the Labour Party and you want to be Prime Minister, your time is running out because Burnham's coming back.

26:32So you've got to move fast. So a number of other people are going to think that they're going to have to move fast. So the whole can of worms could explode to mix two or three metaphors simultaneously. That then explains why West Streeting moved fast last week, Tim. and the piece in The New Statesman, oh, I wasn't plotting a leadership bid, but I am planning one. Yes. And the nuance of all that and the fact that his campaign appears to have, his briefing campaign at least, and his actual campaign appears to have wrapped up. It's not briefing, it's open. He openly attacked the Prime Minister and was talking about you need to get things right the first time, less U-turns.

27:11Streeting's problem is, is he is beloved, I don't know why, by Westminster, but really disliked by Labour members. Yes. Because they perceive him to be right wing. Which is a joke. So he can only win an internal contest if he runs from the left and if he's in some kind of ticket with Angela Rayner, which he's supposedly been lobbying for. She won't commit to it because if she ran and she was against him, she could win. Although it should be noted she's on manoeuvres because she did a kind of like, I haven't done anything wrong interview with the Sunday Mirror. Yes. I mean, Rayner's clearly on manoeuvres.

27:42I mean, I still think Miliband. Miliband is on manoeuvres. Yeah, I mean, I think he stands a high chance. The issue with it, he pretends he's not interested, obviously. Yes. I wouldn't be surprised to see him. But then we had that story about this could be an infringement of the Trades Descriptions Act, but it was suggested that there could be a dream ticket of Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband as Chancellor. Right. Wasn't that mooted last week? Every righty's absolute nightmare. Well, sort of. I mean, on the other hand, I mean, it would be so egregious. It would wind up Conservative England so much that, you know, The backlash to that will be pretty devastating, I suspect.

28:18I mean, anything that sees Miniband coming back, by the way, is defying democracy, right? Miniband failed in a general election. If he suddenly comes back in a very, very senior position, either as the leader of the Labour Party or Chancellor, the message it sends is not exactly great. But, I mean, Burnham is a big thing right now, and I think that's going to flush out a lot of activity. It's a problem politically for Keir Starmer. It's also a problem on policy grounds as well, isn't it? because, for instance, welfare reform is going to be the big issue the next couple of years. Welfare reform, yes, but there could also easily be an auction, an anti-American auction.

28:52Right. So, you know, Starmer thinks he's holding the fort when it comes to Trump, being very careful not to criticise him too much, not to blow up the relationship completely. But, you know, if you're Andy Burnham, you're desperate, right? Or, you know, if you're Angela Rayner, you're desperate. You're trying to be leader of the Labour Party. It's probably your only chance. You've got to do it now and, you know, maybe you lose the next election. We'll have a series of set-piece speeches by Burnham from the backbenches about America, about Israel, all designed to whip up animosity. Yeah, as well as all the class warfare and stuff like that.

29:23I mean, you could end up with an even more left-wing Labour Party. I mean, those of us on the right think this Labour Party is catastrophically left-wing and has wreaked extreme damage on this country as a result of its absurd policies. But just wait until you get the next Labour leader. And it has you turned on one or two things. I just don't think that would happen. Right, but I don't think that would happen under Burnham. They won't even say scrap the winter fuel allowance. I mean, you won't even get to that point. Should we have a look at the electoral maths on, I mean, obviously, all of the candidates that we've mentioned to replace Starmer would beat him.

29:53According to Survation, it's a poll for Labour list. Andy Burnham would defeat Starmer by 58 % to 32. Angela Rayner would defeat him by 52 % to 33. Ed Miliband would beat him by 44 % to 40. and Wes Streeting would edge out Starmer 33 % to 31%. So the least strong candidate, as you've pointed out, is Streeting. The most strong is Burnham, closely followed by Rayner. The Streeting numbers are within the margins of not just Error but the Labour left properly agitating against him because you always have to consider the role of unions and the unions are moving further left as there's some leadership changes coming which are going to make them even more anti-the-government.

30:38Yeah. I mean, the other thing, if Burnham wins a seat, which I suspect he would, he's not going to lose it at the general election, most likely. Treating, I think, will lose his seat at the general election. Yes, of course. So he would need to change seat before the general election. His majority was so reduced by the way, too. But she might be able to find a different one as possible, I suppose. Yeah, but then we then have to witness a load of unedifying chicken runs to become the next Labour leader. I mean, I wouldn't put it past them, but it's not the best look, is it? No, no. Wonderful. Alistair, we're going to let you shuffle off now because I think you've got a high-level lunch.

31:11Tim and I... We've got a low-level sandwich. And we are, having said that, we had great fun, didn't we? And we're going to be back tomorrow with our pub special at 5pm. Pour me a pint already.

31:36Thank you.