Why won't Starmer stand with Trump on Iran?

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0:57Does the British government support Donald Trump's airstrikes on Iran's nuclear bases? It's very hard to tell with the Prime Minister as ever studiously fence-sitting, while Nigel Farage, the unofficial leader of the opposition some might say, throws his support behind America. Farage has also been outgunning Labour with the announcement of a Robin Hood-style levy on non-doms. he'll be wearing tights next. With reform surging to 34 % in the polls, its highest rating yet. We'll be joined by top Tory Tom Tugendhat to discuss foreign and domestic politics. And Camilla and I will be debating Palestine actions protest.

1:35Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomeny. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:49Welcome to the studio, Tom Tugers. How are you? Very nice to see you. Look, I've got to be honest, I thought I was in for a nice afternoon, but I'm a little disappointed with the tea. Yeah, it's not Earl Grey, and we do know this about you. Man of the people will only serve and drink Earl Grey. I'm afraid it's builders. Everybody's equal in my office. Everybody gets the best Earl Grey going. And because we can't serve that, you're drinking it black. You're drinking builder's tea black. I have actually, the one thing that I was particularly, the reason I'm a Thatcherite, frankly, is when Margaret Thatcher took away the milk.

2:19from school children. I hated milk. And when she took away the milk, that's when I realised I was a Conservative. So I've never drunk milk. Also, that's obviously forced you into Earl Grey tea drinking as well. Exactly right. We come full circle. Thoughts on the airstrikes on Fordow and other facilities. Do you think this is about wiping out Iran's nuclear threat or is it actually about regime change? No, I think it's actually about wiping out the nuclear threat. And you can tell that, by the way, because it's been so targeted. It's been on three particular sites, Fordow and then Natanz and Arak.

2:54And the three sites are where the Iranian regime has been refining, enriching the uranium and stockpiling it. So I think it's very focused. I think the comments around regime change are unwise. But I think the decision at this point to seek to end the nuclear blackmail that the Iranian regime has been building up over many years is the right thing to do. I'm afraid I don't understand why our government has been so vacillating about it. The US administration has been very keen to say this is not about regime change. And then Trump said, why not? And this reflects a pattern, doesn't it, for the last couple of weeks.

3:33We thought he wouldn't support Israel in this action. Then he suggested he would. Then he announced that actually I won't do anything for two weeks. And then within 24 hours of that, he had joined in the attack. Now, is this, do you think, a carefully plotted disinformation campaign to throw Iran? Or does it actually suggest that Trump is making this up as he goes along? Look, I'm really sorry. I'm not even going to enter into that on simple grounds that I have absolutely no idea. And I don't think anybody else does. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a senator and a Republican senator in the US who refers to this as OMH, one man's head.

4:12You just don't know. And the reality is, in that sense, it's not an administration. It's an individual. And so we see what comes up. But I think his decision here is the right one. It may not be for the right reasons, but it is the right one. Because the reality is, I mean, you don't need me to tell you this. You've seen it yourselves for many years. 40 years now, the Iranian regime has been threatening the destruction of Israel. And for at least 15, 20 years, it's been developing nuclear capability. And we know that even when it signed up to the JCPOA, it was regularly in violation of its agreements.

4:48In fact, at the end of the last Trump term, it went from refining at about three and a half, four percent up to beyond five. And it's now up to 60. And nobody has ever refined it up to or rather enriched up to 60 percent without going for a nuclear weapon. There's literally no point in doing it for any other reason. And then, you know, even when they were called out in May, you'll remember the IAEA report to their board of governors said that the Iranians were in violation of their agreement. When they said that, the Iranian response was frankly extraordinary. It was like, well, if you're going to be like that, we're going to enrich further from the secret site we never told you about.

5:26Therefore, proving again that they were in violation of the JCPOA, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This is a regime that has consistently lied and, you know, theologically defines lying as completely legitimate as well. It's a very, very difficult regime. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been speaking in Parliament today. Let's have a listen to that. Our diplomats are fully engaged in trying to end this crisis. We can and we must find a negotiated solution. The window has narrowed, but the risks of further escalation are so great and the costs so considerable for Britain and all in the region that this is the government's priority.

6:09We don't yet know precisely how far the US strikes have set back Iran's nuclear programme, but there remains the need for a durable, diplomatic solution. strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon. That's why we've been working so intensively with the new US administration to reach a new agreement with Iran. You said earlier that you think that Keir Starmer hasn't showed great leadership on this. What should he have said, the prime minister? Because we have that statement on Sunday morning, 7.30, basically saying in summary, yes, we're all worried about Iran.

6:59We think they're violating international law. We don't want them to have nuclear weapons. But there wasn't any fully throated support of America or the US president. And then we had this strange situation this morning where Luke Pollard, who is a defence minister, is on the broadcast round. Minister of the armed forces, yeah. And he's asked by Nick Ferrari on LBC, well, does the government support what's happened? And he's all over the place. Let's listen to that. Firstly, let's be absolutely clear. Iran must not have a nuclear weapon. The threat that they pose to regional security is a serious one.

7:32And for that reason, the US took steps to neutralise that threat in the past few days. Our focus as a country is on a diplomatic solution now, is to bring Iran to the table, to get them to negotiate a diplomatic off-ramp. We know that they are in a terrible situation. Their air defences are gone. Their leaders are hiding in a bunker. The solution to the crisis is for them to get around the negotiating table, to negotiate in good faith, and to put their nuclear weapons program beyond use with a handover of materials so they can be verifiably destroyed and a de-escalation of the situation so that all the peoples of the Middle East will be able to live free from the threat of a nuclear strike by the regime in Tehran.

8:22Yes. My question was, Minister, is the United Kingdom opposed to the action we saw on the weekend? It's a yes or no. Well, that's not one for me to comment on. We've been involved with... But you're the Armed Forces Minister. Why would you not have a view on armed intervention, as it were, in Iran? Well, as one of our deep security partners, we keep a regular dialogue with the United States. The US administration has been clear for some time that they were keeping all options on the table to deal with... I'm sorry, I mean, it's a simple one, Minister. Are we for or against the American activity on the weekend?

9:00For or against? The American activity has now happened. They're taking those steps to deal with the threat. What should he have said, Starmer? Well, he should have said yes. I mean, you know, my daughter wishes for unicorns, but unless you're willing to do something about it, wishes are meaningless, right? You know, if you actually do want to stop Iran having a nuclear capability, you need to do something about it. Now, this isn't just about Israel. I mean, we've spoken about Israel because, you know, the Ferdow site was specifically built in order to assist the Iranian regime in targeting Israel in order to murder as many Jews in Israel as they possibly can.

9:36And by the way, Palestinians too, because although the Iranian regime claims to support them, it's complete rubbish. They're perfectly happy to bomb them, as we've seen in recent days. But the reality is this is also about us. You know, the reason we should be concerned is you look at the missile development over the recent decade. You know, the range of the missiles that Iran is building go way further than Israel. They're reaching as far as London. Now, they're not doing that because they happen to like the weather over here. They're doing it in order to threaten us, in order to make sure that we don't support our friends and allies in the region.

10:13Do they definitely reach London? I'm only going to pick you up on this point because I put this point to the Israeli ambassador, Zippy Hotovli, on my GB News show, and she made that point about these missiles can reach London. Then I got a community notice on X, somebody who perhaps isn't aligned with the Israelis, said, no, this is complete nonsense, there's no direct threat to London. And it does feel a bit 2003. I'm not saying that they are targeting London today. That's not what I mean. They are developing missile capability at greater range than simply to threaten Israel. OK. Now, whether they're going to target us or anybody else, we don't know.

10:48What we do know is that they have regularly said that we're one aspect of Satan. The United States is another aspect of Satan. You know, we're supporters of Israel and therefore we're legitimate targets. You know, they have consistently said that. Now, you could ignore it if you like. I choose not to. I think the job of the British government is not to be some sort of international legal advisor, as Keir Starmer seems to think, but to offer leadership in defence of Britain, the British people and British interests. And I think the article that Kemi put out yesterday on clarity in supporting this action I thought was really important.

11:22I think Kemi's done exactly the right thing. But I think we should be clear that when our friends and allies are threatened, talking about Israel, but also Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi and others, We should be absolutely clear whose side we're on. I think if there was a skeptic present, they might say. But no one disputes we don't want nuclear proliferation. No one disputes that Iran is bad. It's the timing of the action which some people are cynical about. Benjamin Netanyahu happened to be domestically in some trouble. The Gaza conflict had been spiraling on for a long time. He wanted to bring America back within the fold and get involved militarily.

11:57Iran has not yet developed nuclear weapons. We've been told many, many times that it's within a few months of doing so, and it never has. So is it the timing? Is it this sense that this is a desperate action by the government of Israel to pull America into the conflict, and Trump has jumped on it for reasons of ego or whatever? Isn't that what unnerves people about this? Well, I'm sure there are many things that unnerve people about this, and it unnerves me. Of course, I'm extremely nervous about an action that could lead to the end of the Iranian regime, to the breakup of a state that, as we know, is 70 or so percent Persian.

12:31It's got Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Sistanis, you know, Gileks. I mean, you can go on. It's a multi-ethnic state. It is genuinely an empire in its makeup. And so, of course, there's a lot of things to be nervous about. But when you talk about timing, I mean, those are fair observations. But actually, I think the key timing is the report to the IAEA Board of Governors in May, where it was made extremely clear that the Iranian government is in breach. And then you look at it and you compare what's been going on. I mean, you can certainly look at the timing of the things you mentioned, but you could also look at the timing of the fact that for the first time in 30 or so years, there isn't an immediate threat to Israel of thousands of rockets from Hezbollah.

13:15There isn't the immediate threat of Iranian presence in Syria. There isn't the immediate threat of rockets from Hamas. The only ongoing immediate threat is from the Houthis, and they're quite a way away. So, you know, the geographical situation, as it were, the geostrategic situation has changed as well. And so there is an ability to act now in a way that there wasn't before. So I'm sure, if you're going to argue to me that politicians have multiple interests in whatever they do. Yeah, right. I mean, you know, to as ever thus, that's not exactly news. But why is Israel conducting this action? I strongly suspect it's because of the warnings of the IAEA and why is the United States conducting them?

13:59Well, you know, you've got a decision to make. Do you want to watch this action end, leaving the enrichment facilities in place, or do you want to take this opportunity to make sure that they don't come back? I don't honestly think there's much of a choice in that. The timing could be down to the fact that there is a belief that since October 7th that Iran and its proxies have been weakened in some way. Well, and also have they proven that they're serious? Yeah. Right. So it goes both ways. But we have to know, don't we, whether this nuclear capability has been completely knocked out. Yes. I mean, it's still too early to say.

14:36So we've got President Trump insisting, yes, it's been a complete success. We've then got the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, doubling down on that claim, although the Pentagon is saying it's a bit too early to tell whether these have been completely destroyed. U.S. Central Command conducted a precision strike in the middle of the night against three nuclear facilities in Iran, Fordow, Natanz, and Asfahan, in order to destroy or severely degrade Iran's nuclear program. And as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs will demonstrate, it was an incredible and overwhelming success. The order we received from our commander-in-chief was focused.

15:19it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program. And the Iranians insist that the damage is purely superficial, but then they would say that, wouldn't they? Because they both want to suggest to the world that they are innocents under attack and they're being damaged. But they also want to suggest to the world that no damage has been done because we're strong and everyone supports us. But I was really struck, Tom, by the report that But when the Americans attacked, the Iranians did not fire back, presumably because they don't have the capability to do so. Is this state actually a paper tiger?

15:55Well, it's become, I mean, I'd be cautious about saying it is. It has become a paper tiger. Look at it over the last 10 years, right? Look at Iranian actions over the last 10 years. You see Hezbollah fighters not only targeting Israel but murdering quite literally tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people in Syria. You see Iranian-supported groups in Syria and, in fact, in Iraq, murdering, again, tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people in different ways. You see inside Iran itself the Basij militias, the sort of part of the IRGC, the sort of the on-the-ground troops, if you like.

16:30You know, not just beating up women who refuse to cover their hair or murdering LGBT people in the country, but you also see them conducting full repression of students or closing universities or whatever it happens to be. So it hasn't been a paper tiger. Has it become one? Well, it appears that it's certainly severely weakened. I'm slightly cautious about predicting the end of anything in Iran, but it's certainly in a very different place. What's interesting, actually, in talking to Iranian friends who have family in Tehran, is you speak to people now and I'm not going to tell you that people are pleased about the attacks.

17:07Of course, they're not pleased about the attacks. But, you know, more than one person has spoken to me about the fact that it feels like their hostage taker is being beaten up. Now, they're also in the line of fire. So they're not, you know, let's not pretend that this is some sort of joyous thing. But they have no sympathy at all with the regime. And it's a very, you know, it's a very vulnerable moment for the regime. But that may, you know, that may bring its own problems, too. I know, but it's not necessarily the moment that they do rise up, as Donald Trump has suggested. So, you know, rise up while bombs are raining down on Tehran.

17:40That's quite difficult. Roland Oliphant made a really good point here, our Telegraph colleague last week. You know, there is no Alexei Navalny figure in Iran. The resistant movement over there isn't joined up. You rise up and what happens? You probably get shot. That's certainly true. But, you know, the reverse is also true, right? I mean, the regime has long set itself against, you know, the legacy of the Shah and hereditary principle and all these sort of things. Khamenei has been replaced by Khamenei. There were various suggestions as to who the next Ayatollah would be, including President Raisi was one of the options and various other people.

18:15There was a few people who were killed in that helicopter crash, which really was a helicopter crash. Even the Iranians don't claim it was anything other the other day. And so now it looks like the heir to the Ayatollah ship, it's not quite the right word, but you know what I mean, is Mushtaba Khamenei, the son of the current Ayatollah. So, you know, the regime itself is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking in on itself. The IRGC is increasingly corrupt. You increasingly hear something that's really quite extraordinary. Younger members of the IRGC in various platforms criticizing older members of the IRGC for their corruption, for their inaction and for various things.

18:51So you can see that there are fractures within the regime. So I'm not look, I'm not going to predict an uprising or whatever. I'm afraid I don't have that granular level of detail. All I can say is this is a regime that two, three, four years ago looked extremely solid with proxies all over the place and was able to threaten, including here, as you'll remember, Ken McCullen told us correctly, that there'd been more than 17 different credible attacks against individuals by Iranian proxies here in the UK. And there was the attack on the Saudi ambassador to the United States. So, you know, we've seen this expansion of Iranian activity and this level of violence.

19:27And it now seems to be being reversed. Now, does that mean it's the end of the regime? I don't know, but it's certainly in a different position. Can you read these criticisms in the original Persian? My Persian's not very good anymore. You've got some. Mine's rusty, actually. Well, I used to have to work in Persian when I worked in Kabul. Right. Well, this is why I bring this up, because you can read and speak Arabic, right? And my Persian's bad, but I can read Persian. There you go. Very clever man. And you did a tour of duty, am I correct, in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you have seen firsthand what regime change looks like.

20:03Is that possible? Is that desirable in this instance? What role should the West play in it? So I'm not a believer that we should have a role in choosing the government of Iran. I mean, I think the Iranian people should have that responsibility, not us. How and what they choose will be up to them at the moment. It's a brutal dictatorship. They don't have any choice. You know, those who in any way resist end up in prison. and many of them are murdered. In fact, there is an element in the IRGC handbook, the manual, the training manual for IRGC officers. One of the aspects in there is if you rise up against the regime, you are not just an enemy of the state, you're an enemy of God, and you must be tortured or raped before you are killed.

20:44Your death must be extremely painful. It's a really brutal regime. You're right about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's hard to argue. it's hard to argue today between Saddam Hussein and today's Iraqi government, but I'm not going to argue that the intervening years haven't been unbelievably painful and horrific. Of course they have. And when you look at Afghanistan, I'm afraid, well, you know my views. I mean, I'm furious and still incredibly sorry about what had happened there. I mean, we abandoned a position and have handed it back to a death cult. This is also the problem, isn't it, when, I mean, sorry to be very crude about it, if you're saying that there could be internal dissent in the IRGC and we have an increasingly online younger population, with that all in mind, it then leads you to the conclusion that this shouldn't just be about taking out nucleosites, sorry, it should be also about taking out the Ayatollah.

21:41Now, Donald Trump has quite curiously actually openly discussed this on Truth Social. Yeah, we haven't taken out the Ayatollah yet, but we might. I mean, indeed, that could all be about bringing them back to the negotiating table and some diplomacy. I'm not sure the language from the Iranians right now is about diplomacy and negotiation. It's more about retaliation and we are exploring all options, notwithstanding the fact that they might not have anything to retaliate with. Well, the main retaliation at the moment will be internal repression and violence against their own people. My point is, does the Ayatollah need to be removed by external forces in order for internal forces to stage some kind of coup?

22:20I mean, there's some polling that's been done and it's very difficult to do polling accurately for very obvious reasons. But as I say, a lot of people are online and with various different elements of encrypted software, you can do it. And a few years ago it was done, and I'm going to get the numbers slightly wrong, but I think it was 72 % of men and 74 % of women were against the morality laws that insist that women are covered and so on. And of that 72, 74, about 80 % of them wanted a secular Iran going forward. They were rejecting the religious government of the theocracy. So I think the public pressure is for there.

22:57And you can see, by the way, the uprisings in 22, in 19, 17 and 15, the various different things. And you can see, by the way, that the regime has felt that it had to kill people like Massa and Nika and Neda, you know, these incredibly impressive young women who stood for their own freedom and sadly lost their lives in doing so. The regime is frightened of the change and frightened of that opposition. I, however, am really cautious about us recommending it, and I'm very, very cautious about us getting involved in it. And I think the idea that sort of, you know, putting another oar in to a very, very complex situation, you know, it's 92 million people, there's 10, 14 million people in Tehran.

23:41It's a huge city, it's a huge country, and it's got enormous internal tensions already. I'm not quite sure it would be that helpful. We've mentioned the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Now, when you were security minister, you had an opportunity to prescribe them. You didn't do it. Today we're debating prescribing Palestine Action, a domestic left-wing protest group. And yet, why is it that the group of people behind this terrorist regime, the British state is so reluctant to prescribe them and call them what they are, which is a terrorist group? So I'll explain to you the legality of it. My own view is we should have done it.

24:18I wasn't able to do it because the government couldn't reach a position on it. But I'll tell you the government's argument on it, which is that the government does not define states as able to commit terror. States can only commit war crimes. Non-state actors can commit terrorism. It's just a legal choice of language, right? So a non-state actor, Hamas, Hezbollah, whatever it happens to be, can be a terrorist group. But a state can't be. It can only be a – it can commit war crimes. It can commit various different criminal acts, but it can't commit terrorism. And the IRGC is a part of the constitutional structure of Iran.

24:53Now, because of those obstacles, I introduced the National Security Act, which gave enormous powers to the state, to our state, to make it a crime and a very severe crime to assist a foreign intelligence service in any way. And the IRGC is a foreign intelligence service. So in reality, the difference between the laws that we now have and prescription against terrorist group are very minor. The reality is I drafted the law so that it basically covered almost exactly the same thing as prescription, but for a state entity, if you like. And so we've got greater capabilities because, you know, you're absolutely right.

25:28It is a challenge, but we need to make sure we have the laws appropriate to the task. You've mentioned Kemi there, Tom. Isn't it a problem that Farage, who, by the way, is on a 34 percent vote share compared to the Tories, 15, according to the latest Ipsos poll, which is pretty horrifying, I would imagine. Isn't it a problem that he cuts through more when it comes to supporting America and his bestie Trump, who, let's be honest, he has a better relationship with than Kemi Badenok? I mean, Nigel has been a very, very active politician in US circles for a long time. I mean, it's not it's not really news.

26:04Kemi gets on very well with Vance, with Vice President Vance, and has very strong relationships with other people. I've been able to support her in various different ways. There's many people in the Senate and the Congress who I've known for many years, including some, in fact, who I served with in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, you know, we all have different relationships with members of the US administration. But what Kemi's doing is she's resetting the agenda. She's offering the leadership that I think is absolutely right at this point. And I understand why people are still angry. I mean, we all understand why people are still angry.

26:34And I think what Kemi's doing is the right thing, which is rebuilding the reputation of the Conservative Party. Is it going to take time? Yeah, it's going to take time and it's hard. but she's doing absolutely the right thing and she has my full support in doing it. Would the Tories be polling better if Tom Tugendhat was the leader? Tim, I would love to claim yes but I think the reality is any leader right now would be facing a really, really difficult task and let's not lie to ourselves that that 34 % or whatever Nigel's polling at is a reform vote. It's not a reform vote, it's a Nigel vote and it's not just a Nigel vote off the Conservatives, It's a Nigel vote off the Conservatives and Labour and the Lib Dems and the Greens.

27:13You look at the way that he's constructed the vote, and, you know, politics is about building up coalitions, so I respect what he's doing, but he's taking a lot of votes off people who would, in some ways, have seen themselves as much more left-wing. So you see what he's been talking about on economic policies. Quite a lot of his economic policies are actually way further left. They're much more about spending, you know, high spending and so on. It's quite a nice idea to take from the rich and give to the poor in this Robin Hood way. take from non-DOMs, if they can pay a one-off amount of£250 ,000 and then you can distribute that to those on the lowest incomes, probably quite popular, not just in the Labour heartlands, but the Tory shires.

27:51I'm sure it's hugely popular. It's very, very popular, except with those who are supposed to pay it. And, of course, the problem is that now Rachel Reeves has chased them out of the country and they're all in whatever they are. I think it's£10 ,000 or£11 ,000 have left the country in the last year because of Rachel Reeves. The idea that they're going to come back with the promise of having to pay a quarter of a million quid. I mean, come on. It's just rubbish. I think you might have to offer to pay them a quarter of a million pounds, but I can't see them paying it. One group that has been proscribed today, banned by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, is Palestine Action.

28:21And we're going to be debating whether they should be regarded as a terrorist group next.

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30:41Welcome back. Yvette Cooper has said the government is going to prescribe Palestine action as a terrorist group. This is the group that broke into an air force base and painted on some planes. Now, we're going to debate whether this is right or wrong. I just want to say from the off that what they did was obviously criminal, borderline treasonous, and they should face the usual criminal proceedings. But I don't see why they need to be labeled a terror group. I suspect the government is doing it for two reasons. One, because in the past when groups have done things like this and they've gone before juries, juries have sometimes let them off.

31:12So maybe it's a way of getting around that. And the other thing is this will get put to Parliament and I suspect Keir Starmer is gagging for the Green Party or someone to say they won't vote for it so there's a proper debate and a proper vote and then he can pitch himself against them because he's tired of being labelled two-tier cure. But are we really saying that this group of kids who are desperate for attention should be treated on the same level as Hamas or ISIS? And should they face prison sentences of up to 14 years? And given that conservatives are usually so exercised about the right to free speech, and we're always complaining about people being flung in prison for things they said on Twitter, isn't it a little bit hypocritical for conservatives to now say, lock this group up?

31:52I'm just going to interject before we hear from Tom that actually, they're not kids, why are you infantilising them? We've just seen these protests in Trafalgar Square. They look like kids to me. They look to me to be middle-aged, white, metropolitan elitist types who come down from Islington. We were looking at the telly earlier. Why aren't any of you at work? They've been moved from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square because of the idea that it poses a great threat to MPs and peers in Westminster, which I think is fair enough. Tom, do you agree with Tim? So let me put it like this. When I was responsible for prescription in the Home Office, I worked with an extraordinarily impressive team of civil servants who provided very, very specific legal advice.

32:37And I don't know the details behind this because I haven't seen the documents that the Home Office have provided. All I can say is they wouldn't have done this lightly. So the idea that this is some sort of signaling operation, I don't buy. Now, you saw the other day the Ukrainian attack on those four Russian bases with drones, right? You saw the other day the Israelis using drones to neutralize the air defenses that you spoke about in Iran. And now we've just seen two of our air refueling aircraft knocked out, effectively, because of this act of criminality, as you called it, in our own country.

33:16Now, they say it's only paint on those engines. Is it? Is there acid in there? Has it somehow or other damaged the engines? We don't know, right? We're going to have to look into this. At the very least, it's going to cost millions of pounds, and at the very least, it's going to take a number of days, maybe weeks. I don't know. During that period, our air defences are degraded. Our ability to conduct operations in defence of the United Kingdom are degraded. I'm just saying prescription requires a very high bar. OK, but shouldn't the Home Office find said evidence and share it with us before it takes this very long time?

33:47There may be reasons why they can't. I mean, one of the problems with intelligence is you say, well, why don't you put it to a court? Well, you may have an agent in the organisation. You may have collected it through a system you don't want to announce because, you know, you're not only using it to collect off them, but you're using the same technology to connect off, I don't know, Vladimir Putin or, you know, the Ayatollah or whoever it might be. So you may not wish to put evidence before a court, not because you're wrong or hiding or whatever, but because the way in which you've collected it would then demonstrate that actually you have a reach into, you know, Camilla's phone or whatever it is.

34:18I don't know if anyone wants to be bored to death of my parental WhatsApp groups. This is where I think the line is drawn. I'm just thinking I've got some clarity on this. Right. The difference between legitimate protest and where protest becomes political violence is where criminal acts are committed. So even if we look at people throwing orange powder at Van Gogh paintings or trying to destroy the turf at Wimbledon or whatever, it becomes trespass and criminal damage, which therefore makes it criminal and above the bar of legitimate protest. The bar is then lifted again to an act of terror if it involves critical national infrastructure and you are attacking RAF Bryce Norton, which isn't just an attack on a private institution or organisation.

35:06It's actually an attack on this state. It is an attack on king and country and those who fight for it to protect national interests and national people. And that's how it reaches the terror bar. I'm going to get criticised for saying this because I'm going to get the legals wrong, but wasn't there some charge of arson in the Queen's dockyards or the King's dockyards? It used to be a specific charge that was connected to treason in some way. Only you would know this, Tom. I think it was. To be honest, did you read that in Persian somewhere? Can you understand my point? No, no, I get what you're saying.

35:38It's just until I'm provided with the evidence that tells me that this group was doing something any more than what looks like a childish stunt. But breaking into an RAF base. Yeah, but people have broken... Anti-arms industry people have broken into things before. People break into things. They do things. They try and stop the movement of things. They lie down in front of things. These are, in some cases, legitimate acts of protest and other ones criminal. But I think you've got to be very careful about saying that it's actually something that becomes terrorism. And I was just thinking in this country personally that we've gone down the route of banning things, banning ninja swords, strangulation porn.

36:15We're talking about banning smoking in public places. Even vapour. I'm not quite sure all three of those are in. Well, it was a wild weekend, I'm describing. But my point is, isn't it just what we do in Britain now? We just ban stuff? It's all too difficult. There's a wide social problem, so we just find something we can ban. And I just feel Palestine action is, I suspect, being targeted because it's a means of this government reasserting that it's not two-tier, that it does take this kind of thing seriously. And I just, I'm not entirely comfortable with it. I'll tell you what, I'd ban. well-meaning hand-wringers flying the Iranian flag down the streets of London, not least after everything Tom's told us.

36:53Funnily enough, I was looking on Twitter earlier and J.K. Rowling was attacking somebody who is an activist, an LGBT activist, who tweeted that they were on Team Iran. And I have to say... Oh, India, India. Is that who it was? It was just the most extraordinary thing. Oh, Willoughby, yes. Just the most extraordinary thing. It's like you would, not even metaphorically, but literally be murdered. You'd literally be killed, yes. Yes, I mean, you know, the Iranian state will hang you. So the uninitiated, she is trans. Yes, she's transgender. So in fact, she's a rare sexual minority that Iran quite likes because it pressures gay men to become women in order to conform their body to their sexual desire.

37:27But you have a right to be stupid and wrong. You do. And if you didn't, then I'd be in prison. All right. I hope we haven't been stupid and wrong on this podcast. I hope we've been clever and right. Tom Tugendhat, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea and stomaching it all without a cup of Earl Grey. Thank you very much. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

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