"Trump wouldn't know Burnham if he slapped him"

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0:33The New Statesman

0:38Hey, it's Oli. We usually come to you on a Wednesday, but given the ever-changing political situation in the UK, I wanted to talk to someone who has been watching us from afar. Earlier this week, I got on the phone with Mehdi Hassan, formerly of this house, now founder of the independent media company Zateo, to tell us how our prime ministerial switcheroo looks from across the pond and why Britain has become the punching bag for the US right. I'm Oli Doug Moore. This is The Exchange from The New Statesman. Enjoy the interview.

1:09Mehdi Hassan, hello. Thank you for making the time to speak to us. We're very glad to have you on The Exchange. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure. Pleasure for me to be back doing New Statesman stuff. Yeah, we're very glad to have you. We're very glad to have you. Alumnus. Yeah. Mehdi, I wanted to, obviously I want to get your perspective, But you also have this position, right, over in the States where you can give us a sense of how America is seeing and thinking about what's happening here. And when I say what's happening, I'm referring to Starmer's resignation and his very likely replacement by Andy Burnham as the leader of the Labour Party.

1:45Just as a starter for 10, I mean, tell me, how does it look from America? Does America care? Is anyone thinking about what's happening over here? Yeah, no is the answer to your question, Ollie. About 15 years ago when I lived in the UK and I worked at the New Statesman, I remember having a coffee with a friend of mine who'd moved to the US to work on foreign policy issues. And he said, when you live in the US, you realise no one cares about the UK. I know it sounds very grand, but it's just a very small backwater and no one really cares. And I thought that was a very arrogant thing to say. And I kind of was very dismissive of him.

2:18And now here I am saying the same thing to you. No one cares. You would struggle to walk very far that way towards Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill and flag down a passing member of Congress. And they would not be able to tell you Andy Burnham's name. Many of them would struggle to tell you Keir Starmer's name. These are members of Congress. I'm not talking about vox spots of people on the street. I'm talking about the people in power. I know in the UK, there's this obsession with the United States, but it's not returned. I just want to be very clear about that. I've lived here for 12 years now.

2:48People love Brits. They love the accent. They love the royal family. They love all of that. But British politics? No. I mean, the United States has a special relationship with Israel. That is what most members of Congress regard as the special relationship. That is who most people, especially on the right, would say, oh, the 51st state. That is Israel, not the United Kingdom. Of course, we can talk about intelligence sharing and defense sharing and all sorts of military ties going back years and NATO. But I'm just telling you the reality of politics and media in this country. I'm looking at the US media and I've seen little to no coverage of Andy Burnham in the mainstream media here.

3:24Yeah, perhaps slightly anticipated that you might say something along those lines. Arrogant and dismissive. Absolutely not, Mehdi Hassan. No chance of that. No one would say such a thing about you. But it's interesting to hear you say that about the special relationship because, you know, different countries have different terms to describe France, for example, oldest alliance. You know, everyone sort of has their special thing they say about their relationship with America and whether or not it bears a semblance with reality. And it was very interesting. I actually was interviewing someone recently departed SPAD from the Foreign Office working with David Lammy when he was there as Deputy Prime Minister, Ben Judah.

3:57And he actually said very similar. He said, no, America's special relationship is with Israel and we should be conscious of that fact. And it seems to me that so much that was made of Starmer, you know, people looking for things to score him up on. One of the things they would say is, oh, he's the Trump whisperer. You know, he's managed this really difficult time in the transatlantic relationship and he's done not a terrible job of doing it. And therefore we should give him credit for achieving it. I don't know how much that's true. I mean, you know, slight carve outs on some of the tariffs for the UK.

4:30But I mean, beyond that. In terms of his own personal reputation, he ended his premiership being publicly attacked and mocked by Donald Trump. So I'm not sure how he would ever retain the title of Trump whisperer. There is no such thing as a Trump whisperer. Trump throws everyone under the bus. You know, the closest to a Trump whisperer in international politics is, you know, either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. It's not Keir Starmer. It's not even Benjamin Netanyahu. We've seen have his ups and downs with Trump. You saw the new Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan book that's just come out, Regime Change, where there's a line where Trump's on the phone with Netanyahu and says, everyone fucking hates you.

5:02Even the Jews fucking hate you. Even the two Jews on this call hate you. So, you know, Trump can unleash on anyone he likes, even people he calls close friends. And Keir Starmer was not a close friend. I don't know if you saw his statement the other day where he said when he was asked about Andy Burnham and he said, oh, Keir Starmer, he was sort of a friend of mine, which is a great construction by Trump. Sort of a friend of mine. He's thinking it through in real time. What is my relationship with this guy? Well, he's on his way out, so I'll be nicer about it. And that's how Trump's thinking. If he was still prime minister, he wouldn't be even that positive.

5:29Obviously, he laid into Burnham in his own very particular way, the mayor of a small town, very liberal, I think he called him. Donald Trump couldn't find Manchester on a map if his life depended on it. He wouldn't know who Andy Burnham was if he walked in the street and slapped him in the face. I think when we talk about special relationships with the United States, we also have to bear in mind that Donald Trump is president, which changes everything. So even if Kamala Harris is president right now, I'd be saying the same thing to you, Ollie, that no one cares about Britain and the United States.

5:55It's not, okay. Yes, at a military level, people got to wonder, is Britain going to spend what it needs to spend on NATO? And all of those things, yes, people at the high levels of, quote unquote, the deep state will care very much about the relationship with the UK. But in terms of like politics on the Hill, national media, no one is paying attention to the Labour leadership race in the United States. But let me add in, Donald Trump makes everything even crazier, because with Donald Trump, you never quite know what he's thinking about a foreign nation or a foreign alliance. You mentioned France.

6:22You said France is where the oldest relation. He goes through ups and downs with France. One minute, he's attacking Macron. Next minute, according to the book Regime Change, which I've been reading over the weekend, so I'll give you a second quote. He says, get Emmanuel on the phone. And he calls Emmanuel Macron up and puts him on speakerphone in the Oval Office because he wants advice on how the Arc de Triomphe's viewing deck looks compared to the one he plans to put on the Arc de Trump in Washington, D.C. So, you know, there was a great moment in Term 1, Oli, where he was giving a speech about France.

6:51And he's reading the speech and he goes, did you know they're our oldest ally? And when Trump says, did you know, that means he just discovered something for the first time. So again, when you talk about France's relationship, Britain, that all assumes that you have a president or commander in chief who understands those relationships, the import of those ties, the history of that relationship. He doesn't understand any of it. So that makes it much harder for a British prime minister, even the normal to say, hey, hey, Mr. President, Mrs. President, Madam President, whoever is in the office, we're your special relationship.

7:21It's even harder. There is a tendency as well, Mehdi, running through British politics and perhaps even European politics to consider this American moment as an aberration rather than the new norm. This is a Trump specific thing and whether or not it's a future Republican president, they will return to maybe not the old ways, but certainly less extreme ways. And I just I'm not so sure on that. I sort of the American strategic orientation towards the Pacific rather than Europe seems like a much more permanent settlement than something that's connected to Trump. And I also think it probably overlooks as well, you know, the way that Trump and MAGA has changed the complete complex complexion of the Republican Party.

8:08Maybe not irreversibly, but certainly over a pretty long time horizon. And even when his presidency is over, he is presumably still going to be the major figure within the party when it comes to who the next presidential candidate is, who he decides to endorse and back in primaries. I think it's still going to have a huge amount of importance. And so what do you I mean, what do you think? Do you think it is a temporary change in the way that America orients itself towards Europe or are we seeing something more permanent here? You, of course, said a line that triggers me and what I say will trigger your listeners and viewers, which is even when his presidency is over.

8:39When will that be, Oli? Because I'm not so sure myself that he just disappears in 2020. I'm not saying he plans to stay on for sure, but I'm saying don't rule anything out in this crazy country that I'm in. You're right in your analysis of the GOP and its long term foreign policy changes. Whether you get a J.D. Vance, who is more of a quote unquote heir to MAGA or stars himself that way, whether you get a Marco Rubio, who's quote unquote more of a traditional foreign policy Republican, old school neoconservative, believes in U.S. alliances as part of America's military strength. We shall see. But I think the long term change has been done.

9:13I think the long term damage has been done as well, Ali. If this was Trump term one, yeah, we can have that relationship. He's an aberration. And then we'll get Joe Biden or whoever it is come in and they'll reset relations. And that's what Joe Biden did try and do, of course. He came into office with America at its lowest position in its international standing. Trump was super unpopular. The United States was unpopular. The world had just watched an insurrection, was stunned by what just got on in Washington, D.C. And Biden did the slow, hard, arduous task of turning around the supertanker. And if you look at the polling, polling did go up for America around the world.

9:43America did get more popular again under Joe Biden. But of course, Donald Trump is back again and much worse than ever before, especially compared to the first term on the international scene. In his first term, he had not launched what looks starting to look like a forever war in the Middle East against Iran. He had not taken out the sovereign leader of a sovereign nation while in his pajamas. as he had not threatened European territory, as Trump continues to do with Greenland. So we're in a very different place in terms of who Trump is in his relationship with Europe. And as you say, the changes he's doing can't just be undone, certainly not on the Republican side.

10:15And even on the Democratic Party side, it's going to take time to, you know, let's say a Democratic president comes in and says, you know, I want to be friends again with all the people Trump pissed off. Yeah, good luck with that. I mean, we've reached a point where the Danes, you know, had blood banks on standby and had troops ready to mine airports and runways because they were worried about an actual American invasion of Greenland. That's very hard to just undo overnight or even over four years. So I don't think we should consider this an aberration. I don't think we should think Trump's just going to disappear.

10:43I was in the UK in 20, I want to think 2022, promoting my book. And I went on the Today program. I remember it vividly. I was on with Michelle and Justin. And they said, oh, well, Ron DeSantis is going to be the candidate, right? And I said, no, it's going to be Trump. And this is Trump. Trump? Trump's gone, isn't he? It's going to be DeSantis. I remember people around the world just couldn't get their head around the eye. I don't know. Donald Trump still had a lock on the Republican Party, was still the MAGA cult leader, was still the most likely guy to come back in 2024. And I think the world needs to understand that this is America now.

11:11Yeah, except that reality and what comes with it, whether it's those wars in the Middle East and particularly, actually, I'll just zoom back to Burnham for a moment and then we can talk some more about America. But seeing as we're talking about foreign policy, I just invite your thoughts on this, Mehdi, because, you know, obviously he's someone who's been a part of the Labour Party for a long period of time, particularly during the Blair Brown years. and at one point in time as well, voted for the Iraq war. And I just, there's a tendency, I don't know whether it's optimism and hope that people of the British left who are kind of hoping for anything that is better than Keir Starmer, sort of projecting something onto Andy Burnham that might not necessarily actually be who he is.

11:56And I personally feel, I think people massively underprice Iraq and the war in terms of its toxicity for Blair personally, but that whole cadre of people as well. And I think you'd be foolish to not think that that has some sort of long tail impact about the way that people think and consider him. I mean, do you think he'll be haunted by that vote as he comes into number 10? I think it may rear its head. Iraq is the war that lots of people who supported it want to go away and has never really gone away. And obviously, I covered the Labour leadership election of 2010 when I was at the New States, when I co-chaired with then editor Jason Cowley, the Labour leaders debate in Westminster, which was Andy Burnham, Diane Abba, Ed Miliband, David Miliband, and Ed Balls.

12:39And at the time, a couple of things, Andy Burnham was the most quote unquote right-wing candidate on stage. He had launched his candidacy in 2010 as the guy saying, we need to be tougher on immigration. We got it all wrong. We abandoned white working class voters. And Ed Miliband, of course, with the exception of Diane Abba, was the most left-wing candidate on the stage and ran very much on the basis that he privately opposed the Iraq war. He'd been part of a faction that was never happy with some of the Blairite Hawkeye foreign policy. And I wrote a book about Miliband, excuse me, with James McIntyre, where we talked about the Iraq war and how that loomed between Ed and David Miliband.

13:13David, of course, had been a supporter. And we're now hearing reports that David Miliband could be back in the House of Lords as foreign secretary, which is interesting because he spent the last decade here in the US, as have I, in New York. I'm in DC. But really rehabilitating his reputation by doing sterling work for the IRC, for the International Rescue Committee on topics like Syria, even on Gaza. And actually, I think the Gaza issue is the one that's really going to hit Burnham first, because he's kind of dodged it. I saw him during the campaign get asked about it in the by-election. And he talked about, in very vague terms, about how it's all very upsetting and distressing.

13:46And he's spoken about it, but he's focused on the by-election. But that excuse won't work once he's prime minister. And we look at Gaza and Lebanon and Iran, all of which are live conflicts. Let's not buy any bullshit that there is some ceasefire or end to the war in any of those places. And the British Prime Minister will have to take a very clear position. We know that Keir Starmer got heavily damaged by his LBC interview, where he talked about no food, fuel, water, they have that right, which they then tried to backpedal on. A lot of the British media tried to ignore it in their political obits.

14:16We didn't here at Zeteo. Owen Jones and I had a very interesting discussion about how the media ignored that infamous line from Keir Starmer, which haunted him for people on the left to, as you know better than me, abandon Labour for the Greens and other left-wing parties. So I think that's going to hit him. What I would say about Andy Burnham is you're right. He did vote for the Iraq war. He's just appointed James Purnell as his chief of staff, perceptionally not the greatest of issues, given Purnell was a Blairite and a hawk and a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, though that was 15 years ago.

14:43People change. Let's see. But in Burnham's defence, I would say at a very controversial moment, October 2023, November 2023, when Keir Starmer is doing these ludicrous interviews on LBC saying Israel has the right to blockade Gaza. Andy Burnham came out for a ceasefire. And I don't think we should completely discount that. Quite an important moment. People don't really remember it because the pro-Israel community, much of the British Jewish community, the chief rabbi, they attacked Sadek Khan. Wonder why Sadek Khan for coming out for a ceasefire. But they didn't say anything about Andy Burnham, who'd come out at the same time.

15:16So I think that was an important moment, I think. I think people discount that as well. Now, as Owen and I were discussing, it all depends who he puts around him, right? Foreign policy for British prime ministers is very much about who is whispering in your ear, who is advising you, who is lobbying you, who is pressuring you, who are the quote unquote grownups in the room who say, you can't do that. That would go against everything we've ever done. And I think that will be a key question as to who the foreign secretary is, who the defense secretary is, who's on his, does he have a national security advisor a la Jonathan Powell?

15:45Who are all those people? Yeah, I mean, there's two things I'd say on that point. One is the phrase that I've seen most commonly, I think, in Starmer's political obituaries is that he's a fundamentally decent man. That's actually a characterisation that I disagree with. Not least because of the example you've just given, an accomplished human rights lawyer who knows full well that collective action is an international war crime. But, you know, other example, you talk about the case of Faisal Shaheen, the Labour candidate in Chingford, who had spent years chipping away in Duncan Smith's majority there.

16:23And then, you know, very late in her third trimester, expected to be the candidate for Labour in the general election, deselected. And then, you know, when she's going through the appeal, she's got her newborn baby hanging off her. Deselected because of echoing something I think Jon Stewart said for The Daily Show. It was some absurd, fake controversy. You know, you're right. By the way, I should say quickly on Burnham, to go back to your original question, to take it very seriously. In the US, my understanding is, and what I've seen, is that where the Trump administration cares about the UK and Andy Burnham is what he does about oil fields.

16:55That's what Trump cares about. He doesn't care about Middle East policy, really. He doesn't care about foreign policy. He cares about business and investment and getting deals done. And obviously, these two oil fields have caused controversy in the UK. What Burnham does there, what Ed Miliband does there as energy secretary or slash chancellor, future chancellor of the exchequer. Wouldn't it be funny to have Ed Miliband as chancellor and David Miliband as foreign secretary? I hadn't even thought about that. I think that will be something that people in Washington, DC pay attention to. I think that's certainly something that's on the agenda here in terms of what happens with oil and drilling, because that's what MAGA is obsessed with.

17:30We're going to take a quick break now. We'll be back after this.

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18:16That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

18:24Some people, there are a few characters, Meddy, who do make a bit of a habit talking about the UK and British politics. Elon Musk, one of them. Tucker Carlson, a little bit. I mean, there has been this increase, actually, in the way that the American right talks about the UK. I think Tucker rode back recently, I should say. I think I've been super mean to the UK and they don't deserve it, is a quote. Projections of frustrations I have with my own country. I saw that. That was the Yelda Hakim Sky interview. I saw some of that. I mean, Tucker's all over the place. I think Elon Musk is obviously the more dangerous figure because he puts his money where his mouth is.

19:01Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. But I just, if I could talk to you about that sort of like communicative regime, the purpose it serves. Because, you know, like you just said, right, Musk is a very powerful, very rich man. And the vision, the apocalyptic vision he paints of Britain presumably serves some kind of purpose. Maybe you think it's just sort of his pet play thing and he likes projecting these ideas of civilisational collapse. And he dials into Tommy Robinson rallies in central London and tells people that violence is coming, whether you choose it or not. You've got to fight back or you'll die.

19:39He's just doing that for the crack. I don't know. But there is this perception, I think, maybe not about Starmer, maybe not about Burnham, but about Britain as a country. And perhaps, is that because of its kind of, I don't know, symbolism as a part of Western civilization? I mean, I'm projecting here. You tell me, how does Musk think about it? I don't know why specifically Britain, but, you know, your guess is as good as any. I mean, it is a European thing. This is not just Britain, right? He spent a lot of time in Italy with George Maloney. He's openly and fully backing the AFD in Germany. He's one of the earliest American supporters of the AFD, well before the Trump administration came out, basically behind the AFD as well.

20:21He spoke via video conference, not just to Tommy Robbins and Drally recently, but years ago to the AFD, long before they were leading nationally in the polls, which they are right now, depressingly. So he does see this as a joined up thing. He does see this as a kind of transatlantic Western movement that he thinks he's trying to save the West. That very much is driven by his white nationalism. You know, I've said it before. You can take the boy out of apartheid South Africa. Can you take apartheid South Africa out of the boy? This is very much who he is. His father is still an open, unabashed racist.

20:54I think his grandparents were accused of being Nazis. He is someone who has not hidden his views. Now, I should correct that. He did hide his views for a lot of his career until about 10 years ago. We've seen Musk get red-pilled in real time. I mean, Elon Musk is exhibit A in what happens if you spend too much time on Twitter and are just credulous. I mean, the guy bought the platform and it red pilled him. He wasn't this radical 10 years ago. He wasn't this bad five years ago. We've seen him get progressively worse and worse, amplify the worst people, take the most extreme positions. He just spent his birthday.

21:30Sunday was his birthday, 55 years old. And he spent it online promoting a film called Citizen Justice, which is a film from Uwe Boll starring Army, what's his name? Hammer. Hammer. The controversial actor from the US. It's a kind of B-rate, low budget revenge thriller. But it's basically also far right political propaganda. It's all about the idea that you deal with migrant criminals by killing them all. It's about an American vigilante in Europe who murders not just migrants, but in their entire families. And Trump has been posting this as the moderate response. This is a film that the Germans won't even classify, right, because they see it as incitement to violence.

22:10And Elon Musk has been promoting this film. So you've got to ask these questions. What is he up to here? How extreme is he? Is he now inciting violence? You mentioned the Tommy Robinson rally where he says fight back or die. Just insane rhetoric from Musk. And yes, he is the driver behind why right wingers and Americans now think Britain is some dystopian Mad Max hellscape that they say things like London has fallen. That is because of Elon Musk. That's not just because he's funding some of the worst people in the UK, Rupert Lowe, Tommy Robinson, et cetera, but because in the US, if you want to see Britain, you see it through his social media prism.

22:47And that is a prism where he often shares his statistic that Britain, the locking up of people on social media, this completely out of context stat that he will share constantly about how Britain is now a fascist state. But he never shares anything about Palestine action people being rounded up, interestingly enough. And he will also, obviously, last year, you remember better than me, where he spent most of December 2024, January 2025, going after Keir Starmer over the rape of Britain and saying British ministers and prime ministers should be locked up. It'd be interesting to see what he says about Andy Burnham now, given he's from Manchester.

23:18So yeah, Elon Musk does have some kind of weird vendetta against the UK. I don't know why the UK, but I think it is a part of a Europe-wide context. and the quote unquote rape gangs controversy gives him easy fuel and it helps him on social media spread his disinformation and racism. Yeah, complicit in the rape of Britain and he accused Jess Phillips of being a rape genocide apologist, I think was his turn of phrase. But then he says it's the left that call people bad words and incite violence and put a target on his head by calling him a fascist. Well, Mehdi, you know, if we are a basket case, you were here recently.

23:53I'm surprised you managed to make it out alive and back to the States, such as the States. No, why would I not? It's Londonistan. My people control it. What are you talking about? Sorry, sorry. That's why you were okay. Yeah, obviously. Sorry, I apologize. Wait till that's clipped. That three seconds completely out of context on social media. Can we talk about his wealth? I mean, how do you feel about the fact that one individual could, for a period of time, be worth more than a trillion US dollars? I mean, is it? Yeah, I'm delighted it was only 12 days, but I'm sure he'll be back there. No, I think it's insane.

24:25And I've said this many times, and I'll say it again. This isn't just about wealth inequality. This isn't just about the rich versus the rest. We can make all the economic points. But fundamentally, this is a political argument. This is a democratic argument. You cannot have a functioning democracy if one person in that democracy is worth so much money, has so much financial power. I mean, he gave$300 million nearly at the last election to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. He then said, I'm done with politics. But of course, he was lying. He's Elon Musk. He's now, again, the top donor heading into the 2026 midterms.

24:54When you have oligarchs who can buy elections, it makes it very difficult with a straight face to say you have free and fair elections and a liberal democracy and one person, one vote. You can't have one person, one vote, where one person's wealth is worth so much more than thousands, millions of people's votes. And I think that is the fundamental issue. And I think all Americans get that, whether you're on the left or the right. No one wants to live in oligarchy. No one wants billionaire control of politics. It's funny that the New York Post right-wing newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire last time I checked, just put out a headline over the weekend saying, George Soros, Alexander Soros.

25:27I think the headline was Democrat Stooges for Soros, if I remember correctly. And it's like, they spent$100 million this year on the midterms. And it's like, yeah, that's bad. I don't think the Soros should be spending hundreds of millions of dollars. But interesting that the right-wing newspaper decided to go with an attack from the left effectively, because even the right understand that their base don't want billionaires controlling politics. They don't like the rich. No one likes the rich in the United States in terms of the richest control over our politics. Everyone wants to be rich, the American dream, aspiration.

25:56I get all that. But no one likes the idea of billionaires controlling politics. And I think that is a fundamental question mark here when you have someone as rich as Elon Musk. And by the way, we should point out when people, oh, it's envy, it's this, it's that. No, I don't care. But I would factually point out he wouldn't have gotten to where he was without all the billions of from government support that he got over the years. Yeah, green lines for Tesla and obviously government contracts, particularly for SpaceX. Well, the SpaceX investor document is filled with the word government. That's what SpaceX relies on.

26:24They're selling it right for its revenue is the proportion. I can't remember, is it 20%, 25 %? Something like that proportion of their contracts are public and that's a selling point for them in their investor deck. Mehdi, let's talk about Zateo UK, UK media landscape. I mean, what did you think was missing? Why did you launch? What made you want to do it? I'll tell you what made me want to do it. Well, many things made me want to do it. We launched Zeteo in 2024 here in the United States after I left MSNBC. It's been very successful, he says humbly. We have over 2 million subscribers on YouTube.

26:51We have 700 ,000 subscribers on Substack. We've done pretty well. We've made a bit of an impact here in the US. We've done what I wanted to do, which is have the establishment taken seriously while also having some anti-establishment politics and media coverage, hold people to account. We want to take that sensibility, that approach to politics and media to the UK, number one, because I'm from the UK at some point, that was an obvious place to expand to. Number two, we are doing well, but we do want to go more global. And the UK seemed like the obvious place to go next. After the US, it's where we have our second most number of subscribers after the US.

27:24And number three, what really annoyed me this year were a few things. I saw the UK media coverage of Iran. I went on some radio shows. I did some interviews in the UK media. And I just reminded myself how bad the UK media is having, you know, I'd kind of forgotten. I'd maybe parked all of my bad experiences from 12 years ago. And then I did a bunch of British media this year and I was like, oh, wow, it's really still really bad. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. Oh, just, you know, I did a bunch of round of interviews, BBC Times, I can't remember who it was. And it was all just kind of cliched questions, kind of just the worst groupthink, the worst conventional wisdom, the laziest of kind of, you know, wannabe right-wing questions from supposedly centrist hosts.

28:06And it really, really reminded me of just how bad the media is in the UK. And I'll throw in here the Gorton by-election. That's when I kind of said to my team, we really need to launch a Zotero UK as quickly as possible because I saw the coverage of the family voting bullshit. It was across the media landscape. Everyone, the BBC, The Guardian, The Times, everyone weighed in on this absolute bullshit story, completely Islamophobic story, completely evidence-free story, hysterical coverage. And it just reminded me of just how bad the British media, quote unquote, liberal media can be in the UK. And I thought we need a satire in the UK to shake things up, to have some pushback.

28:41And then you saw the police come out and say it was all bullshit. And that didn't get as much coverage as the original story. I'm shocked to say. Imagine my shock. Imagine your shock. So those were some of the factors. But I think, look, in general, media in the Western world has its pros and cons. And the cons are there's a lot of groupthink. There's a lot of corporate influence. There's a lot of hawkishness when it comes to foreign wars. And I think Zeteo can play a role in the independent space there. It can play a role in the progressive space with the New Statesman and others trying to make a case against insane wealth inequality, against trillionaire rule, for more democracy, small d democracy at a political and economic level.

29:22And I think people want to hear that. I think people are fed up. I don't know why we think people are just fed up with the political establishment in the UK and not just the media establishment. There is a correlation. So it's explicitly political in that sense. Then I don't get too theoretical, but ideas of someone like Gramscian theory of change being part of a cultural vanguard, Medhi. I don't know. I've got some quotes here. I think it's been called a potential, quote, media arm of the Green Party. That was unheard. That reliable source. No, we're not the media arm of any political party. I think we've made that very clear here in the United States, where in the 2024 election, I was tough on the Republicans, the Democrats and the Greens and on Jill Stein.

30:04So we were pretty tough on all of the parties here in the US. I'm tough on politicians across the board. Obviously, my own politics are on the left, as you know. Obviously, you know, I am a sympathizer with the AOC, Mamdani view of the world. I was delighted when Mamdani won the mayoralty. I'll be delighted if AOC turns up as president. But we don't endorse candidates. We don't campaign for political parties. There's a reason we call ourselves independent media. We're not just independent from corporate control, but from party influence as well. Now, the UK is a fascinating place, because you've got three parties now pushing versions of left, centre-left politics, the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, and the Green Party, and we'll cover them all.

30:40I look forward to reading that coverage. You mentioned AOC. Do you think she's going to run in this cycle? No one knows. I don't think AOC knows if she's going to run. If you put a gun to my head right now, I would say yes, but it's 51-49. I think it's very, very tight. There is a very good case for her not running, for keeping her powder dry, for running for the Senate. She's very young. She's 35 years old. She just made the criteria last time around for being president. There's a good case for saying Chuck Schumer is no future in the Senate. He stands down in the next cycle and she takes his seat and becomes Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has a much strongest springboard for the presidency another time.

31:16But of course, as we know, look, I grew up in the William Hague era, right? People just see a chance and go, now, I call it the William Hague era. The William Hague era. Yeah, that's a ridiculous description of what happened to William Hague circa, what was it, 2001, the most boring general election in British history. But I did cover the 2001 general election. And William Hague, people said to him too, just wait your time. Now's not the moment. Tony Blair's in his dominance. Hague could have been much more effectively than many years later. He actually impressed people years later as an older politician.

31:46But you know what? Politics doesn't work that way. People see a chance. They say, now's the moment. Who knows what will be tomorrow? Got to go for it right now. And there is an argument for her running right now. You mentioned earlier, we don't know who the Republican candidate is going to be. We assume it'll be the end of the Trump era. It'll be a moment for the Democrats when the Republican Party is probably very, very unpopular. There will be about 30 Democrats running. Everyone and their dog is going to run this time. There's going to be no coronation in 2016. I often remind people there was a leaders debate, a Republican candidates debate, sorry, one night.

32:17And then they had like a kiddie table debate the night before for like the shitty candidates for like Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley, like because there were too many candidates to fit on stage. So they had to do like a kiddie table debate one night on Fox and then the main debate the next night. The Democrats will have to do three nights of that because I reckon they've got about 30 people running. Like off the top of my head, I could tell you 20 people who are guaranteed going to run. I don't know if AOC is guaranteed to run, but I would assume she will. The grown-ups table, the kids table and the crash for the also runs who are less than 1%.

32:46Mehdi, it's been a fascinating conversation, fast-paced, invigorating. I really, really enjoyed talking to you. We'll have to get you back on at some point in the near future. All the best, mate. Thank you for taking the time. That was Mehdi Hassan. I'm Oli Dugmore. You were listening to The Exchange from The New Statesman. We'll see you next week.

33:07The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's soundedouttogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.