In short
Podcast Summary: The News Agents - Did the Government Willingly Collapse the China Spy Trial?
Episode Overview In this episode of The News Agents, Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, and Lewis Goodall discuss the political fallout surrounding the collapse of a high-profile trial involving two British men accused of spying for China. The episode delves into accusations against various government officials and the implications of prioritizing economic interests over national security.
Key Themes and Discussions
Background of the Case
- Accusations: Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly spying for China while working in Parliament.
- Trial Collapse: The case against them collapsed unexpectedly, raising questions about governmental interference and the reasons behind the decision to drop charges.
Political Reactions
- Finger-Pointing:
- The current Conservative government blames the previous administration for issues leading to the trial's collapse.
- Critics, including Labour, accuse the government of prioritizing economic relationships with China over justice and national security.
- Key Figures:
- Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, vehemently denies accusations of negligence.
- Jonathan Powell, the National Security Advisor, is under scrutiny as accusations arise about his involvement in the case's handling.
Legal and Procedural Concerns
- Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Role: The head of the CPS indicated the collapse was due to inadequate evidence, as they could not secure necessary government testimony.
- Designation Issues: Discussion around whether China was officially classified as a national security threat at the time of the alleged offences complicates the legal landscape.
Consequences of the Collapse
- Implications for National Security:
- The Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, warns that this case potentially exposes MPs to further espionage threats from foreign nations.
- There's a looming concern that the message sent by the trial's failure could embolden espionage activities.
Economic vs. Security Interests
- Government's Dilemma: The episode emphasizes the tension between maintaining economic relationships with China and ensuring national security.
- Public Interest: Legal experts suggest that the government could have dismissed the trial based on public interest rather than evidential shortcomings, highlighting the murky nature of political decision-making.
Broader Political Context
- Changing Dynamics: The discussion shifts to the ongoing tensions between Labour and the Conservatives regarding their approach to China.
- Upcoming Elections: The episode hints at the potential electoral ramifications of this case, with public sentiment possibly swaying towards parties that address these security concerns more transparently.
Conference Season Reflections
- Party Leaders' Performance: The latter part of the episode touches on the recent party conferences, evaluating which leaders have emerged stronger.
- Emerging Leaders: Attention is drawn to Zach Polanski of the Green Party, whose rise reflects a growing public dissatisfaction with traditional party responses.
Conclusion The episode provides an insightful analysis of the complexities surrounding the collapse of the China spy trial, shedding light on the interplay between politics and national security. The host's skepticism towards government narratives encourages listeners to critically evaluate the motivations behind political decisions amidst ongoing geopolitical tensions.
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Key Takeaways
- The collapse of the spy trial raises significant questions about national security and governmental priorities.
- Political leaders are engaged in a blame game, complicating the public's understanding of the situation.
- The episode highlights the ongoing struggle between economic interests and the imperative of national security.
- The emerging figures in politics, particularly from the Green Party, indicate shifting voter sentiments and the potential for change in future elections.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Jon Sopel:This is a Global Player original podcast. I have to ask you quickly about the China case. Given the controversy, is it right that the CPS review the case and do you still support Jonathan Powell?
0:14Emily Maitlis:Is he exonerated in all of this?
0:16Jon Sopel:Well, as I've said throughout, the relevant evidence was the evidence of what the Conservative government's policy was at the time of the alleged offences. That is what was relevant. That's always what has been relevant. I'm entirely satisfied that that was the evidence before the Crown Prosecution Service. As for Jonathan Powell, he's doing an excellent job. You heard what Steve Wyckoff said about him today in relation to the role he's played behind the scenes. So, of course, I've got full confidence in him. And today, you know, shows the strength of the United Kingdom. Well, that was clear on Jonathan Powell from Keir Starmer.
0:54Jon Sopel:The first bit, though, could have been a word salad that it's hard to make head or tail of.
1:01Emily Maitlis:The government is facing questions after the case against two men accused of spying for China collapsed. We still don't really understand why that case went away or whether the right questions were ever asked. Welcome to the News Agents.
1:23Jon Sopel:the news agents it's john it's emily it's lewis and there are facts and there's finger pointing and at the moment there seems to be a lot more finger pointing than there are facts the facts are that christopher cash and christopher berry were charged under the official secrets act of spying for China when they were working in Parliament. One of them was a parliamentary assistant and they had access to Parliament. And suddenly the charges got dropped last month. Since when, the government has pointed the finger at the previous Conservative government. The Conservative government has pointed it at the present government.
2:05Jon Sopel:The government has then pointed it at the Deputy National Security Advisor. and others have pointed the finger at Jonathan Powell, the national security advisor to the government and some people in the Labour Party very high up, cabinet ministers, have called for his resignation. There is a lot of murk and there's a lot of unpicking that needs to be done.
2:28Lewis Goodall:The reason that this is becoming a political problem for the government and why the opposition parties in particular are crying foul about it is because it is so opaque as to why the trial collapsed the accusation has come forth that the government in some way interfered with it because they wanted to protect relations with Beijing so last week and this is what has prompted the CPS who obviously initially brought this case to trial all of this finger pointing prompted the head of the CPS director of public prosecution of course one of Keir Starmer's successors in that job said that the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat.
3:09Lewis Goodall:This is very rare for the DPP to do this. He said that the CPS, his organisation, has tried to obtain further evidence from the government over many months, but witness statements did not meet the threshold to prosecute. The government is saying, and we can talk about why some of this is a little bit flimsy, The government is blaming Rishi Sunak's government for not designating China as a national security threat at the time that these allegations took place. Many independent commentators are saying that actually that does not matter. And the reason this goes to the heart of Downing Street in particular is the reason that John was saying, which is the accusation is being made that Jonathan Powell, the prime minister's national security adviser, used to work for Tony Blair, may have been involved in some way.
3:56Lewis Goodall:Indeed, when I asked explicitly about that to Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, at the weekend as to whether he had any involvement, see if you can make any sense of what she said. Can you give us your assurance that the Prime Minister and no one who works for the Prime Minister, and in this you'll know I'm referring to his National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, were in any way involved with this decision?
4:18Emily Maitlis:I can give you the assurance that the National Security Advisor was not involved in discussions about the substance of the case or about the evidence connected to the case, yes.
4:26Lewis Goodall:Was he involved in any way?
4:29Emily Maitlis:No, he was not involved in this case, either on the substance or the evidence. I can give you that assurance. He was not consulted.
4:35Lewis Goodall:He didn't give his view about any of it at any point.
4:37Emily Maitlis:Well, I'm sure he has opinions on lots of topics. But he wasn't consulted and he didn't give a view. He was not involved in the evidence or in the taking forward of this case. He was not involved in the substance of it. It is deeply frustrating, deeply disappointing. What does it mean that he wasn't involved in the substance?
4:56Lewis Goodall:What do you mean by that?
4:57Emily Maitlis:He was not involved in the substance of this case in material considerations, including considerations in relation to the evidence. I'm trying to be as clear as I possibly can that this is fundamentally a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service. It really reminded me of Brandon Lewis when he tried to describe the way that the law would be broken over the Northern Ireland agreement during the Brexit negotiations. Do you remember? And he said in a limited and specific way, when people land on two adjectives that they rehearse over and over again, all that you're thinking as you're listening is, what are you really trying not to say?
5:34Emily Maitlis:Right. She clearly landed on those two adjectives over and over again as a way round what was a very unnecessarily complicated answer.
5:42Jon Sopel:Well, I suppose those were her two points, the talking points. You know, you're briefed before you do the interview and say, right, you know, evidence or substance. He wasn't involved in presenting the evidence or the substance. I think what it's trying to say is that he had been involved. And this is what we've subsequently learned that he was involved in a meeting about China, UK relations and what would be the fallout from it. Now, is that a distinction without a difference or is that kind of a difference, you know, that he wasn't involved in the preparation? Downing Street are absolutely kind of, you know, circling the wagons around Jonathan Powell and say it was nothing to do with him that this case collapsed.
6:24Jon Sopel:But you then look at this evidence about the 1911 Official Secrets Act and whether you can only prosecute somebody if they have been designated, if you've been spying for a state that is designated as a threat to national security. And again, that seems to be the argument that Keir Starmer is falling back on when, if you look at apparently the case law and the detail of the act, it doesn't really say that.
6:53Lewis Goodall:I think the thing that is confusing people about this, look, this can get quite technical about the Official Seed Crits Act of 1911, the fact that that was superseded by the National Security Act of 2023. And the government is saying that that old act was out of date. And therefore, this is all just a bit of a bureaucratic problem. But a lot of legal scholars who are looking at this basically say that that is pretty rum. because under even the old act, if you're spying for a state, irrespective of whether the government has officially designated it a national security threat, you are spying for a state.
7:25Lewis Goodall:And we should say these gentlemen involved deny these allegations, but you are spying for a state. And a lot of the people who are experts in this legal architecture, therefore don't understand what the government is really saying. And the reason this kind of matters as well is it's not just a kind of relatively kind of, you know, obscure thing or whatever. Look at what Lindsay Hoyle has said about it, the Speaker of the Commons. He's basically said that the collapse of this case, and obviously, if the government has been involved in making it collapse, that makes what he's about to say even worse.
7:55Lewis Goodall:He said that this is, as far as he's concerned, potentially laying open MPs to be spied upon by the Chinese state or other state actors. And the people involved potentially face no legal records, or at least at the very least, that is potentially the message that has been sent out with the collapse of this trial. It's serious stuff. I think there is something the government ought to be aware of.
8:16Jon Sopel:It is this parliament that has been spied on. It is MPs who have been here. It is MPs' offices that have been infiltrated. And as it stands, what we have seen is the payment for spying on what I believe we should be protected.
8:35Emily Maitlis:At this moment, I feel we haven't had the protection. I've been talking to people who work in this wheelhouse, who have real questions about what went on here, senior lawyers, barristers, prosecutors. One told me, one senior lawyer said, Look, the impression I have whenever you get into a mess like this is the interesting thing is to ask how the mess occurred. They explain the big question that they still have. So whenever you bring a prosecution, there is a CPS code test. In other words, you need to know if it's met the threshold. It has to satisfy the code of prosecutors. The first question you ask is, is there evidential basis?
9:15Emily Maitlis:But the second question you can ask, and you can ask them in either order, is whether it's in the public interest. And this person said, look, the government could have easily got rid of this. It is a very usual thing. The government, any government, can easily get rid of an awkward prosecution, effectively giving immunity to Secret Service personnel by saying it's not in the public interest. It's how you get rid of prosecutions which no longer suit the government of the day. But they didn't do that. They went down the evidential code test instead. And this lawyer said it just makes no sense because if you gather the evidence that brings the case to a charge, which they did in April of 2024, that evidence doesn't change.
10:07Emily Maitlis:You might want to get further evidence. You might want to expand the evidence. But you can't then go back and say, well, actually, I mean, unless something material has happened, which in this case it hasn't, that evidence still stands.
10:19Lewis Goodall:And that's the key, just to make it clear for people, that's the key point of why one of the fundamental things the government is saying makes no sense. Because what they're saying is, oh, the legal architecture wasn't working. If that were the case, the CPS would never have brought it in the first place.
10:33Emily Maitlis:And at that point, you then turn it over to a jury. Right. What you're saying is this is the evidence in front of you. Let the jury decide. Let the jury make their decision. But this person said to me, you know, as I say, a sort of a legal scholar said it is quite normal for a government to make these cases go away by asking the questions if it's in the public interest. this person thinks that it rests with foreign office it rests with the attorney general somebody got to this and they forgot to ask that main question and this person said why don't you go and you put that question to the cps you put it to the director of prosecutions and we did we put that question why did this never go to a question of public interest the director of public prosecutions their press office and they got back and said we won't be commenting further at that time this is all we've had to say in other words there is no response to that that makes any real sense.
11:26Jon Sopel:So let's just broaden this out further to try to put this in a context which is that this government, indeed the last government as well, thought that China poses a national security threat on various different fronts but also China represents an economic opportunity and so does the one thing lead to the other? Is the opportunity of doing more trade with China and it being an engine of economic growth for the UK outweigh the significance of bringing two people to justice who allegedly spied for China. Now the case is being you know people are arguing well it's clear the economic importance is taking priority over this legal case and that is why allegedly the government have scuppered the case and that is the context in which you have to say well hang on Surely if you've got two people who have been spying for another country that pose a national security threat and they have been spying in Parliament on MPs, then surely that has to go to trial.
12:31Jon Sopel:And maybe it doesn't because, well, the economic imperative is greater.
12:36Emily Maitlis:The other point to that, funnily enough, is and this goes back to this idea that the CPS were told to get rid of the case on an evidential basis. The director of public prosecutions called this a high court case. Right. If you go back to the transcription, the press releases, he calls it a high court case. It wasn't. It was a court of appeal case. Now, if you're the director of prosecutions, you don't get stuff like that wrong. We might miss it. We might get the details wrong, but you don't get that wrong. And this person said it's such a basic howler. It suggests it wasn't thought through. In other words, it is a mess.
13:09Emily Maitlis:They've got themselves into a mess because they reacted in the wrong way to something that they thought they had to clear up.
13:17Lewis Goodall:And, you know, the other element to this is, of course, is that this stuff is being noticed. I mean, the Sunday Times had a quote, albeit from an anonymous White House official, basically saying that the Trump administration had very much noticed this stuff. And we're very concerned about it. And we're concerned. And we know, obviously, the sort of geopolitical tension there is between the US and China predates Trump, intensifies on Trump. But it's not just this. There's also this question of the Chinese mega embassy, which lots of people think is basically a kind of...
13:43Emily Maitlis:Which would have been decided today. I mean, they've just pushed that decision back. But we were waiting to hear what this absolutely huge, vast complex in the centre of London would have got greenlit by the Labour Party.
13:55Lewis Goodall:And lots of people think that that is basically just a massive sort of espionage centre or has the ability to sort of become so. And it's sort of controversial. So, you know, as ever, this is, you know, Starmer and Reeves have have tried to thaw relations with Beijing. and because, John, as you say, the economic opportunities which they think are there. As ever with British governments, and we saw this with the Huawei decision under the Theresa May government, lots of British governments want to get close to China and geopolitical realities, mainly from the United States, often bounce them back.
14:25Lewis Goodall:But I do think, you know, in this era that we're living in, I mean, let's remember, you know, MI5 and MI6 have warned that, you know, the Chinese have been involved in all sorts of sort of cyber attacks against the UK, cyber terrorism against the UK, lots of accusations of them trying to spy on MPs. This is a problem which is apparently getting worse. The government's accusation that the last government didn't designate them as a national security threat is pretty risible when you consider that Rishi Sunak literally talked in explicit terms of China being a major geopolitical threat.
14:50Emily Maitlis:Why did you bring the charge then anyway?
14:52Lewis Goodall:Yeah, well, quite so. So all of that feels to me that the position, the holding position that the government and Starmer has got is becoming increasingly difficult. It's a nebulous position. They're trying to confuse everybody, or that's suddenly the net effect anyway. How much road that has to run when, I know for a fact there are lots of Labour own MPs who are always nervous about this cozying up to China and how it could be used against them politically, if nothing else. All of these questions are now coming into the harsh light of public diversity.
15:19Emily Maitlis:I mean, the enemy thing is really interesting because the actual definition is whether it is information useful to an enemy. Now, look, you can go down the stuff that those two men are alleged to have sent. And it's pretty hard to even see why it might have been useful to an enemy. But if you send information to Canada or Australia, they might not be enemies, right? They're not enemies of the British state, but they can pass it on. If somebody is spying for you, it can still get into enemy hands. It can still be passed on to an enemy. So this whole idea of the designation, as you say, makes absolutely no sense in any realistic test.
Read the full transcript
16:00Jon Sopel:Look, MI6 doesn't only have spies in Russia and China. MI6 has spies in Paris, in Rome, in Washington. Of course, the MI6 station chief has, we have MI6 station chief. We just call them ears. Well, yeah, and they are doing, they're trying to find out what's going on in the country. and they're getting all sorts of information from those sort of people. Lewis, you said something about the government is sort of trying to muddy the waters and it's sowing confusion. I was speaking to someone at the weekend from, you know, within government who was saying, look, the fact of the matter is that we don't believe.
16:37Jon Sopel:It is a bit of a mess, but we don't believe that anyone's that interested in this as a subject, that this is not getting traction with the public because it's not a clear-cut, obvious case where you can say, oh, my God, look, there is wrongdoing there. Heads must roll. At the moment, it's, dare I say, the classic BBC thing where a deputy head will roll. It seems like the deputy national security adviser is being lined up to be the fool guy in all of this.
17:04Lewis Goodall:Well, it depends, of course, what they've said to Parliament and what they've said less seriously, but nonetheless potentially politically damaging, what Starmer and others have said in public. And these things obviously can start off feeling a little bit obscure, recondite, and then slowly kind of build up over time. And that's where it feels like it is. Put it this way. The press, much of the press, has got a bit between the teeth on this now. You can see it in the Sunday Times, the Mail, others, the Conservative Party. They sense that there's something here and you can just feel it starting to build up.
17:32Emily Maitlis:I mean, what's really interesting is the pendulum swing about governments and China. Right. If you go back to Cameron and Osborne, I mean, the number of Chinese banquets, They sat through because they were basically saying, you know, we're going to go out, love China, do business with China. We want Huawei. I remember going around the Huawei factory with George Osborne. It was a big deal. And then under Theresa May, and you remember Gavin Williamson was actually fired from the May government because he said actually Huawei is a threat. And she said he'd leaked that and, you know, come from sort of internal meetings.
18:07Emily Maitlis:But you see this pattern, which is we get very, very close and then the subsequent government goes completely against it. Then you get somebody like Liz Truss, right, who for all her faults was an absolute China hawk, called out China and I think went to Taiwan, you know, a big hawk. and then suddenly you're back in this place of like well we've got too many other enemies now and there's there's too little trade coming in from elsewhere and we haven't got any kind of eu deal that makes us rich or trade works you know so let's get back into china's pockets again i
18:40Jon Sopel:mean it's the same thing there was a famous occasion when president xi came to london and david cameron was the prime minister and they would go to the pub didn't they they did a trip to manchester city football club and there was absolute strict instructions about what you had to do and where president she would stand and the chinese secret service absolutely tight about what could be done and what couldn't be done and sergio agüero the forward for manchester city suddenly produces his phone and says come on let's do a selfie and so there's a selfie with president xi david cameron and sergio agüero and it was considered the most brilliant diplomatic triumph of the trip that this selfie had come out and made them look really good and human it's worth
19:20Lewis Goodall:saying as well that you know ollie robbins who is the permanent secretary of the foreign office is in china this week yeah meeting with chinese officials on long planned business as has been said while all this is going on starmer himself is supposed to be visiting next year this is part of a concerted effort which has been taking place since this government came to office and what is i mean let's leave aside some of the political considerations about how they might you know questions they might be asked about it one of the damaging things about this case is that it's putting into sharper relief that policy and it is forcing them to confront questions that they would just rather not confront.
19:54Lewis Goodall:Yeah, they don't want to be thinking about where the money comes from right now. Now you've got people like us saying to them, well, do you think China's a threat or not? And they have to end up, like Bridget Philipson did with me in a different part of that interview, basically sort of talk out both sides of their mouths, which is to say, well, yeah, they're a security threat, but they're also a tremendous economic opportunity which matters more.
20:10Emily Maitlis:Exactly. But they should never have gone out. I mean, that's why I do think that this lawyer has a point. Don't go down the evidential route. Just say, if you don't think it's in the public interest to have the trial, just say it wasn't in the public interest. That's how they make things go away.
20:23Jon Sopel:But isn't it possible to have a conversation where you say, yes, China is both an economic opportunity and a national security threat. I mean, a lot of countries fall into that category. Not everyone just falls into a cuddly little ally. I don't know.
20:36Lewis Goodall:I think they're a category on their own. I can't really think of an equivalent because, you know, other major geopolitical competitors in the past or indeed today, let's say the Soviet Union, economically speaking, of no particular threat or no opportunity. And there was next to no trade. And there was next to no trade because they were hermetically sealed bubble. Russia today has ended up in that sort of, to a lesser extent, but in that sort of category as well. Other kind of authoritarian states, Iran or whatever, again, next to no trade. China is in this weird position. To some extent, we do have to look both ways because it is true that much of our modern economy, supply lines and go on, do run through Beijing and a ton of other deeply economically productive Chinese cities.
21:12Lewis Goodall:And yet they also clearly pose a security and geopolitical threat. And the other thing I'd say as well is that obviously we can't just say it's not just China, right? If we're thinking about MPs, espionage for MPs or sort of wider kind of foreign influence operations, it's not just confined to China. And if we look at it, it's a different sort of thing. But we look at what happened with Nathan Gill, the former UKIP leader in Wales, longstanding sort of ally of Nigel Farage. He, of course, in February was charged by the Met under counterterrorism command with eight counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy to bribery.
21:45Lewis Goodall:Allegations relating to payments made by him in return for promoting pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament and other media. And of course, just last month in September on 26th, he pleaded guilty to all eight counts of bribery. So these kind of foreign influence operations, sometimes espionage, sometimes bribery, whatever happens to be, they are becoming more and more frequent and a bigger and bigger part of our politics.
22:10Emily Maitlis:Yeah. And that led to the top of the party, Reform Party, pretending they didn't know him. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Bow on, bad apple. Yeah. Well, he's been in the barrel a long time. Exactly.
22:20Jon Sopel:And fresh advice from Dan Jarvis, the security minister, who went to the Commons and told people, you need to be more careful about who you mix with.
22:26Lewis Goodall:Well, and just to say on that, I mean, that's an interesting thing about, you know, we're looking ahead to the future, how foreign influence could become more and more important. Something we have to think about more, which is let's take reform just because they happen to be, you know, obviously riding high and we're talking about them becoming majority government. That would mean that you're going to end up with basically 350 ish sort of new MPs potentially from whom we've never heard. And we know that the vetting process for Farage's party outfits, he himself has said, it's not me saying that he himself has said, has been rather lacking in the past.
22:54Lewis Goodall:And it is difficult to do. It's genuinely difficult to do. to find 350 candidates, whatever happens to 650 candidates altogether. And they would be just like if there was to be a massive turnover without those established kind of party networks which deal with these sorts of things, which Labour and Tory parties have had for a long time. It's hard and would absolutely potentially be susceptible to foreign influence.
23:13Emily Maitlis:I mean, the guidance from MI5 I find really funny because yesterday they submitted new advice saying, remain alert and trust your instincts. I would say don't trust your instincts. Remain alert and do due diligence on those people. Crush your gut. I'll just go with your gut. Crush your instincts. No, actually, just kind of do your homework. Make sure you're not appointing Chinese spies or Russian spies or people who want to ask questions on behalf of other authoritarian regimes into our world.
23:43Jon Sopel:We'll be back after the break. And the rise and rise of the Green Party.
23:53Jon Sopel:Stay across the latest news, breaking stories and respected opinions by listening to LBC.
23:59Emily Maitlis:From award-winning internationally respected journalists.
24:03Jon Sopel:Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. James O 'Brien on LBC.
24:05Emily Maitlis:Good afternoon, I'm Sheila Fogarty.
24:07Lewis Goodall:Very good afternoon to you, Tom Swarbrick with you here. Hello, this is Andrew Marr. Hello, you're listening to Sunday with me, Lewis Goodall. Find out what the story means for you.
24:15Emily Maitlis:Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app.
24:20Lewis Goodall:LBC, leading Britain's conversation.
24:27Jon Sopel:The News Agents.
24:29Emily Maitlis:Some politicians seem confused. Do they serve the billionaires or do they serve you? I'm not confused.
24:38Lewis Goodall:Ordinary people can't wait any longer. I'm here to make this call, but I can't do it alone. Will you stand with me? Let's bring back that feeling and make hope normal again.
24:51Emily Maitlis:That was Zach Polanski, leader of the Greens and one of the few politicians right now who has reasons to be cheerful in the post-conference YouGov polling bounce. Because what the public is telling us, which we all secretly know, is that conferences, conference season, actually does sweet FA to a party.
25:18Jon Sopel:Hang on, you like going to party conferences and you're just now just saying, sitting here on our podcast and say, there's no fucking point in going because they don't change anything.
25:25Emily Maitlis:I'm not saying there's no point in going, but I'm saying that it is this really strong reminder of what a bubble, you know, somebody wants to compare. I'm saying people don't listen to party conferences. Tory party conference to London Fashion Week. It's really, really important if you're in that bubble. And if you're not, you don't notice. Kimmy Badenock with a fairly well-received speech, lots of policies, lots of stamina, a few jokes, a bit of charisma.
25:50Lewis Goodall:Great coverage.
25:50Emily Maitlis:Great coverage. Great front pages. At least for the first 12 hours, maybe 24 hours. She didn't really go anywhere in terms of the polling. Keir Starmer, likewise. But the one person who has seen a substantial jump is Zach Polanski on a personal level. and they have now reached in membership terms 100 ,000 members for the first time. That is near 50 % rise since he took over as leader. What? About a month ago, just over a month ago.
26:20Lewis Goodall:Yeah, but look, Polanski, he's been lighting up social media. He obviously won the Green Party leadership contest by an absolute landslide.
26:29Emily Maitlis:It was quite Putin-esque. It almost was. You almost started to wonder about the... Have you locked up all of you? Yeah, who were the people who voted against him?
26:36Lewis Goodall:Because we're coming after you. Yeah, and he, since then, has been doing, I think, you know, what was obvious for a while, which is that there has been a space in British politics on the kind of, what you might say, the kind of populist, economically populist left. We actually did an episode on the show, like, what, about six months or so ago, basically asking, why was it that the Green Party wasn't doing better? And there were sort of two reasons for that. One is that they were being led by some, you know, nice people, one of whom we had Adrian Ramsey into the studio, but who seemed reluctant to engage in the kind of more pugnacious politics that characterises our age and indeed the sort of more pugnacious social media sort of style.
27:14Lewis Goodall:Polanski is not. And, you know, the green part is a sort of weird creature because on the one hand, it is sort of like there's sort of two wings to it. One is obviously the sort of environmental side, which is kind of like I always describe as like Lib Dems plus, you know, radical green policies. So that's like kind of like very nice people and who sort of speak in very nice ways who tend to do well in kind of more rural seats in the sort of more parts of deep England, the sort of places where the Lib Dems historically have done well. And there's always been a more economically, politically radical contingent, more hard left, more like the Jeremy Corbyn wing of the Labour Party.
27:49Lewis Goodall:And what Polanski is doing is taking them hard in that direction.
27:53Jon Sopel:I remember when we interviewed Polanski on the podcast and we were saying, look, there is obviously a space on the left, but aren't you just going to be roadkill to Jeremy Corbyn's new party and Zahra Sultana's new party? And they're just going to, you know, eat you for lunch. And it looks like it's the other way around now that the Corbyn, Sultana, your party kind of shenanigans are just so they're kind of comedy in some ways.
28:20Lewis Goodall:Shall we explain what most people haven't? I mean, yeah, no, let's explain it. Yes, yes. No, no, I just, I mean, people who aren't as sad as us, John, you know, like watching the kind of your party. Well, no, I'm just saying that basically, you know, Corbyn and Sultana, along with a clutch of other, you know, some independent MPs and MPs who had been kicked out of the Labour Party, supposed to be forming their own party, which they decided would be called your party. Although even when they announced that your party was going to happen, Zara Sultana, the Coventry MP.
28:45Emily Maitlis:I don't think your party was even meant to be the name. They just had your party as a holding party.
28:50Lewis Goodall:Yes, you decide what it's going to be called. But Corbyn announced it and then Zoltana went on Twitter saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're not called your party. So from literally day one, it was clearly disputatious and fractious. And since then, it got even worse for reasons that we probably don't need to get into. But basically, it started to look like Zoltana might end up suing your party or vice versa for the misuse of data and emails and all sorts of stuff. They seem to have made up a bit since then. They were in Liverpool at the weekend announcing a rally. But the point is, is that they've been left behind by Polanski, as you say, John, because basically Polanski has won this election and is basically taking the point is, what's the point of your party now?
29:29Because if you're talking about having an economically radical populist party of the left, that is now the Green Party.
29:36Lewis Goodall:So what's your party's point? So there's a really interesting conundrum for the Green Party now, which is all to do with how they raise party funding and they have a ban on who they will accept money from.
29:48Emily Maitlis:And this goes back to the point of what the party wants to be. So at the moment, they have a ban on accepting money from companies that market baby milk in developing countries, are involved in road building or intensive farming or meat sale. In other words, these go back to places where the Greens were just thinking about their sort of eco populism, not about their economic populism. And I think Polanski is now coming to a place where and others around him are saying, do we need to start to shift away from all the bans on where we get the money from?
30:23Lewis Goodall:He's barely been talking about climate change or green issues.
30:26Emily Maitlis:What he's done, and I think his model, as far as we can see, is a Mamdani-like character in New York, where the eco doesn't stand for ecology. It stands for economic. In other words, it's a tax the rich party. It's a socialist. It wears socialism on its sleeve. And it says, we will stop rip off Britain. That's one of his phrases now. You know, he's made a very good fist of saying, all of you, you're getting ripped off. Right. So there is a world in which he even appeals to kind of reform voters because what they care about most is being left behind, is being priced out, is the cost of living, all the rest of it.
31:05Emily Maitlis:But they probably don't care about the ideologies of a Green Party that says no money from X, no money from Y. So I think that's going to be the next thing for Polanski now to decide, like, where are your green ideals now? Is it more important to just go left, get the money and enlarge?
31:23Jon Sopel:Look, we have asked the question a number of times on the podcast, what presents the greatest threat to the Labour coalition of voters? Does it come from Labour voters switching to reform or Labour voters feeling disaffected and going to the left? And I think we now have a pretty clear answer that there is a very substantial number of people who are attracted to this economic populism of Zach Polanski, which is much more kind of red in tooth and claw in terms of socialist values than what is being offered currently by Keir Starmer. And if people feel that the Starmer project, we've got the budget coming up, which will be grim and all the rest of it, then, yeah, Zach Polanski looks like a good harbour to shelter in for the time being.
32:08Jon Sopel:I mean, look, you know, the general elections are a long time away and there's almost too much polling going on in this country at the moment, which is a whole separate argument. But I think that for the time being, who's had a bounce out of the party conferences? The Greens.
32:21Emily Maitlis:Yeah. The other complicated thing about Corbyn and Sultana working with the independents, the ones who were elected on the back of not least really the war in Gaza in 2024, is that they don't really share many of the same traits.
32:36Jon Sopel:Voting against VAT on school fees.
32:39Emily Maitlis:Yeah, I mean, you can be, you know, one of the sort of Muslim independents who is not remotely progressive, probably doesn't have particularly progressive feelings on gay rights or LGBT rights or women's rights or any of that stuff. So then you've got very strange bedfellows for Corbyn and Sultana if they actually want to make that the basis for their next grouping.
33:00Lewis Goodall:Sultana was asked exactly now what is the point of differentiation between her and the Green Party and why you still need your party at the weekend. And this is what she said. And I think you can hear the difficulty in coming up with a very credible answer. We are an explicitly socialist party. We should have a policy, and I hope members pass this, that we should withdraw from NATO because it is an imperialist war machine, whereas the Greens on their website say that NATO has an important role in maintaining security for its member states. If we look at NATO's track record, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, endless wars have made the world less safe.
33:38Lewis Goodall:So basically, we're like the Greens on the Polanski, but we're even more anti-NATO is a, yeah, I mean, it's a difficult one. I mean, it's a difficult one in terms of seeing where the voters in the electoral coalition on that. But not least because, I mean, I've interviewed Polanski before and he makes it quite clear that he wants to reform NATO, whatever that happens to mean. But I think, you know, more broadly, I think it'd be really interesting to see not just what effect on British politics and the discourse, if Polanski can maintain this wave, has, but sort of on Labour, but also more generally.
34:09Lewis Goodall:So because the truth is, is that, you know, what he's doing in one sense, it's like we said on that show at the time, it's not rocket science, right? What the left of politics is needed in Britain is to occupy that space, which has been vacant for a very long time. And you needed to do it pretty unapologetically. And you needed to do it with someone who kind of gets the modern media environment, gets the power of vertical video, gets, you know, is a competent speaker, all of which Polanski is.
34:31Emily Maitlis:That's no small thing. I mean, you watch him. But no, but I'm serious. Like you watch Polanski speak at the podium and it sounds really obvious, but he can. He rehearses his lines. He delivers his speech. He punches hard. He's a good communicator. But most of them don't. I mean, the incredible thing is that most of them don't practice, you know, making a speech.
34:50Lewis Goodall:And so I'm not underestimating his ability, but more that the kind of like it was kind of sort of obvious what they could get the right. Exactly. But it's quite interesting to me just how much he's been hammered by reform related accounts, kind of the radical right, the online right. It's not just it's not the sort of Stama left that have been going for the Labour Party. It's these people, I think, who have been used to this idea for a long time that they themselves uniquely represent a kind of anti-establishment view. Right. I think they dislike him perhaps most of all, because in some ways he is playing on their territory, albeit from a very different sort of political vantage point.
35:24Lewis Goodall:A hundred percent.
35:26Emily Maitlis:This is like Bannon saying, I share a lot with Mamdani. Yeah, exactly. The horseshoe comes round. It does.
35:32Lewis Goodall:And if you buy the theory, which I think we've talked about a lot, which, you know, basically one of the reasons that British politics has been galloping hard, the Overton window has been moving hard in a right and radical right direction, is partly because it has been imbalanced. That, you know, the two magnetic poles, only one has been represented. And whether you agree with Polanski or not and agree with all of his politics or not, you can think that it is important to have a different sort of view articulated from that side of politics as effectively as some of the online radical right have been doing, because potentially it helps rebalance the scales a little bit in everyday media discourse, the day to day political conversation.
36:12Emily Maitlis:I mean, that was when we had Polanski on. The question we asked was, is left-wing populism the answer to right-wing populism? And I think what you see, and I remember it really clearly with the last German election, was the young women go hard left, the young right were going hard right, the young men were going hard right, and the centre cannot hold.
36:39Jon Sopel:wb8s there lovely to have very good glad you got that reference thank you we'll be back in just a moment the news agents i've known so many of you for so long you're friends of mine you're great people i have a couple i don't like in particular but i won't tell you who i have actually a few of them I don't like at all, but you'll never find out who they are, then maybe you will,
37:11Emily Maitlis:come to think of it. It's so creepy and so threatening and slightly demented, isn't it?
37:17Jon Sopel:That was Donald Trump at Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday with the parade of leaders behind him who'd all flown in. And it was like they were the chorus line and there was only one actor who was the star in the show, of course, Donald Trump. And they were just irrelevant people behind him.
37:34Emily Maitlis:I once stood on a stage with Donald Trump when he was the judge of his own beauty contest, Miss America, in Las Vegas. And it had that kind of feel to it. I mean, if they'd all been in sequined bikinis behind him, it wouldn't have felt any weirder.
37:50Jon Sopel:Some of the interactions were absolutely special. United Kingdom. Where's United Kingdom? Where's my friend? Come here. Is everything going good? Very good. that's very nice of you here these people all came on like 20 20 minute notice kirstama is like a kid at the back of the class who says he's about to say i want to go to the toilet and he raises his hand here i am and he gets called in and there's a bit of a hug and a bit of a chat and then kirstama sent back again you thought that kirstama's moment had come and that he was going to address the world and it was no just wanted to see where kirstama was the most revealing bit of it is
38:29Lewis Goodall:where he talks about they've been here, they were called here in 20 minutes, which obviously is not true. That's what appeals to him. They're waiting about six hours. Yeah, yeah, that's what appeals to him, right? They're all just there and they're all here to see the king of the world. My favourite, where's Waldo?
38:44Emily Maitlis:Gianni Infantini, head of FIFA, right? What was he doing on that stage for world peace? Good Lord. I mean, if there was not a deal going on there when he arrived, there were definitely deals being made by the end.
38:59Jon Sopel:I tell you what, But the other person I felt most sorry for was Georgia Maloney, who was told to stop smoking by President Erdogan. You're good.
39:07Emily Maitlis:Oh, you look great. Oh, thank you. I'm very kind. But I have to make you stop smoking. I know, I know. I don't want to kill somebody. This is impossible.
39:20Lewis Goodall:Picture of health, of course.
39:21Jon Sopel:Yeah, who looked... Erdogan. Yeah, exactly. And also, you know, just the sexiest way in which he was treated. you're a very pretty lady you know you're very beautiful it's the beautiful georgia maloney
39:32Lewis Goodall:come on guys her face it's a picture being lectured on being woke by john sopel that really is that really is the bottom of the barrel isn't it right before we fall out catastrophically in here we'll say goodbye bye-bye see you tomorrow this has been a global player original production
From the publisher
The Conservatives have accused Keir Starmer and those around him of wilfully forcing the collapse of a trial involving two young British men accused of spying for the Chinese government - allegations they deny. Security minister Dan Jarvis got to his feet in the Commons last night to angrily deny Kemi Badenoch's attacks - it's all the fault of the last Conservative government was his counter charge. So why exactly did the case collapse? Did those in government really choose to protect economic interests over national security? Or could this be a case of cock up rather than conspiracy?
Later, which party leader emerged best from the conference season. And what might this tell us about the public hunger for change?
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/