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Podcast Summary: The News Agents - Episode: Q&A: Should we abolish the monarchy?
Episode Overview In this episode of *The News Agents*, hosts Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, and Lewis Goodall tackle a range of listener questions, focusing on topics such as the future of the British monarchy, the political landscape in the UK, and the implications of artificial intelligence on jobs and governance. The discussion is marked by skepticism, humor, and in-depth analysis.
Key Topics Discussed
- The British Monarchy
- Question of Republicanism: The hosts explore whether it's time to consider abolishing the monarchy, highlighting a generational divide in attitudes towards the institution.
- Changing Public Opinion: Younger voters show increasing support for republicanism, fueled by recent controversies involving royal family members, particularly Prince Andrew.
- Arguments for and Against:
- Pro-Monarchy Arguments:
- Stability and continuity in governance.
- The monarchy as a diplomatic figurehead, aiding in international relations.
- Anti-Monarchy Arguments:
- The absurdity of hereditary titles and the flaws of the royal family.
- Criticism of the monarchy for allowing individuals like Prince Andrew to wield influence despite scandals.
- Keir Starmer and the Labour Party
- Starmer's Leadership: A discussion on whether Starmer is an obstacle to Labour's success in the next general election.
- Public Perception: Recent polling suggests Starmer's popularity is lower than that of controversial figures like Prince Andrew.
- Party Dynamics: Although Starmer may lead Labour into the next election, internal party factions pose risks for his leadership stability.
- Coalition Politics: Considerations of if Labour can unite leftist voters against populist movements, particularly the rise of the Reform Party.
- Politics of New Parties
- Your Party's Flop: Analysis of why Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's Your Party has not gained traction.
- Personalities Over Policies: The leaders are perceived as having conflicting visions and lack of coherent policy direction.
- Fragmented Left: The left's tendency towards infighting and failure to establish a unified platform contributes to its struggles.
- The Impact of AI on Employment
- Job Losses and Governance: The hosts discuss the potential job losses due to AI and the need for government action to address the implications for tax revenue and social benefits.
- Economic Concerns: Predictions of significant job displacement underscore the urgency for political leaders to engage with the topic.
- Economic Bubble Risks: Speculation about AI and tech investments potentially creating another economic bubble similar to the dot-com crash.
- Understanding the Overton Window
- Concept Explanation: The Overton window describes the range of ideas deemed acceptable in public discourse.
- Shifts in Acceptability: The hosts provide examples such as Brexit and same-sex marriage to illustrate how public perception can evolve over time.
- Media's Role: Discussion of how media influences public perception and can either shift or solidify the Overton window.
Key Takeaways
- Generational Shift: There is a notable generational divide in attitudes toward the monarchy, indicating potential shifts in political ideologies.
- Labour's Challenges: Keir Starmer's leadership is under scrutiny, with concerns about his ability to galvanize support from the left necessary for electoral success.
- Rise of AI: The potential for AI to disrupt job markets requires proactive governance and planning for future economic challenges.
- Overton Window Dynamics: The continual evolution of public discourse is shaped by social, political, and media influences, impacting the viability of various political ideas and movements.
Conclusion The episode encapsulates the current political climate in the UK, exploring critical themes of monarchy, leadership, new political movements, and emerging technologies. The hosts engage listeners with humor and skepticism, providing a nuanced look at complex issues shaping contemporary British society.
For more insights and to catch future episodes, listen to *The News Agents* on the Global Player.
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. So if you were expecting a special question and answer edition of the News Agents last Friday, we of course let you down because there was that minor bit of breaking news concerning Prince Andrew. Sorry, Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. But we're bringing it to this Friday instead. And we're going to start with a question from David Beecham. is there anything in the rumor of Trump building a palatial bunker under the ballroom obviously
0:32Emily Maitlis:still under construction I absolutely love Trump and his ballroom fixation and this for me goes back to nearly 15 years ago the first time I ever met Trump and he showed me his ballroom in the Waldorf Hotel New York and he told me it was the biggest ballroom in New York and my producer and I looked at each other and we kind of went, hmm, I don't think it is actually. I think he's got his square footage wrong. I think he's got his whatever cubic meterage wrong on this. And we kind of went, well, are we going to call him out? And then we were like, no, of course we're not. It's a ballroom. Who cares about a ballroom?
1:10Emily Maitlis:As it turns out, Trump does. He cares a lot about his ballroom. So is the East Wing ballroom a cover for his sort of prepper escape route? No, I don't know. I haven't heard that one. I think for Trump, the ballroom is the thing.
1:28Jon Sopel:Well, it's not just the ballroom, though. If you look at the Oval Office, every time I see a picture of the Oval Office, and when I was there, you used to get called in quite regularly to a pool spray when a prime minister or president was in town, and they'd be sitting in the two chairs by the fireplace, and you'd stand there with your boom mics and all the rest of it and try and get an answer. The Oval Office is being transformed. It's gone guilt. There is gold paint everywhere now in the Oval Office. Trump is changing the White House and you can imagine what this ballroom is going to be like.
1:58Jon Sopel:And the other thing he did at the weekend, I don't know whether you saw this, that he posted pictures of one of the bathrooms that had been redecorated. There is the Lincoln bathroom in the White House, which was kind of, I think it was built in the 1940s, so it wasn't from Lincoln's time. But Trump decided it was out of kilter because it was too Art Deco. And so he says, I have installed a bathroom now that is much more in keeping with what it would have been like in Lincoln's time. And you look at it and you think, no, it's not. It just looks like a kind of, you know, four seasons hotel bathroom.
2:33Jon Sopel:It's got white and black marble that's very speckled and very classy. But the idea that this is somehow a restoration to Abraham Lincoln's time is just preposterous. So we don't know about the bunker. We don't know about the bunker. I mean, goodness knows what he's doing. He loves the idea of demolition. And apparently with the White House, you don't need to get permission to demolish things. If you're rebuilding, you need to get historical buildings approval before you can do it. But you can do the demolition. And so the bulldozers have gone in to the most iconic landmark in America and just started ripping it out.
3:09Jon Sopel:And nobody seems to know anything about it. There are these mysterious donors who are stumping up the money and we have no idea what they're getting back in return for it.
3:18Emily Maitlis:Welcome to the News Agents.
3:24Lewis Goodall:The News Agents. It's John.
3:26Emily Maitlis:It's Emily.
3:27Lewis Goodall:It's Lewis. And there was silence.
3:30Emily Maitlis:And there was silence. Shall I kick off? Why don't you kick off? Snoogle Silky. I like Snoogle Silky. It sounds very Halloween-y. Is it time, finally, to seriously explore republicanism? Surely everyone can see how preposterous the idea of a modern monarchy is. Please don't suggest it would decimate tourist numbers. My first question is, Lewis, is your name Snoogle Silky on Twitter?
3:54Lewis Goodall:I wish it were. I mean, look, I mean, I assume they mean republicanism in the monarchical sense rather than... Shall we get the Republican Party to sort of start up over here? Or American. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a thought. I mean, I do think there is something really interesting going on at the moment in politics. And it's a slow burn thing. But the generational difference that there is in terms of views towards the monarchy is stark and profound. And that's not always been the case. It's not always been the case. A bit as people sometimes say that, you know, people move from the left when they're young to the right when they're old.
4:23Lewis Goodall:Generally speaking, there has been cross-generational support across the cohorts for the monarchy over time. in recent years there has been a sharp cleavage opened up between older voters and younger voters in particular so whether we think or not it's wise to start thinking about republicanism i think it is undoubtedly true that republicanism if those trends that sustain will become more mainstream over time and that's why i think the whole prince andrew thing has had such purchase over the past
4:50Jon Sopel:couple of weeks because people where once upon a time you might have said well you know that's the royal family and will just accept and kind of don't people are really furious about it and people it's kind of common pub conversation about why are we doing all that i just think that's
5:05Emily Maitlis:about the monarchy though i just don't i don't think it's about the monarchy i think it's very specific and it's driven by a bigger question which is you know why are powerful men getting away with terrible things and you could ask that across any bit of public life yeah i don't think it is about the monarchy i think the trouble with you know the whole kind of question of the title and all that kind of stuff is like what is the question you're asking fundamentally at the bottom of that is like well did he earn that title did he deserve that title once you've once you've asked that question it's almost impossible to carry on the whole charade right i mean it's a ridiculous thing to say well he did earn that but they didn't earn that but he earned that but his brother earned that but of course not that that's that is the point you have to suspend your belief willingly
5:57Jon Sopel:to believe in the monarchy as an institution of course you have to suspend your belief and the only thing that the royal family have got i mean what if you were a management consultant and you were asked to say what is the key performance indicator of the royal family it's how many ribbons you've cut and how much airtime you've got on television and if the only airtime you're
6:16Emily Maitlis:getting is negative as prince andrews i think it's more than that i think it's about stability i think it's about your sense of place in the world it's about the way you manage to do a very subtle kind of diplomacy that maybe politics misses you know when the king goes and speaks italian in a speech when he goes and meets macron speaks french these are all doing the things that are trying to repair the immense damage that Brexit created for us. And it's done through the back door of the monarchy rather than through the front door of Number 10.
6:50Lewis Goodall:Prince Andrew could have been king. I mean, you know, if things had worked out differently, if Charles had got killed on that ski slope, you know, 30 years ago, you know, and he hadn't had children, you know, Andrew could have been king. Now, you can get into a big kind of debate or argument about whether his life would have been very different had he been the heir rather than the spare. But it's entirely possible and credible that it wouldn't and he would have had these predilections or whatever, and he would have had this story. And clearly then he would have had to abdicate or he would clearly have had to sort of step back from things.
7:18Lewis Goodall:And this is the problem with hereditary monarchy. It's like, yeah, for every Queen Elizabeth, you get a Prince Andrew. And for every good king or a good queen, you potentially get a real wrong one. And, you know, that is just inherent and inevitable. And not only that, I actually think, I think actually the strongest argument for Republicans is nothing about the country, because I can see the strong, you know, that there is an argument for a head of state who is non-political and around whom the country can kind of cohere and we extract identity from them and so on. I still think you could have a much more slimmed down, less kind of ridiculously kind of ornate monarchy than we have, but, you know, whatever.
7:50Lewis Goodall:I actually think the strongest argument is for them. I think their lives are absurd. I think they live in a gilded cage where they have no freedom to decide anything that they want to do. I was reading a story today. Apparently that Prince Andrew, you know, at one point was so helpless because, you know, he has a cook following him everywhere he went that, you know, he decided that he needed, this cook was going off on a sort of Christmas party or whatever and he called them back because he was desperate to have a baked potato. You know, such is the kind of like infantile life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure.
8:16Lewis Goodall:I'm sure. But like such is the kind of infantilisation of these people that we basically breed this family to have an infantile miserable life and I think that's the strongest argument is for them rather than for us. Do you know what though?
8:27Emily Maitlis:I mean, there are a lot of people in public life who leave office, some very young, and find that they are pursued forever by their, you know, bodyguards or their personal security or whatever. And they also have these incredibly trapped, gilded lives, right? I mean, it doesn't happen.
8:47Lewis Goodall:But they chose to be there. They chose this. And the royals don't.
8:52Emily Maitlis:Yeah.
8:52Jon Sopel:Yeah, that's a fair point. But I do think that on the stability front, they do give us something. And, you know, you started kind of when you kind of made the quip about, are we talking about a Republican Party? You know, you think, well would you rather have donald trump as your head of state or king charles broadly speaking i'm kind of happy with where we are at the moment we'd have someone else we'd have a british i mean
9:11Lewis Goodall:maybe we'd have a farage but at least the public would have chosen him yes but then you but then
9:15Jon Sopel:there's the whole question i think that once you take away the mystique and if you you know we talked about accountability and you know the kind of finances needed to be less opaque and there must be much more transparency i think once you do that though what are you left with you're left with this family that looks slightly dysfunctional, like many other families, but probably worse. And then you've kind of destroyed the mystique of it. I think if you're happy with the monarchy, I'm pro-monarchy.
9:40Emily Maitlis:Yeah, I think if you're happy with the monarchy, you have to be happy with a gold piano. Yeah, exactly. And a castle. And a palace. It's like, wait till they find out. Exactly. Wait till they find out about the palaces.
9:50Lewis Goodall:Yeah. Yeah. But except that loads of other monarchies don't operate that way and they're very successful. So like, you know, you can find the Scandinavian monarchs cycling along the main street of Oslo or Stockholm. I'm not saying, maybe we wouldn't want that. We probably wouldn't like that because we do for reasons I don't understand. Look, I get, I'm completely cold by the pomp and the pageantry. I find it, I hate it when people go, oh, and you've said this, John, and it annoys me, when you're like, oh, we do this so well. It's like, do what so well? Frippery and flummery and stupid, you know, just putting people in stupidity.
10:19Lewis Goodall:Come on. Is that the best we can do in our country? I'm so pleased I turned up for this episode.
10:23Emily Maitlis:I never realised this was going on. This is where we have it all out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to say, I think it is very cohesive, actually. Well, apart from Republicanism in Asia.
10:37Jon Sopel:Snoogle Silky, do you see what you've just started? Snoogle, you fiend. You fiend. I bet they work for another podcast. Let us move. Hi, John and Lewis and Emily. After the by-election in Wales, a lot of people claim that is proof that Labour can win the next election as voters on the left will unite behind them to beat reform. I think this is possible, but only if Keir Starmer is replaced as leader. Given his quite deliberate alienation of his base, both in the Labour leadership contest and in government, he clearly is not trusted by the broad left in the UK. Isn't Starmer himself the biggest obstacle to a second term Labour government from France's?
11:16Lewis Goodall:Well, Lewis, do you want to start on that? I mean, look, there was to go back to what we were just saying. now there was a poll out today which should perhaps give number 10 some pause for thought which showed that Keir Starmer was actually less popular than Prince Andrew uh which is not a completely ideal place I mean to be honest it was a kind of you know there's only one point in it but even a statistical tie about being as popular as Prince Andrew is not a good starting place and we've talked a lot on the show about whether Starmer is a good conduit for the sort of politics that we're in at the moment and when you need to be able to project a kind of compelling message he's not brilliant at it he can have his moments he's been a much underestimated politician i still am of the view that he is more likely than not to lead labour into the next election that's not to say there aren't lots of preparations going on by certain people we're streeting hello if you're listening like trying to sort of prepare the way in case he chooses to resign that is going on but because the labour party it's not so much that like they're bad at getting rid of their leaders though that's true it's because you know the factions of the labour party are such that they are always they always cling to nerves for fear of something worse and that is why you know you get someone like harold wilson sticking around for as long as he did because they're all afraid that if they get rid of them particularly with the jeremy corbyn example in their mind from 2015 you get rid of him and there's a leadership election and you can't control the outcome of that election so whether he is an impediment right now for a second term or not i think it is more likely than not that he leads them into the next election but who knows yeah i would just put on a
12:41Emily Maitlis:warning of reading into the future too quickly because it wasn't so long ago that Boris Johnson was telling us he was going to serve a 10-year premiership and he was going to win another term and none of us thought that even sounded extreme or extraordinary and I think he was gone within four months six months after saying that and the rest as they say is history and I think that We never mention them. Don't say the rest is history. But I just think that we are so far away from our next general election. I know it's a really obvious, boring thing to say.
13:21Jon Sopel:Yeah, no, completely right.
13:21Emily Maitlis:But I just think we've overestimated Farage up till now. I think there is such a thing as kind of media momentum, where you feel if you're not joining the circus of everyone talking about the thing that might be about to happen, that somehow you feel like you're being left alone. And sometimes that is the worst place to be. You have to step back from the circus and say, actually, who is coming for him? Right. Apart from the general public, who is actually coming for him within the party or who are the challengers who could technically do? We all thought that Gordon Brown was going to be replaced, didn't we?
13:55Emily Maitlis:We all thought there was going to be a challenge to Gordon Brown. And there were, I think, six almost challenges to Gordon Brown. And nobody ever actually got close.
14:05Jon Sopel:I think the question for me about Keir Starmer is, can he change? Can he change the way he does things? Can he? You know, we understandably focus on his interaction, his interface with the public, the electorate and how well he's doing that. and is he kind of coming across any better? Is he clear about the argument he's trying to present as to why he's the right person? Speak to anyone in the cabinet about what it's like dealing with Keir Starmer. And they say he doesn't speak to any of them. He's a sphinx. He's alone. He's got a couple of old mates that he hangs out with. No one goes up to the flat in Number 10 for a beer afterwards or a chat about the state of politics.
14:49Emily Maitlis:I feel like that's what they say about every Prime Minister. I mean, I used to say Boris Johnson was similarly very isolated, didn't have real friends in the parliamentary party, you know, and they said that Rishi was too aloof because he had too much money. You know, there was and Liz Truss was odd. I mean, people always say and maybe that is just what goes with the premiership. You're in a very, very odd position. You're part of a pretty small club.
Read the full transcript
15:12Jon Sopel:But normally you've got a coterie of people who are there and they will send a message out to other bits of the party or to the trade union movement. If it's the Labour government, you know, there are people there that will do that work. And Keir Starmer seems sort of uniquely uninterested in politics. You know, he's not devouring the latest poll and trying to see what else is going on under the surface of the headline numbers. Well, no, but that's what you hear about how he operates. And there are people who are thinking, OK, I've now got a really senior position in the government. I'm now going to really kind of be able to build up the relationship with Keir Starmer.
15:50Jon Sopel:And you do not see him or speak to him from one month to the next.
15:53Lewis Goodall:I think it is true that Starmer, I mean, because he came into politics late and because in so many ways he was an instrument for other people's political projects. He is relatively, I hear what you're saying, Emily, about like the often PMs are isolated. I do think he is relatively ally-less, you know, because he didn't really have a faction of the party. And insofar as he did, he basically was supplanted or was replaced by another faction of the party. So there aren't like there aren't Starmerites right in the parliamentary Labour Party, which has always made his position internally weaker than perhaps other Labour leaders.
16:26Lewis Goodall:Sometimes it's also enabled him to be quite sort of nimble because he's sort of not come in with those sort of years and years of baggage. Yeah. So it's sort of been an advantage and disadvantage. But I do think it means that he's relatively kind of friendless in politics. I think the exact question is about whether it is possible, basically, he will be able to construct a kind of progressive coalition, i.e. as we saw to some extent the Dutch elections, which we were talking about the other day, or obviously in Carefilly, that the next election is a kind of anti-Farage, assuming that's the dynamics stay in place.
16:55Lewis Goodall:The next election is a kind of anti-Farage election. given that he has such history with the left and he's so disliked by the left can labor maintain its position as the natural leader of the anti-farage kind of block i think that's an open question and the only thing that i would be quite worried about at the moment number 10 is if i do think the polanski surge is potentially dangerous because as we've seen it doesn't require you to have loads of seats in parliament to give the impression that you're dead right the conservative party has way more seats in parliament than the reform party does and yet the reform party because of its lead in the polls it's basically projected an idea that the tory party is dead and they are now the natural leaders on the right if the green party it's a big big if the green party were to able to overtake labor for a sustained period of time by good margin they could try and pull that trick off now it's harder because they're in the government labor so they're always going to have more advantage but that could be a big big problem in seats across the country right let's do fantasy
17:51Emily Maitlis:football for a second is there a world in which the next election is won by a progressive coalition and the demands of let's say the greens and the lib dems are we will support you but not with kistarmer as leader is there a world in which yes i think that is absolutely yes okay is there a world in which polanski would ever become pm no because you'd have to have the number of seats but you could imagine a world in which there was that there was a deputy pm for either davy polanski said on the show to me that he wouldn't work with with star did he say that yeah so i mean that he would work with labor yeah but not with starmer because he accused of
18:31Jon Sopel:this brings us to the next question which is from julia on instagram why has corbyn and sultana's your party been such a spectacular flop well yeah polanski yeah i mean polanski is part of it but also you've got to say you know i think they flopped before polanski but tony ben always used to have his mantra it's about policies not personalities and this is about personalities i mean it seems that jeremy corbyn and sultana kind of hooked this thing together having not worked out any of the fundamental questions both want to be leader both have got very different ideas about the way this should be done.
19:10Jon Sopel:And it's turned into an absolute shit show within seconds of launch. I mean, it's like kind of one of those...
19:17Lewis Goodall:Well, they're all suing each other. And they're all suing each other, which is
19:19Jon Sopel:sort of, you know, not exactly fraternal socialist kind of
19:23Lewis Goodall:loving, you know, respect for your colleagues. We got over it, but that's how we started.
19:27Emily Maitlis:I do think it's the dirty laundry that is the worst bit. I think it's totally understandable that you have rivalries, even within, you know, a government like obviously the Blair Brown days, but it's the airing of it so publicly. Don't put that stuff up on Twitter. Don't contradict each other so clearly for everyone to see. Don't start pulling your membership numbers back and then putting them out and all the rest of it. I think that's become the really uncomfortable thing because it feels like there's two very angry people shouting at each other over the kids, right?
20:03Lewis Goodall:I think there's three things going on. I think one is about leftist politics, which is often deeply fragmented. and the sort of tyranny of small differences, in fact, minuscule differences, occupies a kind of unique pedigree on the left. I think you're seeing a bit of that. I think you're seeing two personalities who are actually quite ill-suited to, ironically enough, collectivist, collaborative working. Corbyn. One thing I think is always misunderstood about Corbyn is that, obviously because he has this image as a kind of slightly sort of grandfatherly kind of sort of gentleman, gentleman, you know, doing work on his allotment.
20:35Lewis Goodall:He's got a lot of pride. You know, he's quite a prideful guy. Sometimes I think, you know, at times teetering on a certain sort of arrogance. You know, some people have talked about before. I can see why people would say that. Lots of people in politics do. But I think that he would be very, very reluctant to sort of share that stage with Zoltana. Clearly, they've clashed. I mean, there was all this talk about them being a kind of Bernie Sanders AOC kind of. And you can see that that's quite an interesting kind of parallel. But the truth is, I think the two are not really in that league in terms of that comparison.
21:03Lewis Goodall:And the third thing is, I think that, you know, I do think it's the Polanski thing. You know, there was a moment when there was a clear, open space for an economically leftist populist party to break through to Labour's left. Unfortunately for your party, just as they got going, and obviously they sabotaged themselves as well, Polanski has occupied that space. So there's just an obvious point, which is, what's the point? What's the difference? And when, you know, Zoltan has been asked about that, basically it gets into, you know, pretty marginal stuff about attitudes to Israel. She's saying that there should be, you know, we think your party thinks there should be no diplomatic relations at all with Israel.
21:39Lewis Goodall:And the Green Party does support continued diplomatic relations. It's like if that's the point of difference, that is not enough to sustain a separate political project.
21:46Emily Maitlis:A job share is quite hard. I mean, going back to that earlier question about sort of charisma, there is something where you coalesce around one person, you know, and listen to their thoughts. when you've got a job share at the top and you're kind of ping-ponging between two people's views, however slight the differences are, it becomes much harder to know why you would sort of invest in them and the leadership that represents. It's inevitably fraught.
22:10Jon Sopel:I mean, think of going back to David Steele.
22:12Lewis Goodall:Who would share the stage between two or three people on a daily basis? So I can't imagine. No, no, no, no. No, that's just a recipe for disaster.
22:19Jon Sopel:I mean, remember David Steele being in the pocket of David Owen and it kind of completely undermined the sort of alliance back in the early 80s where David Steele thought he was being perpetually undermined by what Spitting Image was doing to him. Anyway, right, we'll be back after the break.
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23:07Lewis Goodall:The News Agents.
23:09Emily Maitlis:And we're back. Hi, gang. Love the Honest Pod. My question and all the work Lewis has done with AI, he can answer. Latest estimates is that AI will take 300, 600 million jobs by 2030 when the jobs figures came out last week. No news outlet or politician asked how many of those job losses were due to AI. Even if the UK lose 20 million jobs in the next five years because of AI, are the government or any government in the world planning for a big drop in income tax and benefit payment increases keep up the good work? Could ask Lewis or could just ask ChatGPT.
23:40Lewis Goodall:Yeah. Should we do that? Yeah. All right, I'll do it. I'll tell you what, you talk. You talk and I'll just do that.
23:46Emily Maitlis:You're answering the question. I'm answering the question. And I'm going to ask ChatGPT.
23:50Lewis Goodall:Well, look, I think it's a really, I think it's a really pertinent question because when we did the report that in References, which is also now a film version of that, which is on YouTube and Global Player, which you can watch, that was kind of the whole point of it, which is there's been loads and loads, there's been endless sort of tech coverage about how amazing or how terrifying AI might be. but in a way we're not in a position necessarily the best people to sort of address that but what i do think we can address and what needs to be talked about more is the political consequences of this and the tax revenue point is a really interesting one because i think most economists would say most economists would say that certainly in the short term there are going to be significant job losses or rather there will be less hiring than there might have been we saw amazon just this week say they were going to lay off 22 000 people in their corporate structure largely powered by AI, you know, about 4 % of their global workforce.
24:42Lewis Goodall:And of course, there are revenue implications for that. I mean, the hope obviously will be that the productivity gains that AI unleashes will be so significant that you will be able to generate lots of new revenues. And there may be such efficiency gains in, say, the public sector, NHS and elsewhere, that maybe that itself sort of generates enough savings to offset it. But of course, no one knows for sure. There's the other big economic question, of course, which lots of people are talking about, is whether so much of this stuff is a bubble. I mean, I don't know if you saw yesterday that NVIDIA, which is just insane.
25:12Lewis Goodall:NVIDIA, no, not just AI, but like chips, you know, they are now valued at eight trillion dollars. Right. Like this is more than GDP, I think, pretty much of every country in the world, apart from the US and China. Right. This is mad stuff. And the AI boom in particular just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger because so many firms don't want to lose out. They're so terrified. Investment firms and banks and the rest are so terrified of missing out on this sort of golden goose. But of course, it is possible that a bit like the dot-com bubble in the late 90s, it could burst. And that will have all sorts of economic implications.
25:43Emily Maitlis:Right. Do you want the answer? Chatty Jeeps? I've just asked. Chatty Jeeps? Chatty Jeeps? No, we can't be saying that. How many jobs have been lost to AI in the UK in 2025? I could not find any reliable figures. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? It's a cover-up. You're covering it up. I'll just ask if it's a cover-up. It does say, yeah, they quote the IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research Estimates, jobs that could be lost. Is this a cover-up?
26:08Lewis Goodall:There's so many elements to this as well. It's not just like in terms of revenues and governments not thinking about it. Like, to take a slightly different example, it's like electric cars. What happens with the revenue loss from fuel duty? The only way, really, that you can really seriously probably do it is road pricing. And no one wants to talk or even think about that. There's an example after this. We're in this extraordinary new wave of technological development with so many political implications that politicians don't really want to engage in.
26:33Jon Sopel:Well, also, I mean, going back to your point, Lewis, about the bubble, is that the fact of the matter is that we don't know whether AI, it looks like it's going to deliver a fundamental change and is going to be as anything as big since, you know, the internal combustion engine or whatever you want, or, you know, the internet. But we don't know yet what the impact is going to be. And that's why it could be a bubble, because if it doesn't deliver these dramatic changes, then huge numbers of people are going to have invested vast sums of money that we'll all end up paying for, that will make the 2008 financial crash seem, you know, quite genteel in comparison.
27:07Emily Maitlis:So the only thing I'd say is that the dot com bubble, which struck in 2000, was obviously not the end of either dot or com or the Internet. You know, so sometimes you can have the bursty of a bubble because we are not quite at the point of maximum capacity at that point.
27:25Lewis Goodall:The financial crash wasn't the end of financial services or banks.
27:28Emily Maitlis:Exactly. You pick up and it happens again. So all that happened in 2000 was that the overvaluation had come too quickly. but now you know look at what you're saying about nvidia nobody's kind of going oh yeah the internet
27:39Jon Sopel:never took off did it this is a really good question from paul haywood i hear you all talk about the overton window can you please explain its origins and meaning thanks so yeah so but we
27:52Lewis Goodall:do use it all the time we probably should explain well we talk about the overton window all the time which is basically we might talk for example when we were talking about sarah poachin say the other day and what she said, you know, following in Robert Jenrick's fine example of just counting as many white faces as she can and counting as many black and brown faces as she can and then getting really angry about it. We would say that maybe the fact she felt able to say that and say it was just totally normal is an example of the Overton window shifting, i.e. an idea that would once have seemed forbidden or taboo from saying she now feels able to say it and that is an example of the Overton window shifting.
28:25Emily Maitlis:Joseph Overton. His name was a former senior vice president at the McKinnick Centre for Public Policy. And he proposed that political viability of an idea depends on whether it falls within an acceptability range rather than individual preferences. So in other words, you think that you're thinking things according to your own individual choices, but you're not. You're part of something that has grown to understand a different acceptability range than the one that you used to see.
28:57Lewis Goodall:Brexit is a great example. Brexit was once considered a completely fringe idea on the absolute fringes of politics. And gradually, over time, it shifted into something that became mainstream. And now is not just mainstream, but basically is sort of accepted, received wisdom across much of the political spectrum. Same-sex marriage would be another one, something that seems completely fringe and extreme, eventually becomes censor. So the window can shift and it can shift in lots of different directions.
29:21Emily Maitlis:I'm going to tell you one interesting thing, though, that I've just read, which I think I've fallen into the trap. common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window and apparently for the Overton window to be a true Overton window lawmakers have to respond to what is the public mood of whether or not it has shifted well same sex marriage
29:41Lewis Goodall:is a good example of that it's who drives it
29:44Emily Maitlis:in other words
29:44Lewis Goodall:and it's often and it basically it's a really interesting it's a really interesting thing to think about because it's sort of like basically it poses a question where do ideas in politics come from and how do they germinate and how do they become acceptable? And the truth is, is that often there's all sorts of different ways and ideas that start off often fringe, you know, written about by academics or think tanks or whatever it happens to be, you know, gradually sort of percolate their way through the system and eventually become mainstream.
30:10Emily Maitlis:The only thing I'd say is that I think that the missing key in that is the media. And this goes back to the conversation that we're always having, which is, you know, do lawmakers come up with their ideas or do the public, you know, tell the lawmakers what they want? And we sometimes underestimate the power, particularly, I think, that the tabloid press has had in this country at completely changing what the public perceives as OK.
30:34Jon Sopel:I would say in relation to that, look, you talk about gay marriage. I would say the biggest change in my lifetime is attitudes towards homosexuality. And the tabloids were trying to still do kind of gotcha stories on a Tory MP having a gay relationship and there being no other story other than it was a gay relationship. The Sun headline when David Furnish and Elton John got married was Elton takes David up the aisle. And you can see there that the attitudes about that had not shifted at all, but the public had shifted. And then the papers had to catch up with where the public was. And I think that that's an area where I think we can overestimate sometimes the power that the tabloids have to affect public opinion.
31:24Jon Sopel:And I think that, you know, well, certainly now, certainly now, I mean, certainly now, I don't think they do have that same impact that they once did.
31:31Lewis Goodall:I think what's interesting about the Overwritten Window is that it started to generate its own power within politics as a concept. so what was basically started off from an academic as someone trying to sort of conceptualize an idea it's almost become a sort of objective in politics in itself you know you've got political actors now who actively talk about shifting the window and wanting to shift the window and will and you see this is where the nexus with social media happens will you know posit extreme ideas or extreme language as extreme as possible with an even though they probably know that it well they definitely know a it will get a reaction and b that idea might not be realized at that moment with the aim of simply shifting the window along a little bit and you're seeing this on the radical right a lot at the moment particularly with regards to race some of it is simply about them sort of daring to say things they have long believed some of it is about trying to actively conceptualize the window and move it along so their ideas become more mainstream over
32:26Emily Maitlis:time let's take it on the opposite side you mentioned brexit i wonder if nato like polanski went as close as I've heard him in the last couple of weeks saying, you know, if I won an election, I would take us out of NATO, right? That seems preposterous, I think, to most British people right now. I wonder if that would ever gain enough favour, carry enough favour to kind of make that a totally normal position, where you go, yeah, don't really like being part of these wars, don't really like being part of... Well, we've got Donald Trump in the US
32:58Jon Sopel:considering taking America out of NATO, so They're very similar. That doesn't sound that far-fetched, does it? We'll be back after the break.
33:15Jon Sopel:The News Agents. And before we go, one final question. Seeing as today is his final day working with the News Agents, what's your favourite memory of working with cameraman Rory? and that question comes from Rory. We'll be back next week. See you then. Bye-bye.
33:34Emily Maitlis:Bye for now.
33:36Jon Sopel:This has been a Global Player original production.
From the publisher
Is it time to rethink the British monarchy? Why has “Your Party” been such a spectacular flop? Is Starmer the biggest obstacle to a Labour second term? And what IS the Overton window?
This Friday, Jon, Lewis and Emily answer your questions.
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/