Q&A Special: Harry and Meghan, Trump's midterm chaos, and another Farage by-election?

10:52Jon Sopel:And I thought, you know what? That is effective leadership and communication, which is what he's shown himself to be very adroit at since taking over. Thoughts on Leicestershire, John? Leicestershire. Yeah, it's fine.

11:07Lewis Goodall:I think that's it, isn't it, with Leicestershire?

11:09Jon Sopel:it is fine. Home of Ashby de L 'Azouche,

11:11Lewis Goodall:of course. Big hello to all of our Ashby listeners out there. Did you know that Lady Bird Books come from Loughborough in Leicestershire? The company began as Wills and Hepworth, a local printing firm, and before its inexpensive illustrated children's books became fixtures of post-war British childhood. So there's something Leicestershire's done for us, isn't it? Pork pies. Pork pies. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. It's actually all right, isn't it?

11:33Jon Sopel:Lady Bird Books, Pork pies.

11:35Lewis Goodall:Ashby de L 'Azouche. It's not that bad. I'm warming to them I am warming to them Also Leicester City 2016 I know But what have they done recently? Like you know anything about it Well I don't know I don't know what they've done Anyway our next question This question comes from Michael Who is currently on holiday Truffle hunting in Tuscany God And they say our listeners are out of touch Dear newsagents I love the show I would never dream of listening to any of your Quotes Rivals I don't know he even means to be honest Have we got rivals?

12:06Jon Sopel:Wasn't aware of it

12:07Lewis Goodall:They may believe so, but I mean, people do live under all sorts of delusions, don't they? One thing I've been mulling over for a while. Why do you think the right are so good at creating influences and commentators, but the left are so bad at it? Thanks again for your tireless work behind the mic. Ah, God, it's a difficult one. Is that true?

12:27Jon Sopel:Yeah, that's why I'm trying to assess whether it's...

12:31Lewis Goodall:Well, recently, well, look, I mean, one obvious change recently, which is, as we've talked about on the show many times, shifted politics and favoured we talked about on the show earlier week with rupert low obviously x remains the central kind of arena for political commentary and news commentary really compared to all the other social media sites and there is no doubt that during musk's time of ownership it has amplified the voices and not just the right but in many cases the far right he would say that those voices have been suppressed before that and now it's a sort of equal opportunity to platform for free speech a bit of a pretty hefty question mark about all of that but i think there is no doubt that that has um that that has certainly propelled a different type of voice to the fore in terms of our political communications and our political discourse than we've seen before um lewis i don't

13:25Jon Sopel:want to be rude or anything mate but you have muddled up that question is not from michael who is truffle hunting in Tuscany. Oh, well, again, it's our Tim Pot production team. That is from Miles in Manchester.

13:38Lewis Goodall:There's basically no line break or anything between any of this stuff. He just sends out a useless editor, sends it to us on a WhatsApp message. All just basically indecipherable and incomprehensible. Meanwhile, I'm having to look up my own facts about English counties. I mean, for God's sake, for God's sake, I'm looking at it through the glass. They're just laughing.

13:57Jon Sopel:Do you ever take responsibility? No. for any of your own shortcomings. I'm a presenter. You're like Donald Trump, aren't you? Well, I'm not the best. It's not my fault. It's them.

14:06Lewis Goodall:They're rubbish. Well, anyway, my apologies. So that is, in fact, Miles in Manchester. Who has asked that question? But we'll get to Michael, who for some reason is on truffle hunting in Tuscany, the absurd character.

14:17Jon Sopel:Honestly, rivals will be laughing at us if they could hear the comically amateur way we are handling all of this. I mean, it's just terrible. But back to the substance. What do you think? Back to the substance. If you look at America, it's certainly true that, you know, the shock jocks who took over talk radio in America and kind of really shaped a political narrative and the Rush Limbaugh's and now they are being taken over by the Joe Rogan's and these voices that are kind of of the right. And there was nobody on the left who came close to them. And I remember a guy I knew in Washington who was deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration.

14:59Jon Sopel:And he said that he went on a fishing trip, you know, kind of up to the way up north. And he said, you know, I'd listen to all these radio stations. And I came out and hating the Obama administration by the time I got there, because all you were fed was a diet and a diatribe of hostility and vituperation against whatever it was that was being done in Washington. And I think that that was a really important ecosystem for the Republican right in America, where these influencers and it was I don't think we use the term influencers, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, were having such an impact on our politics.

15:36Jon Sopel:I think it's true now, but I think there are voices on the left that are also coming to the fore in this country in a way that maybe it's not that unbalanced in the way that it was.

15:48Lewis Goodall:Yeah, I think that's true. I think that as well, what we've seen is, look, what there certainly is in a way that I don't think that there is on the progressive left, is that the Trump era and the kind of MAGA movement kind of reminds me in some ways of the way that, you know, in the sort of early to mid 20th century, sort of communism used to think of itself. You know, there's this big debate in the Soviet Union about whether you could have communism in one country or whether actually you had to basically spread and disseminate it. And that is one of the reasons why the Soviet Union started to support communist movements in Western European countries and so on.

16:26Lewis Goodall:And Latin America. And Latin America. And MAGA, there's a bit of that to MAGA, right? MAGA and this movement which has sort of coalesced around Trump but is bigger than Trump sees itself as a transnational political movement. it sees itself and this has especially been true of trump too anyway it sees itself as a or parts of it see itself anyway as a kind of savior movement for the west to save western civilization again it's something we've talked about on the show quite a few times john you know that look the trump national security strategy you know where they see basically kind of talking about you know european civilization being lost and european governments uh losing themselves through waves of migration and policies that they've adopted and they should support kind of populist right-wing insurgents movements MAGA equivalents in those countries and I think that has led to a kind of ecosystem of political actors commentators influencers podcasters streamers you name it which kind of fall under that umbrella and with which there is a sort of constant exchange of of information, the purchase of X by Musk has added to that, there has become almost kind of one conversation on the kind of radical right.

17:42Lewis Goodall:It doesn't really exist in the same way with the left and with progressive forces for all sorts of reasons. I think there are signs of that changing and there are definitely figures, more populist radical figures, I think someone like Hassan Paikah for example, who's got in a lot of trouble this week who are sort of shifting the debate and are more sort of visceral in that way online but i think that the mega phenomenon has been pretty instrumental in shaping that right

18:08Jon Sopel:debate internationally it's interesting having shit bagged you just a moment ago for your incompetence i'm now going to praise you for something the other day i mean you know of all things that when we were talking about on the news agents when we were discussing dolly parton and her death and you said there is something to be learned by progressives in the way you can talk to people and the way you address people and i think that on the left it has come with piety and a sanctimoniousness and, you know, and a kind of intellectual arrogance that we know better. And if you'd only read a few more books, then you too would believe the sort of things that we're articulating.

18:43Jon Sopel:Whereas on the right, it was much more raw and much more kind of visceral, and you could get behind the ideas of it. And it was easier. Whereas I think on the left, it was this kind of, you know, de haut en bas, you know, it's from the top to the bottom.

19:01Jon Sopel:We're that you were right to say that you know that actually the left should have a look at how dolly parton managed to communicate some pretty progressive ideas but without making it seem like this is medicine open your mouth five milligrams are going into your mouth right now and it will be very good for you do you know drum oh here comes a another county question do you know

19:24Lewis Goodall:which English county the Thames starts in?

19:29Jon Sopel:Oh, that's a good question. Isn't it good? I would say... Where does it begin? Gloucestershire.

19:35Lewis Goodall:Oh, he got it in one. Did I? There we go. I'm amazed you didn't win Celebrity Mastermind, unlike myself,

19:43Jon Sopel:with knowledge like that. So that was just a cheap opportunity

19:46Lewis Goodall:for points for... It rises in a field near Kemble in the Cotswolds. Yeah. So if anyone is near Kemble, We'd love to hear from you for the next Q &A session. Yeah. We'll be back just after this.

20:13Jon Sopel:We are now going to get to Michael's question, who won't be listening because he is truffle hunting in Tuscany. And apologies again, Michael, for misreading your question. and if you want to sue for libel, just make the action against Lewis Goodall and not against the rest of us, please. Aren't truffle hunting... It's usually pigs, aren't they?

20:30Lewis Goodall:That's what we usually use for truffle hunting. Truffle pigs.

20:33Jon Sopel:Yes. In the New Forest in Hampshire, there's a certain period of the year... Now you've got a county fact. There is a certain period of the year where the pigs are allowed out and the verderers of the New Forest allow the pigs out. The what? The verderers. Not the murderers. They're the ancient court who run the New Forest. See? so you've got a few county facts as well i've got them there ready to go at a moment's notice anyway dear news agents this is one for lewis goodall with the return of harry and megan to the uk would you say there's any chance the two of them would be able to help modernize or rebrand the royal family this time around and maybe even convince lewis in the process thanks michael well

21:13Lewis Goodall:i think it's quite clear isn't it that the royal family ain't much interested they don't want they don't want them around so i think i mean look we sort of this was talked about a lot when megan the duchess of sussex married into the family that this was a moment of modernization that moment curdled slowly over time there is clearly now a lot of bitterness and acrimony between them um and although i'm not much interested in the sort of ins and outs of it my impression from everything that you read is that there is very little chance of any kind of rapprochement between William and Harry, at the very least, whoever's right or wrong about all that, as ever with families.

21:52Lewis Goodall:There's probably a bit of both, who knows? And so I think the possibility of modernisation is probably, or Meghan being harnessed to help modernise the family, is long gone. And in that sense, she simply fits into a long line of people who have married in, Diana being the obvious example, but there are others, of people who simply could not, the institution and the family simply could not know and did not know what to do with them. And they would not, they personally would not institutionalise. I mean, I was looking at, I mean, this might just be, I don't know, I'm speculating here, but I was watching a news channel the other day and they were covering this story and they were showing pictures of Meghan in the early days when she came in.

22:40Lewis Goodall:And I remember reading something once that some courtier had said, which is that, you know, you've always got to remember that this is an institution which has one son at the centre. And whenever a new star kind of comes into the system, it's difficult. And we saw that with Diana. It was difficult with Margaret for a while in that way as well. You know, there can only be one star at the centre of this family. And I just think, and I think that she was almost too starry and too glamorous and they didn't really know what to do with it. She was always going to challenge, just by her presence, those closer or higher to the centre and higher up the chain, which probably included the future Queen Catherine herself.

23:24Lewis Goodall:So I'm not surprised there was tension, which was perhaps irreconcilable.

23:28Jon Sopel:Look, it's impossible to know whether reconciliation is possible or not. Given evidence, given the book Spare, given Oprah interviews, it's hard to imagine the full reintegration of Harry and Meghan into the royal family you're absolutely right about there can only be one star of the show and that is the sovereign on the other hand the royal family is a bit of a business and part of that business is you've got to have people who are prepared to go and do dreary things like cut the ribbon on a new hospital or whatever that's what princess stands for isn't it whatever it happens to be yeah but but there are a few of them now there are very few of them and you do need to have a squad of royals who the public there's loads of them in there there's loads of them they're not there aren't because no one knows who half of them are whereas they know who harry and megan are and so you can see look i think the the royal family as an institution the reason that it's still going and more or less going strong i would say, is that it does adapt.

24:35Jon Sopel:It does change, but it changes at a slow pace. And the idea that Meghan Markle was going to go in and suddenly overnight, the whole institution would change and it would refocus and rebalance. I think it saw the advantages of Meghan Markle. I think that, you know, for whatever reasons, it all went horribly wrong and got very, you know, bitter very quickly. I think, though, that the royal family needs the likes of Harry and Meghan there because they give it some star power and they give it a bit of luster that maybe it lacks at the moment and you've got william and kate and you've got the king and who else would you say gives that luster to the royal family now um well i mean there's a lot of them aren't there

25:21Lewis Goodall:i mean are you saying that the prince richard the duke of gloucester john doesn't doesn't imbue a certain glamour on the whole thing? Would your breath not be taken away if HRH, Prince Richard, walked in here right now and asked you to bow in front of him? Would you not find that? A grandson of George V himself? No?

25:43Jon Sopel:I would be honoured to meet him.

25:45Lewis Goodall:Do you know, John, that Lancashire and Yorkshire once met inside Todmorden Town Hall? Indeed, the historic border, no longer there, unfortunately, again thanks to that demon Ted Heath with his local government reorganisation Act 1972 but the historic border reportedly ran through the building and so during county dances it was possible for people to dance literally from one side or one county to another. Wouldn't have that been thrilling. Particularly Prince Richard And next week on the news agents, the beaching railway gosiers Yeah, now we're talking. That would be our biggest episode ever you realise.

26:24Lewis Goodall:People love that stuff.

26:25Jon Sopel:Right, should we get to Simon's question in Wokingham. If you want. Yeah. Have you got any thoughts on the Supreme Court's ruling regarding mail-in votes, particularly with regards to the midterms? I might be being neurotic, but is there any risk Trump might use the potential resultant chaos as a reason to try to postpone the midterms? Hopefully you can put my mind at rest. Cheers, Simon. Yeah, we discussed that quite a lot on the News Agents USA this week. Look, what's happened is The Supreme Court hasn't ruled on mail-in ballots. What it said is that it's kind of it's kind of given an administrative fudge where it says we're not ruling on this, which means that an earlier executive order from the president means that they can look at mail-in ballots and decide kind of almost which ones they think are safe and which ones aren't.

27:17Jon Sopel:And the US Postal Service has got to perform miracles over the next two months. It's the subject of further legal challenges. But to your wider question, that could Trump use the chaos that may follow to postpone the midterms? No, it's in the Constitution. It's in the Constitution that midterm elections will happen on the first Tuesday in November. And I think it's kind of, you know, what does he do? Declare a state of emergency? or some other kind of manufactured thing. And also elections are run by the states. They are not run by the federal government. So I think that even though you've got a Supreme Court that has got a 6-3 conservative majority and is, broadly speaking, supportive of Donald Trump, I do not think they would accept the idea that the midterm elections can just be postponed.

28:12Lewis Goodall:I also think there is a thing about Trump's own political authority. And I think this was always slightly kind of underestimated with the slightly more fevered takes in the early part of his second presidency, which is this idea that, you know, he was just going to completely ignore the Constitution. He'd be allowed to run forever. He could cancel elections. And I'm sure he'd really like to. Don't get me wrong. It's not like it's not like he thought better of that. but we do have to remember that i mean ultimately people always talk about constitutional law and the constitutions as if that's the thing that will stop him doing things no a constitution is just written down it's just a bit of paper the thing it doesn't matter whether your constitution is written down or it's largely not written down like britain the thing that matters most is the sentiment of the democracy itself, of the people and of the elites.

29:07Lewis Goodall:If there is a desire, a willingness to keep democracy on the road and to prevent a tyrant from emerging, then that will happen. That is what happened in 2020 when Trump tried to overturn the results of the election. It was the efforts of often Republican election officials in states like Georgia which prevented that from happening because they cared about something bigger than their own party and certainly about Trump's fortunes. And I think there's two things going on here. One is we mustn't forget, you know, America arguably has been a democracy for longer than any other country in the world.

29:43Lewis Goodall:Even with this wannabe tyrant that there now is, those runs, and the fact that there are, he is certainly surrounded by other wannabe tyrants. Those roots do run deep, very deep. We cannot, as Abraham Lincoln said, with public sentiment, you can do everything. Without it, you can do nothing and we cannot also underestimate that for the average american voter and for the average american an attempt to actually overturn an election or to cancel an election altogether would be greeted by fury and seen for what it is and you add on to that as well trump's own political fortunes are now very bad he's got an approval rating of 33 whatever is in his head whatever fantasy he's got about how brilliant and how popular he is most americans right now think he's doing a very bad job as president.

30:29And any attempt to overturn an election

30:31Lewis Goodall:or to cancel an election would be seen for what it is. It doesn't mean, of course, he can't interfere. It doesn't mean, of course, that he can't create mischief and local states can't create mischief. And the nightmare scenario, of course, is that he does that in a couple of places and the margin of error, it all comes down, the Senate comes down to one state or the House comes down to a handful of places. That is a nightmare scenario and it is difficult. But I don't think, all I'm saying is, I don't think we should underestimate the sentiment of uh american the american electorate and even still most american political elites which is still inclined towards democratic health yeah simon i would just add to that yeah

31:08Jon Sopel:you know i think the great experiment that trump had and the kind of the evil genius the of people behind him of what we could do to massage the elections and make sure they come out in our favour. I think the experiment took place in Minnesota at the beginning of the year with ICE officers just randomly stopping people and intimidating people and making sure that those of a certain kind of immigrant community feel intimidated and maybe intimidated enough that they wouldn't go near a polling station. I think that backfired spectacularly. I think the American people saw it for what it was. And, you know, the deaths of various innocent bystanders who were protesting against the ICE officers cause really major blowback for the Trump administration.

31:56Jon Sopel:And I think that, you know, and I think that was going to be the template for what they would do in certain key electoral districts that were being fought in November. And I think they will have to be a lot more subtle and clever about it than what happened in Minneapolis. And as a result of which, I think that maybe there is more chance that the midterms happen and happen without too much interference. And that's kind of what I'm getting at.

32:20Lewis Goodall:It wasn't a piece of law necessarily, which stopped or pressured Trump to pull back from Minnesota. Yes, there were legal judgments which helped. But fundamentally, what it was, was a revulsion sentiment within the American electorate itself with the average American voter, even many of whom who want a crackdown and want tough migration policies. It was too much. It was too far. It cut against the grain of the spirit of American democracy. and that is why I'm a bit more hopeful about the future of American democracy than I think some other people are. Andy in the Wirral has written to us, Dear News Agents.

32:54Lewis Goodall:Now there's an interesting place, the Wirral.

32:57Jon Sopel:Yeah, I quite like the Wirral.

32:58Lewis Goodall:Yeah. Yeah.

32:59Jon Sopel:Which two rivers?

33:00Lewis Goodall:No, well, look, okay. Look, I'm just saying.

33:03Jon Sopel:Please, let me out of this studio.

33:06Lewis Goodall:The Wirral, of course, is a peninsula between two rivers. What are they, John?

33:11Jon Sopel:The Mersey.

33:12Lewis Goodall:Yes. That's on the eastern side. And on the western side?

33:19Lewis Goodall:irish seat of the north of course yeah um i don't know the d the d 50 there that's just about a pass

33:27Jon Sopel:honestly that's that would be good for my school exams uh dear news agents why don't major parties try to find out why people don't vote the main message from recent by-elections should be that even in what is considered to be an important by-election the turnout was only 47 which means that over half of the electorate either couldn't be bothered to vote or didn't vote in protest to other all parties. They should try to find out why people don't vote and try to appeal to that part of the electorate. In these days of celebrity and populist politics, we could end up with a Love Island winner or YouTube influencer as prime minister.

34:02Lewis Goodall:Well, I think political parties are interested in why they don't vote, but they're also afraid of the people who don't vote because they're very unpredictable by definition. And one of the reasons why occasionally comes up this idea of us going down the australian model of having compulsory voting historically political parties our main political parties are worried about that because people who don't vote by definition are what they would consider to be you know low propensity voters and they can vote in unpredictable ways and disrupt electrical coalitions and so on so i think that um it's a bit of a case of not opening pandora's box with regards to motivating non-voters and particularly our um our politics has changed a little bit as well over the years and american politics has definitely had this experience which is of course more historically there was a sense of trying to kind of bridge the gap and to try and persuade others to come over to you certainly in american politics to a lesser extent our politics it's very much become a get your vote out operation in many constituencies particularly as our politics has fragmented in britain um and so most parties are focused on that rather than trying to motivate non-voters even though it would be nice obviously to have higher turnout in elections i want to talk about the democracy

35:12Jon Sopel:sausage i've told you before about that not to bring up the democracy sausage so in australia where there is compulsory voting and where i spend far too much of my time um you feel free feel free not to by the way spend more time at work look i can't help it if i've got a son who married an Australian, for God help me. Kate, we love you dearly. Is that you go, everyone has to go and vote. And they put up at polling stations where they are going to be having a barbecue. And so you can choose your polling station where there'll be a barbecue and where you can get a sausage when you turn up to vote there.

35:49Jon Sopel:When the grill is on and working. And I tell you what, I have been convinced by compulsory voting. And I know it will bring some odd people that are off the grid, back onto the grid, and what will they do and how will they vote? And that could bring some political uncertainty. Well, Australia hasn't done that badly. They've had it for a long time.

36:08Lewis Goodall:I went on a real deep dive in the democracy sausage at one point and down the rabbit hole of the democracy sausage, as it were. And I remember reading about the origins of it. And it's sort of, it's like early 20th century, isn't it? Or late 19th, something like that.

36:20Jon Sopel:So it's been there for a long time. The other thing, the other huge advantage, you look at the number of episodes that we've done on the newsagents about how young people are discriminated against. Why is it that we still have the triple lock on pensions? Why is it that if you're of a certain age, you get a free bus pass and you get everything else, whereas young people still have to pay to travel around? And so much social policy is geared against young people because the calculation in British politics is it is old people who go and vote. Well, if you have compulsory voting, then there is no point in gearing your government policy towards the elderly because the young are going to hate it and i think that just might do something to rebalance some of the concerns that young people feel when they've got bloody massive interest rates to pay on their student loans they can't afford to buy a property they can't get on the housing all of those things where young people feel we have got the shit end of the stick and i think that that would be a good way of rebalancing we should certainly think about ways of expanding um or making it easier

37:26Lewis Goodall:to vote i mean yes certainly certainly true and uh i'm you know subsession that is developing again it's an american import farage is pushing out for a while you know against mail postal votes and things like that ridiculous i mean obviously we've got to have robust systems but ridiculous um i was against compulsory voter id for the reason that it potentially um makes it harder for poorer people in particular who are less likely to have ID to vote unless you want to introduce compulsory, some form of national identification, which is free, but those same people who are in favour of wanting voter ID are often the people who are most against a form of ID cards.

38:01Lewis Goodall:Why do we have our elections on a Thursday? Yeah, Thursday. We could easily not do it on a Thursday. We could do it on a Saturday. We could do it on a Sunday.

38:06Jon Sopel:Or do it Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

38:08Lewis Goodall:Or do it over multiple days. Yeah, we should certainly be thinking far more creatively. And I'm also in favour of what the government is doing, which is reducing it to 16. We should be thinking far more creatively about how we expand access to the ballot box, both in a literal sense, but also just making it easier to vote. I mean, just in the sense of Bernadette's worry... Oh, no, sorry, it's not Bernadette. We'll go ahead to the next one. Andy, it's these things. It's too hard to see. Andy in the world. Sorry, Bernadette, we'll get to you.

38:34Jon Sopel:Can someone get me a proper presenter? Andy in the world.

38:37Lewis Goodall:In terms of his concern about having celebrity or populist politics, I do think, again, though, I mean, our parliamentary system does mitigate against that still. It is far easier to end up with a Trump or a milieu or someone like that if we had a presidential model. I mean, I always think that our equivalent would actually be Clarkson. I think, Jeremy, if we had a presidential model and Jeremy Clarkson at some point had run to be British president, I think he would have stood a very good chance. But it would be a very different and he's probably a more serious figure than someone like Trump or whatever.

39:06Lewis Goodall:But that's the sort of person I think that we would sort of throw in. But the thing is, someone like that, who would be much more tempted to run, it would be much more credible and possible to run in a presidential model as an independent, because you're just looking for a direct mandate for the people, particularly in this age of digital media and so on, where you can connect directly with the electorate. And that's harder to do with the parliamentary model, because in the parliamentary model, you have to go through the party. And the party is a great, literal kind of sifter, mediator of the sort of candidates that you can get.

39:34Lewis Goodall:And you have to build up a profile within the party. And then you have to get a faction together and all that stuff. So it's just much harder to have that sort of person suddenly break through into politics and become prime minister. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.

39:48Jon Sopel:Well, back in just a second where Lewis will probably. No, no, no, you can't go yet.

39:52Lewis Goodall:I want to give you one more fact about the Wirral. Did you know that Birkenhead Park, the great Birkenhead Park, helped create Central Park in New York because it was opened in 1847. It was Britain's first major municipally funded public park. and Frederick Law Olmsted, who was central to the Central Park, visited in 1850 and incorporated some of its principles into his creation in Manhattan. So, Manhattan, you have got something to be grateful to Birkenhead for.

40:22Jon Sopel:As I was saying 45 seconds ago, we'll be back in just a moment.

40:41Lewis Goodall:All right, one last question. Apologies to Bernadette. We're never going to get to you. Maybe next time. Instead, we've got this question from Seb in Litchfield. Lovely Litchfield. Dear newsagents, my question for your Friday Q &A episode is a linguistic one. With terms like administration, as in the Burnham administration, which originated in American political discourse, having now almost completely assimilated into British English, do you know of any examples where our american cousins have taken any political terms or phrases from british english love the pod keep up the great work seb from lichfield sadly very much not in appalachia is that sad don't be sad about it lichfield's nice lichfield's nice good old staffordshire we haven't talked about staffordshire at all oh i know next time potteries all of that

41:25Jon Sopel:next time absolutely nothing wrong with staffordshire nothing wrong with that at all Okay, fine. What are the phrases? I mean, I suppose there are bits and pieces. You with us still? I am, sorry. Lewis is sort of giggling to himself in the corner. Sort of a naughty schoolboy.

41:44Lewis Goodall:It's the last... Emily's returning next week, so I'm just enjoying the freedom, you know. She'd be scowling at me by now.

41:50Jon Sopel:Well, rightly so. Rightly so. Rightly so. Kind of disorderly behaviour in the classroom. Well, I suppose the sergeant at arms is a role that the US has, you know, on the State of the Union address. The sergeant at arms is the person who brings the president in. The person who convenes over the State of the Union address is the speaker. Again, a very different role from the one that the speaker plays. Yeah, the whip, the whip's office, all of that. that is part of our politics that we've exported to America.

42:27Lewis Goodall:Well, the truth is, of course, is that, and that's entirely natural, because in so many ways, the American constitution, which we think of as a deeply radical document, in some ways it was, and it was certainly radical to write it all down in that way at the time, in the late 18th century, is basically the English constitution at the time democratised. You know, the president is basically the monarch, the House of Commons becomes the House of Representatives, the House of Lords becomes the Senate. And it's based, albeit adjusted and amended, it's based on English principles of constitutionalism and English principles of politics and governance because that is what the revolutionaries at the time considered themselves to be.

43:04Lewis Goodall:They considered themselves to be Englishmen who were fighting for their rights and their political rights and liberties as Englishmen and were creating a more perfect version of that constitution. So it's not surprising. Never mind words. We gave them the whole shebang. We gave them the whole lot. are you are you familiar with the phrase the cloakroom the cloakroom in the senate i so i met

43:25Jon Sopel:someone in the states who was this kind of incredibly smart sophisticated woman and she was not in politics and she but she was knew that i was you know covering politics and said oh i used to work in the cloakroom at the senate and i was thinking you weren't sorry you worked what you took hung people's coats up did you and the cloakroom is sort of almost like the whips office in the westminster example right the cloakroom is where you go to strategize where you meet behind the kind of behind the scenes right and i didn't know that and so when someone talks started speaking to me about the cloakroom i was thinking what you worked in a cloakroom and you just you know what did you give them a you know raffle ticket to tell them what number their coat was so that when they came back in the afternoon you could give them their coat back um and so it's a and that is something again where i i just had no concept that there was such a thing cabinet that's another

44:18Lewis Goodall:one yeah cabinet the establishment they talk about the establishment that's a british word

44:22Jon Sopel:that they've imported loads of them loads of them they've started saying bollocks the americans now

44:26Lewis Goodall:have you noticed no i've noticed that you see more and more american dramas and stuff so

44:30Jon Sopel:bollocks they obviously can't say it right i was somewhere in california and they had there was a fish and chip shop which they sort of brand and what was the name of the fish and chip shop go on wankers because that is a phrase because that is a phrase they do not use a word they do not use as you know they don't know what a wanker is in america i feel talking about wankers i got one

44:51Lewis Goodall:more fact i feel that um staffordshire didn't get its full due do you know that staffordshire john contains english england's highest village flesh in the staffordshire moorland stands at roughly 460 metres above sea level. So how about that?

45:08Jon Sopel:We should go. We could do an OB. I wonder whether the news agents will have any listeners and viewers. Well, we will in Flash. And in Birkenhead.

45:16Lewis Goodall:We'll have loads. We'll be upping listeners. One last thing, John. Do you know, one of the most popular English counties, according to a recent IE 2018 poll from YouGov, I doubt it's changed. Most popular English counties, to finish with the question we started with. Well, it's not Essex. It's definitely no way. No way. That's actually one of the least popular ones. The public agree with me. Not for the first time. I would think... Not the last.

45:38Jon Sopel:Popular. Popular. What would be a great... Northumberland. You know what? That is actually a great answer.

45:44Lewis Goodall:And I should have said that to myself because I love Northumberland. Yeah. But no, that's quite hard. That's number nine. Top, Dorset and Devon. There you go. Dorset and Devon. Least popular. And again, the British public. Spot on here. Absolutely spot on. This is the worst county in my view by far. endorse it thoroughly recommend it we'll see you no no the worst what's the worst

46:07Jon Sopel:oh I don't bloody know I don't care

46:09Lewis Goodall:Bedfordshire there's absolutely fuck all in Bedfordshire it's just a waste of time Luton Airport well need I say more QED we'll see you on Tuesday

46:18Jon Sopel:see you next Tuesday bye bye this has been a global production