What America's first dictator could teach Keir Starmer

19:26Emma Barnett:The News Agents.

19:27Lewis Goodall:Now, Patrick, some people might have seen, some eagle-eyed viewers and listeners, I don't know what eagle's hearing is like, but eagle-eared listeners may have remembered that you were the man who briefly lit up social media for castigating American political nerds like me, and indeed people in the Parliamentary Labour Party, for overlearning the lessons of Zora Mamdani's win in New York, and whether that was germane to anything that the Labour Party could do here.

19:54Patrick Maguire:I was scrolling through Twitter, now known as X. Heard of it, yeah. And I was bombarded with Labour MP after Labour MP saying, oh, Zoran Mandami shows us how to win. You know, we finally know how to beat reform. And I just look at these people and think, get real. Just get real. Like, get a grip. Why don't you try, now you've worked out how to win in New York, trying to win in Wales, trying to win in Labour's historic heartlands, to use that dreadful cliche. You know, they've worked out, apparently, that the way to save progressivism is to run a singularly charismatic, brilliant communicator who understands the modern attention economy against a disgraced sex pest who killed a load of old people during Covid, allegedly, or that's how people in New York see him, and do it in the biggest liberal city, one of the biggest liberal cities in America and that's apparently how you beat Nigel Farage and challenges to your left as a singularly unpopular government in a parliamentary system in Britain it's just, I'm just sick of this and also, where were these people when Labour won 11 % of the vote in Caffili?

21:06Patrick Maguire:like, get real guys, get a grip

21:08Lewis Goodall:but you do think the dangers are there of over-extrapolating 2020's American politics are not there with 1930's American politics because you wrote this amazingly brilliant piece about Huey Long on your substack this week. Just explain to us, people who don't remember who Huey Long was.

21:26Patrick Maguire:Yeah, if you weren't in Louisiana in the 1920s and 30s... Yeah, I'm sure... Maybe there's one listener who was. Oh, big time. We've got a lot of those. Or if you haven't read... In the Pelican State. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm sure. They're tuning into this in Baton Rouge now. John covered his first campaign. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, he'll tell you about it at length at some point. Yeah, I'm sure he will. I'm sure he will. The Huey Long I knew. Well, Huey Long is, I think, for my money, one of, if not the fascinating American populist, certainly, and one of the neglected figures of 20th century American political history.

22:00Patrick Maguire:And to the extent he's remembered now, it is sort of America's first domestic dictator, which is a view popularised by Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, which is a sort of thinly fictionalised version of Long. He's had a dark reputation. He has had a dark reputation, and it's not entirely undeserved. But he was the governor of Louisiana in the 20s and early 30s. And then he became a senator. And he was threatening to run against FDR for the presidency in 1936 before he was shot in Baton Rouge in the state capital that he had built as governor.

22:38Lewis Goodall:And FDR was afraid of this. I mean, he was really afraid of FDR as a hegemonic figure. And he was, but he was really afraid. He was really, really afraid.

22:44Patrick Maguire:And a lot of what we now remember as authentically FDR was stuff he was chivvied and spooked into by Long. So why was FDR scared of Long? Well, because Long was pretty uniquely a very, very effective state administrator and economic populist. Now, why do I say economic populist? Because when we imagine sort of southern governors in that bit of the deep south, you think of race baiting demagogues. You think of George Wallace, you think of Orville Forbuss in Arkansas. You might, if you're a massive nerd, think of Theodore Bilbo in Alabama, who sat next to Long in the Senate. But Long wasn't like that.

23:22Patrick Maguire:He came from a tiny town called Winfield in the north of Louisiana. And when he was 18, he said to the woman that would become his wife, Rose, by the time I'm 35, I'll be governor of this state. And I'm first going to run for minor public office. Then I'll become governor. Then I'll become senator. and then I become the president. And amazingly, when he was 34, he was elected governor, having been on the Railroad Commission and then the Public Service Commission of Louisiana. And what was his platform as governor? It was share the wealth. It was I'm going to build the roads. It was I'm going to build the hospitals.

23:58Patrick Maguire:I'm going to expand Louisiana State University. I am going to stand up for the rights of Louisianans against Standard Oil, the big kleptocratic corporation that is stealing our wealth. I'm going to tax them. And I'm going to use that tax to fund free textbooks for school kids. I'm going to eradicate illiteracy here. And it didn't really talk about race. I don't want to say he was woke because if you read particularly... He definitely wasn't woke. No, no, no. He really wasn't woke. But by the standards of southern populists and the great demagogues of America, he didn't really talk about race.

24:32Lewis Goodall:He wasn't involved in the Klan.

24:34Patrick Maguire:He didn't have the Klan.

24:35Lewis Goodall:He didn't run on a white supremacist ideology.

24:37Patrick Maguire:in a way that many of his contemporaries did. Completely. And that's not to say he didn't cynically play into that on occasion or reach an accommodation with it. But the thing he was always proudest of was that poor black people in Louisiana learnt to read. And poor black people in Louisiana for decades afterwards would talk about Huey Long as a singular politician in that respect. And he did things. He told the public he was going to do things and did them. And how did he do them? He ran roughshod over the Louisiana legislature. he you know made lots of noise he was a master of what was new media at the time he you know he would commandeer radio stations in new orleans and ramble on the air for hours on end he would start his own newspapers but it was all about economics and particularly in the depression he understood intuitively something i think politicians on the center left now and particularly this Labour Party are failing to understand, which is, who are the people that make populism happen?

25:40Patrick Maguire:Now, Long always fancied himself as, in his words, the champion of the little guy. He imagined himself to be standing up for the very poorest in Louisiana. Now, that was true in an indirect sense. The stuff he did, the roads he built, the schools he funded, the universities he expanded, the hospitals he built, obviously benefited the very poor, white and black but who was his electoral base it was the people in the words of another great american historian alan brinkley who wrote a brilliant book called voices of protest which is about long and father cochland the uh the radio priest who spoke about in very similar terms about depression it was people who felt their membership of a modest world of middle-class accomplishment was imperiled which it was by the depression by bank foreclosures by savings being wiped out exactly all of that and they were the people that made populism happen Long's inauguration as governor who turn up from the rural Louisiana it's the farmers, it's the smallholders it's small tradesmen and what's striking is people notice they're turning up in new cars so they're not the poorest in society but they're the people who've earned just a little bit and feel they're about to lose it and long really understood that and he also understood the importance of picking an enemy when he went to the senate and became a master of the filibuster and a master of self-publicity it was the banks it was jp morgan it was you know it was rockefeller it was all of these

27:17Lewis Goodall:profits of capital um we see glimmers and threads of that in contemporary american politics bernie sanders you know the sort of that part of the american left and you know that sort of strain the economic populist gene, which Trump has channeled brilliantly himself, you know, has been central, you know, was central to the Democratic Party for a long time.

27:36Patrick Maguire:Yeah. And also, it's interesting you mentioned Sanders, right? Because what is Long's critique of Roosevelt? He goes there having helped Roosevelt get the nomination. He helps broker the convention for Roosevelt, swings the southern states behind him. And he's initially a massive fan of Roosevelt, right? He's going to do the New Deal. He's going to tackle wealth and he finds himself disappointed and breaks with Roosevelt. And what's his critique of Roosevelt? It's a very similar one that you hear from the left of the Democratic Party. It's that these people are in bed with the very people who are screwing our people over with the banks, with big finance.

28:16Patrick Maguire:And, you know, there's no sort of nutjob conspiratorialism in that. It's a sort of very cogent political critique. It's sort of he's always like, why isn't Roosevelt doing a tax on wealth? well it's because you know in his words there's a set of democratic waiters on one side and there are a set of republican waiters on the other side and all the grub comes out the same wall street kitchen and that's very similar you know that rhetoric sort of echoes through democratic leftism in america ever since and we hear lots of it now and you know sanders was a master of it too and it's that sort of critique i think that marks him out right and roosevelt as you said earlier initially people think Long's a clown he is the very archetype of a southern bumpkin he's a redneck his first national story is him starting a national debate on how best to dip your bread in a Louisiana delicacy called pot liquor but over time Long is organising he's channeling forces that are only inchoate and lack coherent political expression in American politics the depression is biting Roosevelt's not doing enough.

29:24Patrick Maguire:We need more. Some people are doing well. We're not doing well. You know, who is going to speak for us? Roosevelt wasn't doing enough to speak to them. You know, he called Long one of the two most dangerous men in America, the other being General MacArthur, right? These are the forces to left and right that were going to destabilise, you know, democratic government in America. You know, when Roosevelt does his second New Deal, his aides are very open in saying, we're only having to do half this stuff because otherwise people are going to turn to Huey Long and we definitely don't want that to happen.

29:55Patrick Maguire:You know, Jim Farley, his close aide, commissions private polling that shows OK, Long's not going to win a presidential election because he was going to run in 1936, but he'll win 10 % of the vote, 10 million votes and he will swing the election to Hoover, back to the Republicans. So it was a massive, massive deal and it was all because he understood instinctively a constituency of the public. be they in Louisiana be they actually in the North East and in parts of industrial Midwest that were really badly hit by the depression understood what people had lost and understood who they blamed for it and actually Roosevelt although we remember him now as a progressive hero was buffeted and destabilised by the criticisms of these people and it's that sort of left wing resistance to Roosevelt that reveals the sort of part of the American public that felt that they weren't being helped and felt that they had lost most, even if what they'd lost was modest.

30:56Patrick Maguire:And I think it gives you a template for understanding how populism can happen in strange and unlikely places and how to channel those energies and also how to beat them.

31:04Lewis Goodall:And that's why I thought your argument was very interesting about the contemporary resonances of Long's life. Because as you say, what Long did and what Long understood and actually what is common to populists And indeed, you can draw a line even in terms of that critique to write through to contemporary British politics with Farage, for example, even Zach Polanski, obviously coming at it from completely different ways. But understanding that constituency of politics in the electorate, who are the small shopkeepers, the small business people, the people who have something but don't have much and actually usually are, as you say and argue, are usually at the centre when they are doing badly or fear losing the little that they have.

31:43Lewis Goodall:that is the sort of cradle of populism and the sort of centrifuge of populism. And I suppose the argument then, and indeed the argument you make, is those are precisely the people who feel most attacked by the current government and the budget.

31:56Patrick Maguire:Yeah, and they're always difficult. You know, you might call them the petty bourgeois, you might call them the aspirational low middle class. As you say, they're small shopkeepers, sole traders, tradesmen, that sort of thing. Lots of people who sort of work for themselves. There's an element of class ambiguity there. And it's difficult for social democrats to sort of conceive of where they fit into their own coalition because they lots of them don't work for the people. There's certainly not a group of people that the Labour Party congenitally reflexively understand.

32:25Lewis Goodall:Right. Because they're not usually a key constituency of the Labour Party. The person I mean, in a way, the thing I've kept thinking ever since the budget. Right. Is that it makes me think and sort of slightly rethink the Blair period in a more profound way in the sense that it really brought what brings home how Labour is being at the moment. It really brings home how unusual that was and how unusual Blair's fixation with those people was. So petty bourgeois for Bonnevare expression within the Labour Party tradition.

32:51Patrick Maguire:Well, on my way over, I was actually thinking about who is the great sort of cultural marker of Thatcherism and what it did to Britain's sense of self and the British economy. You could say it was loads of money. Right. Harry Enfield's plasterer. He was a grotesque. He was vulgar. He was an Essex boy, you know, in the novelty single he released, you know, watch this and look at my wad.

33:17Emma Barnett:Oi, you! Shut your mouth and look at my wad! Loads of money! This is a journey into money. Loads of money.

33:33Patrick Maguire:Hi-nam, hi-nam, hi-nam, he's low to me. He was vulgar. He was someone for everybody else to laugh at, for bien-pensant people to laugh at, because, ha ha ha, look at this guy, right? All the values of Thatcherism are wrong and depraved and twisted. And, you know, Neil Kinnock, actually, in one of his budget responses, spoke of a loads of money economy. And if you really drill down to that, why shouldn't loads of money, why shouldn't Harry Enfield's plaster have been a natural Labour vote? What is it about the Labour Party that, especially a broad-based Labour Party that despised to be in Blair's words the political wing of the British people?

34:11Loads of money is not any less excluded from the elites of Britain than anybody who works for somebody else, I don't think.

34:21Patrick Maguire:He is culturally a working class guy, a self-made working class guy. I didn't actually intend to make this a defence of Harry Enfield's loads of money plasterer, but I think it's really interesting. right everybody laughs at that character but why it tells you something about the sort of cultural left-centre self that they can't imagine anything more absurd or more offensive about that tourism yeah more vulgar than a plasterer who makes loads of money and actually is culturally isolated both from the working class and the conventional middle and certainly the upper classes obviously but why shouldn't a sort of low middle class or someone who is sort of maroon between classes by financial circumstance a skilled tradesman be the subject of derision why shouldn't he be part of the labour party because you know by any other metric he is he's not one of life's great winners he has joined what alan brinkley called that world of modest middle class

35:20Lewis Goodall:accomplishment your argument is is this long understood it's these people's frustrations and anger that basically sort of forms at least economic populism yes that they're at the center of economic populism, that Farage understands that as well. Polanski understands that. The Labour Party either doesn't understand it or doesn't know what to think about it or what to do about it. And unless they do something about it or do start to re-gear themselves, that they won't be able to deal with populism as it is at the moment.

35:47Patrick Maguire:No, that's the problem. And it's... So on one hand, you've got the petty bourgeois. On the other hand, you've got the new graduate class as well. You know, people who are finding that the minimum wage is compressing with whatever entry-level job they're doing or their primary school teaching job they've just got and they're paying their student loans back at an extortionate rate of interest, even working part-time, well, not part-time at Tesco, but they might have a job at Tesco that pays them just over the threshold or soon will, if the minimum wage keeps going up, pay them over the threshold.

36:18Patrick Maguire:Marginal tax rates of over 40%. Totally, right? So loads of people are screwed by the economy, by the decisions on tax Labour has made.

36:27Lewis Goodall:And crucially, not the people, just to sort of hammer it at home for people. I think that the key point about this and this argument is to say that we know it's hardly a new thing to observe that economic populism is a problem for the Labour Party. The problem is, is that the way particularly we've been conditioned to think about where populism lies and where these forces lie. Basically, we think about Rust Belt. We think in the US, we think about kind of the post-industrial north or the Midlands. We think about places that are sort of down on their luck and people who used to work in factories.

36:56Lewis Goodall:And obviously, they have been a centre of some political discontent. But in fact, it isn't necessarily in terms of the kind of where the sort of real power of populism is right now and might yet be in terms of opposing the Labour Party. It's actually a slightly different group of people.

37:11Patrick Maguire:No, exactly. And I think the problem is these people do not see themselves as life's great winners. You know, they, in their own words, work hard. They do the right thing. But the Labour Party does. Yeah, well, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Well, they think so. You own a business. OK, here are a load of regulatory obligations. You might employ somebody else. And the problem is, it's both an economic force and a cultural force, right? culturally these people do not feel like members of the middle class labour you know thinks it's hitting or they don't it's because they're sort of cultural milieu and the way they work in the way they earn a living are you know they're not white collar workers then they're often not degree educated they are the everyday risk takers of economic life they are people who get their hands dirty nor are they people that the labour party feels comfortable with in a sense that

38:02Lewis Goodall:they're unionized, that they are working on a shop floor. They're not the people that Keir Starmer actually talks about. When you think about his sort of political kind of creation story if you like, that he tells often, you know, which is about his father and about the toolmaker and about the disrespect that he got at work and so on which is about the lack of dignity which is an interesting story and it is now well rehearsed. But even Starmer, that is not the story of those people. That's not the political story of the people that you're talking about and where this new sort of

38:30Patrick Maguire:on where populism now potentially might sit no no completely and as you said farage gets that i remember a couple of weeks ago maybe a month ago he did a big speech in westminster about reform and small business and we were promised a big announcement and he brings on the founder of checker trade which is you know website for tradesmen and basically sort of the whole of westminster shrugged its souls and says so what never heard of him you know but actually it's understanding that tradesmen you know skilled trades the people who you know labour mps might get in to paint their extension or whatever or build their extension and otherwise not engage with or not spend much time thinking about.

39:06Patrick Maguire:They are people who are looking at the Labour Party. Culturally they might think the Labour Party ought to be the party for me and they are finding themselves find the Labour Party has nothing to say to them.

39:20Lewis Goodall:But I think this is, and again, one of the contradictions or paradoxes of politics right now, isn't it, is that the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Labour Party is huge. dominates parliament. But the truth is, it's never really been more homogenous, right? In the sense that it is populated by lots of people who, again, ironically, have a good claim and pedigree of being working class. The cabinet often likes to talk about that. And on one level, it is clearly true. But on another level, it's clearly completely untrue, right? Or at least it is not anywhere near the whole story. Because what they do have is a similar story.

39:51Lewis Goodall:They are a product of a great thing, which is social mobility. but they do not in any way epitomise or necessarily resonate with, at this point, the people that you're talking about and their political story.

40:02Patrick Maguire:No, completely. And actually, maybe that is one of the unintended consequences of the success of New Labour on that front. Right? There are people who were lifted out of child poverty by Blowing Brown. They went to good comprehensives. Then they went to Oxbridge. And all of a sudden, they have very little in common with the people who... That plaster you were talking about. Well, yeah. Exactly. they would sort of look at loads of money and think god you know you remind me of the guy who used to bully me in school or something like that's the problem and i just sort of think you know what you think about the mythology of the labour party as well i suppose like you know what is the foundational text this labour party help the labour party comes consciousness it was the ragged trousers philanthropists right which is actually a novel about a semi-autobiographical novel by robert tressel about you know being a painter and decorator and being exploited by bad bosses and all that sort of stuff.

40:53Patrick Maguire:Tony Benn used to give it as a presence to anybody who... Yeah, exactly. But I think that's sort of quite revealing about, you know, to the extent that Labour Party ever thought about tradesmen, it's, you know, tradesmen screwing each other over and being screwed over. It's sort of, you know, Labour Party thinks almost exclusively of bad bosses. You know, even people who are bosses on the tiniest scale, you know, the SME, people who start their own businesses, etc. And, you know, it's a world of narrow margins and all of that. And don't feel particularly wealthy, probably aren't particularly wealthy.

41:25Patrick Maguire:They might earn more than the median income. It feels fundamentally to me that right now the Labour Party has slipped into a mode of thinking,

41:32Lewis Goodall:which is that that is extractive, that there is something fundamentally extractive about capitalism. And if you push your, you know, your average Labour MP into the recesses of what they think about, that is basically their assumption.

41:45Patrick Maguire:Yeah, quite possibly. And it's not sort of, it's not, as you say, it's an old Labour reflex. It's a very, very old Labour reflex. Well, one of the stories of this Parliament so far, right, is that we've discovered that this PLP is actually way more left wing than anybody thought it was. Yeah. And it presents us, it sort of uses slightly outdated Blairite modes of communication and presents as a, presents as a sort of post new Labour Party. but it's actually in its political impulses pretty old school in many respects and finds most difficult it's forced to imagine a way of doing things outside of those confines of taxing and spending right kirstom used to talk about this in opposition we can't just pull this tax and spend leaders we're going to have to find new leaders the growth lever we're going to have to reimagine the economy they haven't done that and actually with their backs to the wall they've thought higher tax higher spending higher welfare but those are very old impulses it's not sort of late-term Blairism public service reform they spoke about in opposition a lot as well.

42:42Patrick Maguire:There's none of that. Where do you think we'll be in a year's time? Do you think Starmer is still going to be there? I suspect Wes Streeting will be in this chair reflecting on his first... First leadership coup attempt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the sacking. Exactly. He'll be admitting that, you know, it was right, the 50 MPs did exist. No, I don't think Keir Starmer will be Prime Minister in a year's time. I'd be shocked if Keir Starmer was Prime Minister in a year's time. I think it's possible to imagine the Labour Party staggering on with him for longer than is sensible. But I think May, to a large extent, by the way, in part because of the people we've been talking about, the people who are turning to reform, the people who are turning to the Greens, in local elections that are basically a free hit, in Scotland and Wales, where they have clear alternatives on the progressive wing of politics to the Labour Party, with reform polling, you know, 25 % in Scotland, 20 % in Scotland, 30 % plus everywhere else.

43:35Patrick Maguire:Right, reform's vote is real. Reform is now the vote of the white working class and much of the petty bourgeois in Britain. I think those results are going to be a massive psychological shock. Labour not getting back in in Scotland, probably. Labour being forced to place supplicants applied in Wales. Green councils in London, hung councils in London that Labour have thought of their birthright for decades, out of London reform councils, that sort of thing. I just think it's going to be a huge psychological shock for the Labour Party. And after that, even this parliamentary Labour Party is not going to say, well, the guy who just made that happen should stay.

44:14Patrick Maguire:And I think at that point, the case for anything else and a bit of discipline from the PLP, and maybe I'm being foolish in assuming they're capable of discipline, But I think at that point they will say we just need someone who can come out and speak like a human being and keep us united. And I think the only person who's consciously trying to do that at the minute is West Streeting. You know, West Streeting is articulating a sort of oven ready, fairly middle of the road, but also quite punchy progressivism that might not solve all of Labour's problems. problems but it's probably something everybody in the Labour Party can sort of live with and it's obviously will be communicated a million times better than anything Keir Starmer could manage and I'm just looking at the rest of the field if that shakes down after May I actually think there might be an out.

45:06Lewis Goodall:Particularly for a Labour Party which is in abject fear yeah which

45:08Patrick Maguire:will be the tone. Well it would just be please please somebody make this stop can somebody beat Nigel Farage and interesting I was leaked some members polling that a city consultancy had done with YouGov of the Labour membership last week. And what was really striking was they asked members, what do you look for in a Labour leader? And it was, I want them to beat Farage and I want them to be competent. And actually, it's just going to be as simple as that. It will be the Labour MPs are going to break glass and say, OK, who can fix this problem right now? And West Streeting is doing all the things to present themselves, present himself to those people as the ready-made solution.

45:46Patrick Maguire:And Rayner? I don't think Angela Rayner is going to run for Labour leadership. Maybe I'm wrong. Really? No, I don't think so. I think the big question with Angela Rayner is whether she really wants it. What does she want most? I think actually what she wants most is probably to be taken properly seriously by part of the Labour Party that is consistently underestimated and denigrated there. Would she enjoy being prime minister? I'm not actually sure she would. I don't think there are lots of things in frontline politics that she particularly enjoys. What would she like most? I don't know. I mean, I can't speak for Angela Rayner and her in a monologue, but I'd be certainly surprised if...

46:22Patrick Maguire:Look, she said she'd run against West Streeting. As someone recounted to me the other day, she said she'd rather stick pins in her eyes than back him. But she's got a lot of leverage. Maybe she'll use that to run against him, in which case she's going to be Prime Minister. Does she really want to do that? Or she has near infinite leverage over the shape of West Streeting's cabinet. What would you prefer if you were her? I don't know. That's the big question that could determine the course of this leadership election.

46:46Lewis Goodall:Just finally, I mean, is it possible? I mean, let's say we get to the end of the year. And indeed, let's say Streeting's in or somebody else, Labour Party does bite the bullet. Although, of course, you know, you can never underestimate the extent to which Labour Party will bottle it at any particular moment if there's any excuse to. But let's assume that they do. It's so easy to imagine, though, isn't it, that, you know, we'll be having a very similar conversation about a prime minister's streeting or whoever it happens to be. Yeah, they'll be able to communicate better than Starmer because most people would be able to.

47:13Lewis Goodall:But the structural factors that we've been talking about remain. And to go back to that question, I sort of half-posited it near the beginning. Who was the last prime minister to have true authority for a prolonged period? I mean, Cameron maybe for a while, not for that long. I mean, and partly that was the slight artificial nature of the coalition. Blair for sure, obviously. But, you know, we basically had a succession of prime ministers, even those who have been reasonably electorally successful, whose authority, which is essential in our system, evaporated very, very quickly. So it's clearly something.

47:42Lewis Goodall:Either we basically conclude that we've had a run of particularly subgrade, subpar leaders and prime ministers, possible, probable, maybe. Or we sort of conclude there is also just something structural about the British system and British politics right now, which is making it increasingly ungovernable or maybe both. What do you think?

48:00Patrick Maguire:I think probably both. I think, yes, certainly the quality of our debate, intellectual culture and British politics, the quality of our parliamentarians has undoubtedly declined. and I mean no disrespect to people when I say that I mean the quality of our journalists has probably declined as well if that makes you feel better my admitting that there's a diminishing amount of seriousness in you know the culture in the discourse whatever you want to call it but I think it's possible that you know factor that in Blair certainly Blair 97 to 2003 you can put in your box early Thatcher is you know being kicked about by the wets in their cabinet is not having a great time the public don't particularly like her every leader is you know Cameron's early Cameron is at war with the Eurosceptics indeed the Eurosceptics forced him to promise the EU referendum but what has changed most profoundly in the decades since then it is our information environment that is the great catalyst that probably turns you know what was once a you know report on the inside pages of the Telegraph by a lobby journalist is you know immediately whipped up into crisis crisis cataclysm perma crisis and cataclysm all of the time and it's democratized information in a basically an uncontrollable way right um i'm not saying democratizing information is bad it's just changed the way we relate to our leaders and

49:24Lewis Goodall:it's weird because on the one hand and it goes back to what you're saying about starmer and his sort of new comm strategy in so far as it exists but on the one hand there is this contradiction because we do have a media information environment which on some levels is infinitely richer, infinitely more textured, longer, there's more of it, there's more of anything that you might want to have and it's probably in some ways of higher quality that the mediation which, you know, could basically patronise people and not give them what they want is much less than it was. And yet on the other hand, it is also endless sugar rush, sugar rush, sugar rush, which as you say is deeply destabilising to the political process.

50:00Lewis Goodall:I don't think there's any way around that. But also, I don't see any way of its reversal, which is kind of where I go back to the start, which is I find it hard at this point now to imagine. I feel like we've played the game so long now of just thinking, well, let's just get a new prime minister or a new home secretary or whatever it happens to be. And we end up in the same place.

50:15Patrick Maguire:Well, totally. I mean, I had this conversation with someone in Number 10 fairly recently, and they said, you know, we're going to sort of swipe right for your next prime minister culture, which is a problem, right? Because on your vertical feed of video, on Netflix, on whatever, and by the way, I think it's possible to overdo this. I think if things are going well, it's possible to book this trend if you're a democratic leader. But it's unsurprising that in politics people are looking to the next thing and then the next thing. Although, you know, were that the case? How do you explain reforms, remarkable resilience in the polls?

50:52Patrick Maguire:how do you explain how do you explain lots of things in politics Viraj's been around for 30 years well no no totally

50:58Lewis Goodall:right that's the thing so I don't know I think maybe the answer is I mean maybe the answer is is that as you sort of already say maybe both things are both things are true but what it means is is that actually if you accept that the structural problems are there what it requires is even better leadership yes like actually almost titanic leadership which we certainly haven't had no we're not getting that because it's been going in the opposite direction we're not getting that currently we'll see in 12 months Patrick thanks so much for coming in me. And give our best to Huey. I will. I will.

51:33Emma Barnett:The News Agents.

51:35Lewis Goodall:And they say that Christmases can't come early. A whole hour talking about 1930s American senators. Thank you very much. Reading and writing is Patrick Substack, which I can't recommend enough. And of course, you can read it in the Times. One other quote from that time, which caught my eye in a book I read this year, maybe with some resonance for Keir Starmer to ponder. It was 1928. Most of the press were endorsing Herbert Hoover. Indeed, he won in the presidential election of that year in a landslide. But Time magazine declined to endorse him, saying, in a society of temperate, of temperate, industrious, unspectacular beavers, such a beaver man would make an ideal king beaver.

52:12Lewis Goodall:But humans are different. Remind you of anyone? That's it from the History Agents for this week. We'll be back on Monday. The show is produced by Shane Fennelly, Michaela Walters, Natalie Inge, Arvin Badoual Anna Georgievich Jess Williamson Mikey Bags and new recruit Lizzie Ward what has she let herself in for our executive producer is Louis Dagenhart our editor is MIA Tom Hughes it's presented by Emily Maitlis John Sopel and me Lewis good all remember to tune in to my LBC Sunday show from 10 this weekend for the best political interviews we'll see you on Monday as I say have a lovely weekend this has been a Global Player original production