Why has Musk set the mob on innocent random British police officers?

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1:27so little responsibility for what he does with it. Something is clearly going on. I hope that on behalf of those two officers, action will be taken, because otherwise they become... Well, I mean, it is a bit like the Wild West, isn't it?

1:46Lord Blunkett:Yeah, death threats, threats of extreme violence, trying to find family, people that know me, you know people saying that I shouldn't be put in a position like I have been. It's been really tough to read it and it's just been an absolute onslaught. That is Christy Hill. She was a serving police officer till about two years ago but she's now found her face, her name, her image plastered all over the internet and social media accused by many of being one of the police that attended the death of Henry Novak. It is a completely false claim. And another police officer has had to go into hiding. How is it possible there now seems to be a lynch mob deciding what justice looks like?

2:41How did we get here? And more importantly, who's to blame? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:52Lord Blunkett:The News Agents. It's John. It's Malis. And what we heard there was Christy Hill going on GB News to talk about what had happened to her. There is another police officer who we're not going to name, but whose face is across the Internet, where it feels that social media is doing due process and the rule of law and deciding who should be held responsible for things that those who are making judgment know absolutely sod all about because they've misidentified somebody. They've put their face up there in lights and ironically, just kind of for laughs, this was a police officer who was in Downing Street because he'd been nominated for a bravery award.

3:42but the kind of internet sleuths have decided that he is responsible for the terrible policing that took place when Henry Novak died. His face has been put out there. It's been amplified by the likes of Elon Musk. And hey, presto, your life is turned upside down. And this from the right of British politics, where they like to say, we are the party. We are the people of law and order. You can't make it up. It was so inevitable, almost from the moment that we heard from Henry Novak's father, Mark, outside the Southampton court on Monday night, begging people not to whip this up, not to make this about race, about tension, about hate, and asking the country as a whole to focus on knife crime, asking people to understand where things had gone wrong in the policing, but also in the murderer who was carrying a 21 inch dagger and how quickly this has spiralled into something that frankly suits the purposes of people who are looking to make electoral gain.

4:55You talk about the right traditionally being the sort of the parties of law and order. I mean, if you cast your mind back to that utterly despicable, appalling murder of Sarah Everard, in the middle of the COVID pandemic in 2021, killed by a serving police officer, raped by a serving police officer. At the time, Nigel Farage, if memory serves me right, said, we must not allow the tragic murder of a young woman to turn into attacks on men and attacks on police. My God, how far we've come. So when a woman is raped and murdered, it becomes a potential attack on the police. if there are people who go out, as they did then, to protest her death.

5:45Farage was one of those saying, oh, let's all calm it down. We don't want to hurt the police. That was an actual serving police officer who raped and murdered her. Suddenly, five years on, look where we are. The right is fighting with itself to be the party that doxes, outs, incites, whips up. and today we heard from Keir Starmer who accused the tech billionaire Elon Musk of trying to whip up division. It was Elon Musk who actually doxxed the young man you were talking about in the photo and it was Grok that outed the woman we heard from at the very beginning of this episode and this was Starmer's, I think, pretty punchy, fairly muscular response to that billionaire.

6:32Lord Blunkett:We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division. That is not who we are in Britain. In Britain, we are reasonable, tolerant people. When we have a terrible case like Henry's case, Henry Novak, we react calmly, as his family have done. When it comes to disgusting images on Grok, we take Grok on and fight, because that's who we are as a country. And of course, Keir Starmer can do his best as the prime minister to take on Grok, to take on Elon Musk. But Elon Musk controls X. The algorithm will favour anything that Elon Musk posts with his millions and millions of supporters.

7:17And when that photo was put up on X, what was Elon Musk's response? When is this scumbag going to prison? when is this scumbag going to prison a serving police officer who had nothing to do with the arrest of Henry Novak who was nominated for bravery who was nominated for a bravery award and now has his life upended is facing death threats has had to be moved to a safe house this is grotesque and I think far I mean I think that Keir Starmer is right to say this is not who we are. This is not Britain. But what on earth do you do with someone like Elon Musk, who has such copious amounts of power and seemingly so little responsibility for what he does with it?

8:08Yeah. And it's not just Elon Musk. If you've been following our episodes over the past couple of days, you'll have heard those scenes in the Commons when Nigel Farage took to his feet in Prime Minister's questions and said he feared that the violence in Southampton was getting worse and he understood if people responded to Henry Novak's death with pure cold rage. What does that verb responded mean? Does it just mean you feel rage or does it mean you respond because somebody is suggesting that maybe there is action to be taken? We know that today, Kemi Badenock, who has played an incredibly straight bat here, met with Henry Novak's family, with Lucy, his mum, with Mark, his dad, and with Katie, his stepmother, and praised their extraordinary courage.

9:03I believe that Keir Starmer is welcoming them to Downing Street, meeting them this afternoon as well. And I think if you want a sort of silver lining, actually, in this week, it has been what looks like a really comprehensive, grown up, mature response from the sort of major parties, I guess the central parties, we'd say, to this appalling tragedy at the heart of all the kind of noise and the flam of the political rhetoric. But something is clearly going on because Farage, as we say, doesn't get his words wrong that often. He tends to know where he's going with his language. And he is fighting, reform is fighting a by-election where Restore have outflanked them on the right.

10:01And there will be voices now who say he's being pushed into a place which actually is not particularly attractive for reform. It is not a good look for reform's leader to be going against the wishes, the demands of a dead boy's family. And this may just be upending the race. I mean, it is too early to see what happens. We are two weeks out from that by-election. And it is a curious moment, I think, for British politics to try and understand where the British public is on this. I'm just going to very briefly give you some numbers. And I should warn you, a little health warning, that these come from more in common from two years ago, from August 2024, after the race riots of that time.

10:55But people were asked, the public were asked, do you think the police in the UK treat white people more favourably, treat people equally regardless of race or treat people from ethnic minorities more favourably? And if you look at the top line, the all, and this comes from two years ago, only 18 percent of people thought the police treated people from ethnic minorities more favourably. In other words, the vast majority were in a space in between. 80 % of people were either saying pretty much the same white people or don't know. Now, I say that's from two years ago. Is it possible that something has massively changed in that time?

11:38I guess it is. You know, we will find out, presumably. And some of that make-a-feel voting may tell us where people feel. But as things were, the British public has been fairly accepting, I think. No, the British public has been fairly clear sighted about whether there has been, you know, what Nigel Farage called two tier policing against white people. You know that Nigel Farage chooses his words with care. He doesn't just shoot from the hip. He makes political calculation. And I think it's ugly, but it's worth dissecting where Farage is, because what has happened is that as reform has grown more popular, Farage eyes the possibility of getting into Downing Street and therefore thinks I've got to peel away conservative voices who might think that I'm a bit unpalatable.

12:30So therefore, I'm going to become slightly a bit more centrist. I'm not going to talk about forced repatriation of illegal immigrants and the way that Rupert Lowe is doing. I'm going to just be a slightly more moderate voice. Then he sees the Makerfield by-election, which has so much riding on it, like we've never seen before in a British by-election. And he suddenly realises that Rupert Lowe's party, Restore, is eating into his support. You get the Henry Novak case and he's got a calculation to make. Do I look like a slightly right of centre conservative politician to hope to peel off Tory voters?

13:09Well, there aren't that many of them in Makerfield. Much better that I go hard for the restore votes, which could split my vote. And that is the way to be Andy Burnham. And so you see him calculating two tier policing, white bias. And then that stuff where he doesn't contend the protesters and he talks about the anger could spill out of Southampton, could even get worse. what does that say? I mean it is almost like guys you're right if you want to go out attack the police you know that's what may happen and he'll condemn it if the police get attacked but he'll have said those words in the first place.

13:48Well in a moment we're going to be here from the former Home Secretary, Labour Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett.

14:00from a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists good morning i'm nick ferrari it's

14:05Lord Blunkett:time to get to your calls find out the latest news and hear every side of the story he was actually treated in a way that meant an accusation of a racial slur was treated more seriously than act of murder. They wanted riots and they got riots, aided and abetted by people who really should know better. But the next dimension of this tragedy could be even more troubling. Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC leading Britain's conversation.

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15:44Well, we're joined now by Lord Blunkett, David Blunkett, former Labour Home Secretary. And we've just been discussing the background to this. What do you make of Elon Musk and his chatbot, Grok, doxing two police officers? Well, I think people are weaponising it. And Musk has a reputation on this. and I'm afraid believes that it's his bounden duty to create havoc and this is a way of doing it. I mean, he's aided and abetted, obviously, by both Reform UK and Restore, the very small Rupert Lowe party, in terms of stirring up hate and resentment. And it's very difficult to overcome that because once people have absorbed the notion that this terrible, tragic death demonstrates something about inequalities more broadly in our society.

16:45It's very hard to get that out of their heads. But what should be the response to Elon Musk? Is there any way of shutting him up other than closing X in the UK? Well, we clearly can't. I think the ramifications of that would be profound. I mean, in a sane world, you would say we're simply not going to put up with any of this, but we're not living in that kind of environment. So we do have to be able to have an immediate reactive response. And I hope that on behalf of those two officers, action will be taken because otherwise they become, well, I mean, it is a bit like the Wild West, isn't it? It's the law of the jungle.

17:31It's the kind of hanging mob. What kind of action? I mean, what do you mean action will be taken? Well, legal action against him, an action, just as we've seen in terms of creative imagery and what he did on the Internet to allow people to create the most obscene images of other people. We also need to be able to protect people who are perfectly innocent from being abused personally. Otherwise, this is a lynch mob and we can't have lynch mobs. Can I take you inside the Commons to the scenes yesterday? Nigel Farage stood up and said he believed that the anger was spilling out in Southampton and could get worse.

18:23He was booed, he was jeered by many MPs around him. What did you hear then, Lord Blunkett? Well, and could get worse isn't a kind of prediction. It's an incitement. And it is saying, you know, this anger, it's almost legitimising what happened rather than as with all three of the main party leaders condemning it unequivocally, which I thought was very, very important. because as in the history of Europe and elsewhere, if we don't stand up and see off people who are taking this particular political line in order to win support, then we'll regret it at great length. Nonetheless, he has now started a conversation and it looks like the Times newspaper is sort of picking up where he's leaving off about whether DEI has gone too far.

19:28What do you make of these two-tier policing allegations? Do you think, I mean, you've been right at the centre of this. You will remember the McPherson report when that came out after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, that McPherson report in 1999. You will remember the Casey report from a couple of years back. Do you see two-tier policing? Well, we've seen it in the past. that two-tier policing was totally detrimental to ethnic minorities. We all know that from those major reports and from a recognition of that across society. What we've had in the last two years is the pendulum in the political arena being pushed the other way.

20:14I ought to confess that I'm co-chair of an independent commission on police leadership, which will report in July. This commission is about recruitment, promotion, it's about training and development, it's about leadership at every level. And we've been examining what needs to be done to make the police service more effective, to make it more trusted, and above all, to make it deliver to people in their communities. And I can't say a lot at this stage because we haven't finalised the recommendations. But that report, I think, will be important in putting to rest the idea that there's somehow a new wave of discrimination.

21:03I'm very sorry if very serious newspapers are building their support, their base on the back of going down this very dangerous rabbit hole. I mean, the Home Secretary couldn't have been clearer on Tuesday when she talked about policing without fear or favour. She talked about the equality of every citizen is the foundation on which the openness, tolerance and generosity of this country rests. And I mean, that is as clear as I can get. and I hope that our report will demonstrate that where there are problems and there are within the police service we will deal with them well we'll try and stop the pendulum swinging from one way to another I happen not to be politically correct I much to friends around me back in June 2020 wrote in a wide circulation newspaper that I didn't think it was appropriate for the police to take the knee in the Black Lives Matters campaign because I thought it demonstrated that they were getting themselves involved in a movement and I don't think whether that movement is right, left or woke or otherwise that they should be involved in it.

22:29So I have a bit of a back reputation here to be very clear that the police should steer clear of it. But it doesn't mean that the police shouldn't be trained in understanding the sensitivities that exist in our society. Otherwise, they're a blunderbuss. In the last 48 hours, though, we've seen the police chief's organisation suggest that maybe they had to adjust the wording on some of their sort of value statements, mission statements. I mean, does that seem like the right response to this? or do you worry that this is a kind of knee-jerk caving in, which is going to have an adverse effect? Well, there's a nice tightrope to walk, Emily.

23:12I think on this occasion they were right to say that whilst, and they did say this, while they stick entirely to the principle and the foundation of what they were doing, they actually could take a look at wording. Wording does matter. I remember when my predecessor at the Home Office, Jack Straw, published the Macpherson report, and there was a Runnymede report on race equality pretty much at the same time. It was individual wording that started hairs running. And I just think that we've got to be so careful now not to play into the playbook, into the narrative of people like Nigel Farage, historically, and particularly with the Nazis, they were brilliant at being able to pick up what the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats said or did and twisting it.

24:08And if we're not aware of that, then we're not politically astute. So being politically astute means watching your back, watching what you say, being careful not to play into their hands. My great worry in the immediate term is, for instance, that the Green Party are God's gift to reform. So all of us have got to be incredibly careful that we don't say or do the right thing ending up with the wrong outcome. So, David, look, we have ahead of us in the next two weeks the most consequential by-election in our lifetimes, potentially in British history. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's hard to divorce some of the reaction from Farage to this, to the Makerfield by election.

24:56And I just wonder what your read is on how this could play out in a constituency which is very largely white, where reform seemed to be doing extremely well. Yes, and did extremely well on May the 7th throughout the Wigan metropolitan district in which this constituency is based. And I think that that's why it is so consequential, irrespective of what happens after the 18th of June within the Labour Party and the government. losing this election would be seismic for both the Labour Party and the potential danger of disintegration of our democratic system with all its faults with all the danger of people in the establishment not really understanding what's going on and because of the nature of that constituency and its makeup socioeconomically and politically.

25:54Andy Burnham winning is an absolute imperative. I shall be there with him. He used to be my PPS, my parliamentary private secretary, when I was the home secretary. So we've known each other a very, very long time. And, you know, his victory isn't about Andy. It's about the trajectory of our politics and the the ability of the Labour Party to represent that section of our society that need their voice understanding and hearing but need also to be able to be challenged where perceptions become all and reality takes on an entirely different meaning. I'm really struck by one of the words that you've just used because I know you've I've known you for a very long time and you use words very carefully you talk about the disintegration of our politics if burnham loses this by-election yes because where does that leave the official left of center major party that currently is in government i mean i i love history and i would recommend to those tapping into your podcast to see if they can get an uh it'll be a dog-eared copy now of a book by george dangerfield called the strange death of liberal england which takes us back uh over a hundred years to the early part of last century with a liberal party that leading up to and at the beginning of the first world war had the most enormous parliamentary majority and with the within years almost became an irrelevance.

27:42So to take you back to that critical by-election which is actually two weeks today then what do you think Andy Burnham's response should be today tonight to this week and the reflection on the Novak tragedy and the question of policing? I mean do you want to hear him speak to Makerfield? Do you want to hear him talk to the rest of the country, to Labour? There is a kind of weird sort of theatricality to what's going on, isn't there, that we know it's bigger than one constituency, but right now it's one constituency that he has to win. I think he needs to talk to the people of Makerfield and to do so from a position of strength in terms of delivery within Greater Manchester.

28:33He, together with Sir Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, and Kate Green, the Deputy Dealing with Policing, have turned round Greater Manchester Police. It's not perfect, but my goodness me, it's an exemplar of what can be done and the way that really big problems in the recent past are now being overcome and he's got a he's got a platform there to say we have done it we can do it and i will speak for you and i will speak for you in a way that understands the respect you have for each other the care that that community has built for each other over years that's my experience from a white working class community that i grew up are you not worried that even that is speaking if you over the heads of the actual people of Makerfield.

29:24I mean, when you look at the polling that's come out, a lot of the constituents, though, are saying, actually, we don't understand why Josh Simons left. Well, you know, he was good. He listened to us. He did stuff. We don't want the Manchester thing. I get that entirely. 60 years ago, we had the same challenge in Smethwick, in the West Midlands. And it is a really tricky situation. I think the answer is that there's a decision now about their future and our future as a country and a great deal of rests on their shoulders. They can only vote for Andy and for Labour if they believe that he will represent their interests and their voice nationally.

30:10And I believe he will. And that has to be the message, not what might have happened and why Josh Simon stood down. But do you believe this man who lives literally up the road, who's done such a good job for your greater region, is the right person to represent you in Parliament? And what kind of sense are you getting from Andy Burnham? I know you're close. You speak to him regularly. I mean, when he's knocking on doors or when he's campaigning, what's the message coming back? The message coming back, it's a very fine by-election. This is going right to the wire. Restore party may have an influence, but the main challenge is getting those who are still committed and willing to give Labour a chance to turn out.

31:01And I've said to all of those who I've been speaking to, when someone tells you they haven't made their mind up, it's 90 % certain they won't be voting for you. Yeah. David Blunkett, Lord Blunkett, great to have you with us again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.