317. How to save the NHS

23:03Consequently, total cross -party, Lib Dem conservative Labor up in arms. And of course none of us want to see the big picture. I was fighting about the closing of every single community hospital in my constituency. Elections were lost by elections were lost over the issue of the A &E and the West Cumberland infirmary. And nobody wanted to buy into the idea that actually patient outcomes would be better if we closed these hospitals. So I'm just going to stop there and get you to talk a little bit about the politics of this. Well the politics are very very very difficult and what this report I think, I think the purpose of this report is actually to try to establish in the public mind a bit like they did on the economy with the black hole.

23:44We've been banging on about the NHS being in a really really really bad state for years ever since the choice had been in. It's actually a lot worse than you think and here's the evidence and here's the report. And then, where streeting has the job and Kierstam has the job of bringing forward the reforms that he's talking about and bringing forward a 10 -year plan. Now, if they are right that this is going to take 10 years, which I think and I think they probably are, that means they're going to have to win another general election, at least one more general election. And to win that general election, they are going to have to and people are going to get sick to death of hearing labour ministers blame the last lot and the mess you left behind and you ruined the NHS and we're fixing it.

24:26But they're going to have to cement that in the public mind. Just as David Cameron George Osborne did with the mess we inherited back in 2010. Otherwise, they will find it incredibly difficult to do difficult things. They're going to find it difficult anyway. And as you say, every time we're seeing a version of this right now in relation to the universal taking where the universal went to fuel allowance, which is tiny compared to the NHS right? Exactly. And yeah, look at the right -wing newspapers, which normally would be arguing that, you know, universal benefits aren't a good thing and the thing should be means tested to save the state money.

25:02Every single contender in the Tory leadership election is coming out and saying this is a terrible thing to do. Every single MP who voted with the government on it is getting thousands of emails of organised campaigns, just as you used to and you voted on the government whip on on popular things. So MPs are getting a very early sign on the issue of what will happen. If you imagine, as you say, if you're the successor, a Labour MP in a Labour constituency with a hospital that the health secretary comes along and says, actually, we're going to reorganise, we're going to have fewer hospitals, we're going to put more of our resources into the community, we're going to build up mental health teams outside of hospitals and you know full well, there'll be a massive campaign because of the hospital.

25:46Now, my point to we're speaking here, Stammer, you have to face it down. Also, you're an MP who's won what wasn't to Labour seat before. So you feel that you've fought to take this marginal seat. You've sweated every vote. Some of these seats are on tiny, tiny margins and you've got either a LibDam or Tory opponent producing pamphlets quoting you, saying you supported the NHS and now the A &E's closing in your local hospital or the hospital itself is closing or the breast cancer services are closing. Yeah, listen, it's not easy but funnily enough, I've just been reading Tony Blair's book on leadership, which is a very kind of Tony kind of read, but he's very interesting on this business of doing difficult, unpopular things and he makes few recommendations.

26:30One of them is do it early in the first term because by the end of the first term, you've got to be able to show that this progress being made. Which is the Ken Clark point, right? Absolutely, absolutely. But the other thing he says is that you leadership is not about saying the things that people want to say and doing the things that you know that people want to do. Leadership is actually about confronting people with choices that perhaps they won't want to make, but your job as the leader is to persuade them of the long term need. Now, that is very, very difficult in the modern age. And another example, he's the other thing about Tony's book is obsessed with technology and rightly, and it's so important to a lot of the changes that we talk about.

27:09But in Aradaz's report, he makes the point that actually the technological advances, if anything, have actually increased the workload of clinicians because the technology is not being used to best advantage. And I still don't think that we fully understand what we mean when we say technology can transform the way that we interact with the state. And Tony's argument is that we've got it, you know, he wants to sort of complete reimagining of the public's interaction with services like the National Health Service. On that, again, it's true. I mean, I really believe that AI and technology could have incredible productivity benefits.

27:46But the fight that you would have is that to get productivity benefits literally just means you're basically replacing a human with a computer. And every time you do that, somebody's losing their job. And therefore you have all the unions out against you. And their first argument will be safety. You know, the computer's not as safe for reliable as a human doing that job. And they will have incredible public support because people will be suspicious about the interaction with technology. So again, is the labor government going to show the courage and the determination to face down the nurses, the doctors, the unions in order to bring these productivity benefits they could do?

28:24My other question is how can you do it early in your term, unless you've got it up your sleeve? I mean, I got the impression that you had before you came in in 1997 already had pretty clear thoughts about independence, the Bank of England shore start so that you were able to get going quite quickly. Real reform of the NHS would require some secret plan, which these guys have developed over the last two, three years, which is really going to be a piece of legislation, the law that they're going to drive through the house of comments. But when does it exist? I mean, do you think this thing exists?

28:55Or they're writing it now? I mean, I don't know as the answer to that. I think the three pillars are the ones that we've talked about that we're treating as taught in terms of kind of, you know, where they want to take the NHS in terms of the areas for reform. Again, to go back to the report, when you read his analysis of the Lancer reforms, I can know this, they established over 300 new national health services organisations. And he makes the point, how can they possibly all be high performing? When you're creating 300 new organisations within an existing already complex structure. So I think there'll be resistance to some extent by the government in wanting to make it all about organisational and institutional change.

29:34But if you're talking about transforming from the analysis that this report presents, which is really, really damning, to something where he says, and Keir Starmer says, and Westreeding says, the fundamental principles of the National Health Service are not up for grabs. So the funding model is going to say the same. And then I think you're kind of hemming yourself in. I mean, presumably you said this is sort of short order review. I imagine it'll now be a longer sort of review. I wonder whether they will at some point try to broaden this out to bring other parties into the debate and discussion about it.

30:11I mean, it's astonishing they haven't. I mean, it would seem to me that the obvious things to do with the NHS is to get a cross -party 10, 15, 20 -year plan together, which everybody signs up to. That's why I keep shamelessly trying to say I'd love to serve on a cross -party commission on this and bring in. Oh, you've downgraded your role. You wanted to chair it earlier. I just want to be on it. Yeah, I just want to be on it. I just want to be on it. But no, because I think there's nothing more important and there's nothing which more obviously needs a much longer term plan. And that's the only hope presumably of getting really difficult reforms through.

30:44Can I just, as we conclude, just to sort of bring it to life again for people? I guess one of the interesting things about the NHS unlike prisons, which most people don't visit, is we all go to the GP and we've all got relatives in hospital so that we see the best and the worst of it much more frequently. And it touches our lives. There are more than one million people employed in the NHS, 316 million GP appointments a year. I mean, so if you think about my personal experience, delivered my son at home, fantastic experience with 999 because they told me how to help get the baby out. Obviously, with Shashana doing most of the work, slightly disappointing experience with the ambulance, given the ambulance to turn up for about an hour and a half after the baby was born in central London.

31:27Then fantastic experience with the midwife who then turned up and weighed the baby at home and said we didn't have to go in hospital. So I mean, did you do a little snapshot? But I mean, every single one of us are living these lives where we turn up, we see some things we think are terrific and so many things that are obviously ludicrous and wasteful. And then finally, when you look at the statistics, one of the reasons they keep reforming doesn't matter where it's Ken Clark or Alan Melbourne with Labour or Andrew Lansley, one of the things they're always worrying about is how different different hospitals are in performance.

31:57I mean, you can see some hospitals will spend on average 2 ,000 pounds on a procedure that another hospital's spending 1 ,000 pounds on a procedure to do. Some hospitals are managing to get twice as many procedures done in a day compared to another hospital and they can be two London hospitals with very similar catch from populations. So a loss of this stuff comes out, what do you do about it? What do you do? I mean, I felt this in a small way in prisons. If you turn up the places filthy and the weather is very turn up in a hospital, they're missing appointments, the emergency rooms, staff, the ambulances are queuing outside, too many patients are dying.

32:31How do you sort that out? And of course, you can't do it from the center, right? You need really good management systems, but you create the management systems. And then of course, Lord Darcy says, well, you've created 300 new management systems. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that when Keir Starmer and we're streasing when the review was published and they did a hospital visit with cameras in tow, and I recognised it was the University College Hospital. And it was in one of the most modern, high tech, amazing equipment, fantastic new blocks. And yet the story was about how terrible everything was and it was all sort of fall of debates.

33:07Anybody watching that clip of where Keir Starmer was talking would have thought, my god, if every hospital was like that would be, would be kind of okay. We all know, as you say, we all have our experience, some good, some bad. I was in hospital a few months ago and actually things went a bit wrong, but it wasn't, it wasn't their fault and they were absolutely brilliant about it. I either dealt with it, other experiences, my GP's pretty good. So we've all got those stories, but equally, what comes through this report and what comes through all the polling is that sat -patient satisfaction is going down and down and down and down.

33:37One of the big things he talks about, he talks about too much focus on hospitals, too much resource on hospitals, even worse than that because of the lack of provision of social care and the failure of the last lot, or failure of either of the last governments to really to fix it, the capacity that is wasted on people who are literally staying in there for weeks, sometimes for months, without good medical need because they have nowhere to go. As a result, ambulance delays, he says the main cause of ambulance delays, which you suffered as well, is probably the ambulance that should have been coming to you when your when your son was being born, was stuck in a queue outside the hospital waiting to try to find some space to take somebody who who needed a bed.

34:17At my final point, Roy, before we go to a break, you know, I've got an interest in mental health and his analysis on mental health devastating to read. 41 % drop in learning disability nurses. Overall, mental health now 20 % of the disease burden, but 10 % of the resource that goes into health service, a reduction in mental health nursing between 2011 and 2016, out of area placements rising again, including for children and young people. We've had a wasted decade where the talk has been good. I've said on this podcast many times, I think David Cameron Theresa may really meant meant it when they said they wanted to reform mental health and improve mental health services, but you read this report and I'm afraid they got worse on their watch.

35:03So anyway, this is going to be forget sort of rouse over Kirsta and was wives clothing and even things like winter fuel allowance, I mean, eventually that will either get tapered and sorted or it'll get, you know, just sort of go into the body politic, but this, the National Health Service, the future of the National Health Service, this is fundamental to the future of our politics for the next several general elections and this report and whether they can fix the problems the outlines is right up there and top three top government challenges for Geistarma right now. Very good. Well, Alison, let's take a quick break.

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36:49Welcome back to The Restus Politics with me, Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory last week, Kierstarmour went off to Washington, sat down with Joe Biden and the big issue in terms of the coverage of that was about Ukraine and this issue of weather, Ukraine and Zelensky can use the Storm Shadow missiles which can go much deeper into Russian territory. Up to now the missiles that the Allies have been giving to Zelensky, they can use them, they use them for defense within their own territory. So giving them Storm Shadows already, they can use them to hit Russian territory, but only Russian territory which has been occupied since the invasion so they can hit Crimea, they can hit Don Yetzka -Luhansk, back to you.

37:34So big issue, these Storm Shadow missiles, which cost a million dollars every time you fire one off and Zelensky wants to be able to use them to go further. They have a range of 250 kilometers. They can penetrate bunkers, they can penetrate ammunition stores and you can see why he's pretty desperate to get his hands on them and I think we were expecting a decision from the meeting with Joe Biden but we didn't get one. Yeah, so Storm Shadow missiles are a cruise missile. It's quite a big thing, I mean it's got a three meter wing span, you strap it to the bottom of a bomber, release it and it actually climbs up to altitude and then comes in and the since the French and the British started supplying them spring of last year, they've killed a Russian general, they've killed the commander of the Black Sea, fleet with them and strikes on Sebastian Pole, they've hit a submarine, they've hit a major Russian ship, so they've been quite effective, but at the moment as you say, they can only be used for hitting territory which is considered to be Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia rather than Russia itself and what Kirstama seems to now want to do is allow them to use these missiles to fire into Russia itself.

38:46That could be very useful because it could allow them obviously, more straightforwardly, to drive back Russian assets further back, so as you say this thing would drive them back another 150 miles. It can also potentially hit Russian infrastructure, one of the big changes in the war is that the Russians are increasingly hitting electricity infrastructure in Ukraine and maybe if you started hitting Russian infrastructure, it would provide a deterrence or some reason for Russia to back off a bit. And again, it's one of these things which on its own isn't going to change anything, it's just part of the general picture.

39:16The bigger broader picture still are big debates about strategy, should they have gone into course, should the Ukrainians have invaded Russian territory? Is that a smart move because it gives them a bargaining chip or is it overextending them so they're going to weaken their front lines and the Russians may be able to advance in other areas? Is Russia going to continue to largely ignore what they're doing there and concentrate on breaking through the existing front lines in which case the Ukrainians can dig in or Russia going to go north and try to deal with that? And what happens next year? Because a lot of this story around us supplying missiles is also about the US and the $60 billion that they voted this year and the funny ways in which the Pentagon accounts for it because of course it's not cash.

39:55What's happening is that the Pentagon says, oh well we're providing you with $60 billion worth of equipment but of course the Pentagon has every reason to overvalue its equipment. So a lot of kind of dodgy, armored personnel carriers that they use in Afghanistan, they don't have much use of. They put a big price tag on and ship them off to Ukraine. And a lot of the things Ukrainians want, they're still not getting that many off and it's very difficult to get into the depths of the Pentagon to work out why when the US military have 60 -patreon missile batteries. Is there any prepared to give one to Ukraine?

40:24Just a few things on the kind of political or the geopolitical arena on this. I think one of the reasons why Zelensky is really kind of trying to get this thing over the line is because of these reports that Iran has been supplying more ballistic missiles to Russia and getting as part of the deal getting support for their nuclear program which presses a lot of buttons in Washington. And then the other thing that I think is worth talking about, there was a very interesting Jake Sullivan who's Biden's main kind of foreign policy advisor. He did a video link speech to policy makers and military people in Ukraine last week and he was saying that it wasn't unwillingness that was stopping them from doing this.

41:07It was difficult, complicated logistics. He said it's not a matter of political will but given what Ukraine is up against we've got to do more or we've got to do better. Now reading between the lines that sounded to me much more cautious than the message that Anthony Blinken when he went with David Lamy to meet Zelensky recently sounded a lot more cautious. The other interesting thing that came out of that was the head of Ukraine's intelligence said that the moment of all of Russia's allies the one that was the most damaging in terms of assistance was North Korea because of the large the massive quantities of ammunition that they were providing.

41:47So if you throw in Iran with their ballistic missiles and North Korea in that content you can see why Biden might be a little bit cautious. The reason why they're waiting by the way why the American go ahead is necessary isn't just because they're the leaders of the alliance. It's just that for these missiles to work they require a certain amount of American technological and technical support. In order to operate we had a good interview coming up with Anna Poem on leading in which she frames this debate and the big debate obviously is between people who think Biden's been correct to follow this relatively cautious policy.

42:21So listeners will remember over the last two and a half years again and again, America will say it won't supply a certain kind of weapon system and then a few months later it supplies it. So if you're on Biden's side you say this is smart they're being cautious they don't want to provoke too much response from Russia and that they're slowly boiling the frog and they can gradually increase the support without putting everything. If you're on the other side which is the Ann Applebaum side or Ben Wallace who's been talking about it's quite a lot. That view is no no we've been far too wimpy we should have provided much more support and everything we provide is a dollar short and a day late and the one of the reasons that Ukraine never manages to do its counteroffensive is that we're always producing the stuff yeah.

43:02Lately, limply at the wrong time and that we should challenge Russia more and obviously at the heart of this debate is a question of trying to guess when Putin says you've crossed a red line if Europe directly gets involved in supporting missile strikes on Russian territory I'm going to lose the plot how seriously do we take that? So we don't know we don't know actually I mean the honest ones we don't know we don't know what's inside his head. We also are struggling to work at how he's going to respond he's presumably not going to fire ballistic missiles into Europe but he could well support Iran on North Korea to cause trouble in other places that might be intelligent stuff coming in that Putin might be expeling more of our people he might threaten cyber attacks so there's an incredible game of bluff it's imputence interest to suggest that if we support strikes into Russia some amazing hell will be unleashed by Russia which will push us into a third world war and of course it's a new craines interest to argue that that's all bluff and Putin's not going to do anything he hasn't done anything in the past but I think the honest treats us nobody really knows it was interesting that when this debate was going on ahead of Kierstheim are going off to Washington Putin called in one of the state media people just one one microphone and he did a clip to camera essentially with the sort of understated but clear threat that if you do this then that's you at war with Russia and terrible consequences will follow and everybody goes off thinking he's talking about nuclear weapons and he's kind of done that several times so does that mean that the last time he was bluffing and that the time after that when we sent in the tanks and all the other stuff he was bluffing and does it mean that there's no limit to when the bluff runs out and then there was no I mean Medvedev you know his kind of sort of predecessor former president who's now still quite a big part of the Russian machine and he came up with a very unpleasant turn of phrase he said that if we did this Kier would be reduced to a giant melted spot they would melt it now again I think the world melt is designed to sort of say you know get us thinking about newcs but the truth is if you know I think people will enjoy the interview with Apple bar and she feels very strongly about this I think you and I do even though we're aware of the sort you know the risks I mean it's to put our cuts on the table we tend to believe we should have provided more support to Ukraine earlier and take more risk on this yeah and if Russia does win or is allowed to define this as a win then that is a terrible thing for European security and frankly the security of the world because it won't be the last thing that he goes out and of course the other thing in the mix here is which Zelensky is worried about is Zelensky I'm sure will have followed the debate between Trump and Harris the same as most people did and Donald Trump would not bring himself to say that it is a good thing for the world if Ukraine wins this war instead he's back to be sort of boastful braggart stuff about I'll get this fixed even before I become president in other words you'll do a deal which involves puting keeping the land that he's got keeping the ground that he's taken so for that's the other big thing that's into the mix here that the that Zelensky is worried about which probably makes him even more agitated that Joe Biden is so cautious they're all going to be Biden, Stama, Zelensky, lots of the others going to be the United Nations General Assembly I think that's the point at which this decision gets made.

46:17There's also been some interesting stuff out of Germany I mean Shultz came in with a big fanfare he was going to increase military expenditure to 2 % set aside 100 billion to do that but that 100 billion is going to run out and it would take a 60 % rise in the defense budget to meet that 2 % I mean and the some of the stats are extraordinary to get their howits levels up to where they were in 2003 forward take 100 years and what Germany's doing is putting more money into social welfare putting more money into child benefit you get 3000 euros per child up to the age of 25 and that is costing more than the entire core budget of the German defense ministry.

46:54The other factor in the German context is that one of the things that we've got this another state election at the weekend in Brandenburg where the AFD look like they might win and the rise of the far right the populist far right and the populist far left both of them essentially constantly echoing Putin's main talking points that is also making life more difficult on Ukraine for Shultz. I'm going to make a prediction, Laurie. Yep you brought up Germany I'm going to make a prediction that the German SPD will do a Biden Harris. A Biden Harris question. Good they'll get rid of Shultz. They'll get rid of Shultz.

47:29You heard it here first. Well you probably haven't heard it here first if you're a jerk you know you heard it here first if you're a you. Very good. Some very interesting we do just briefly to close off. Our current leading guest by the way is Nate Silver so that's where we talk about all things American election but we interviewed a while back Peter Malalowski who's the premier of South Australia who is trying to ban social media access for children on the 14 and interestingly he has employed this former high court chief justice Robert French to draw up draft legislation and it's a fascinating thing he's literally drawn up the legislation and his report explains how he has come to that conclusion.

48:14It's a really sort of interesting reader. It's the sort of policy development I think you were library but the big news is the Antineal Benazie the prime minister of Australia, the federal state of Australia, the Commonwealth of Australia, he has decided to roll it out for the whole country. So that is a great example of one leader in one state comes up with an idea, fights for it, wins that fight politically and now the whole country and if that happens in if Australia do that I suspect that we other countries will do the same. And very interesting too because one of the reasons he managed to do it is he also got the opposition to sign up for it before he got his own party leader to sign up for it.

48:52Let's just quickly just romp through the arguments on this that there are three positions obviously on this there's the position of the social media companies and you're for a Nick Clegg which is they want his little legislation and constraints of this sort as possible and we need to be honest about that because I am getting a bit in the neck from people saying we're being a bit too gentle to hella Schmettson to Nick Clegg when we interview them. They're very good at being emollient and sweet on interviews but when you see their lawyers in court it's quite clear that these social media companies basically want no restrictions or control at all on what they're doing and rely on very very extreme arguments.

49:30So does that mean second view is the Manel Lorskis view which is social media for children is dangerous and it should be banned and the third view is what's been developing more in the UK and Europe which is sort of typically sort of somewhere in the middle which is can you control the content so they would say it's like saying instead of children can't get macaque they must wear a belt or it's not they can't get to a pool but there should be a fence around a pool with the Australian example. And I guess the debate just to lay it out very quickly for listeners is on the harm side the harm side is the content social media can be absolutely horrible the contact that you get through social media right who you can get in touch with getting in touch with creepy people on social media conduct on social media which is kind of children being bullied or shown horrible explicit naked images and finally all the contract stuff commercial data harvesting on children that's sort of downside the upside if you're making the argument social media is that it's placed where a lot of children feel this opportunity to socialize to make friends to relax to get away from the stress of school to experiment with things that their parents don't necessarily want them experimenting with and also gain information from learning.

50:42So the people who are going the middle ground say we've got to get that and then there's the final view I think which I'm sympathetic to I'd love to hear you on which is that maybe we might end up with the compromise but maybe Peter Manoloskas is right to start with a really aggressive ban because that might be the only way to get these companies to start concentrating in meters in the middle. He talks in terms of this being a ban Albanese interestingly prefers to talk about it being minimum age access but you know it's about it you know it would take away freedoms but the other roul going on with them social media in Australia the Australian government has got these new laws coming in unrelated to this although in the same area basically saying that they're going to levy substantial fines on social media companies if they don't comply with your Australian government rules on combating scams and disinformation and on that basis Elon Musk whose Twitter account is becoming more embarrassing by the day he basically says you know he talked about Kierstarma being extreme and obvious and all this stuff he called the Australian government fascists because they they wanted to do this to find companies that that allowed this information and do nothing about it.

51:54So I can't imagine Musk is going to be very happy about this the social media stuff and kids and if you remember Rory's remember Rory's Peter Manoloskas said that the social media companies just thus far refused really to engage with them on this and they've now got a bill they're going to get a bill through parliament. It's become such a sort of symbolic issue of free speech I mean I did a long conversation I mean the states now did a long conversation with an American tech investor for an hour and a half he just kept saying Europe and Australia are trying to create authoritarian states and he tried to suggest that any kind of attempts to limit free speech on social media is an attack on fundamental human rights and liberties.

52:37So I then had dinner with my best friend who's British and was complaining about this and expecting him to sympathize with me and he also slightly took this view and said he's very suspicious and you know the humans are more grown up and we're able to cope with this stuff much better than the people think and a lot of it's a joke and the government's overreacting and free speech is being censored and that then leads into obviously people who are worried about what's happening in universities and free speech being censored there so I was trying to say and I guess you and I agree on this that it's very dangerous in politics to turn a detailed individualist you like you know what exactly is in the legislation on the digital act and Britain into a huge kind of philosophical discussion about freedom and tyranny and Hitler and autocracy.

53:21We just got to keep bringing it back to details what are we actually proposing and what will it really mean? Yeah that's why I wonder I mean I can't imagine a huge proportion of our listeners would necessarily get through the whole thing but I think we should put in the newsletter the full report written by this guy French because it's a very very interesting example of somebody given the job of analyzing report all the meetings that he had he just has very short notes of all the points that were made and then he ends the process by by drafting the legislation so it's a really interesting example of and you know legislation gets amended and there'll be arguments about it and so forth but what is done is give is take you through the process of actually and it's how government might do it how you might bring this into into being because of course what the social media companies will say rightly is that it will be very difficult to work out exactly how to do this one of the things Albanese taught is it might have to be done through facial recognition well that again brings into question all sorts of of other issues of that you know we've talked about and other episodes of the podcast so anyway I'm with Peter Malau because I think that there is a real problem I think when we were talking about the National Health Service and the rise in mental illness epidemic amongst young people I don't blame social media in quotes but I think it is a big factor I think the fact there's a girl said to me in a school recently with social media if you are being bullied there is now no escape there is no sanctuary there is no way you can go to hide away from it and and I think that's stuff that we've got to listen to and you may be right maybe Peter Malau is right out there and we'll end up somewhere in the middle but I hope we don't end up so far in the middle that just becomes a bit of a mush well this this maybe is a good way of looping together all the different things that we're talking about which is that the difference between the kind of analyst and the politician and what seems to be the perfect technocratic policy and what you actually have to do to get stuff done and that'll be true with the NHS I mean I've some great work of people want to get into the details of this by an amazing health journalist called Andy Crowley that this was a great book by Isabel Hardman on the history of the NHS but I also slightly feel when I hear Andy making a hundred detailed points the big question is how do you do it in our political sphere not not what's the ideal solution and the same is true here if you talk about social media Sonia Livingston if people are interested a LSE academics given a great infusion ABC Australian news where she lays out the arguments on either side but I'm still with you I think actually these companies are not being reasonable you can't have a reasonable debate with them there isn't a halfway house where they're going to voluntarily come along and agree to lose access unrestricted access to their biggest growing market share so I think this is the situation where you have to pull the handbrake pretty aggressively in order to get anything done and just look at the way Elon Musk is behaving at the moment Trump has this guy trying to shoot at him from a golf course and Elon Musk does what he calls a funny tweet about well nobody's trying to kill Biden or Harris with then a sort of face of a smiling thingy the idea of that guy engaging with something like this so I think Peter Malau's case is right they're not going to engage we'll just bring forward a bill and and now Albanese is taking it up now Rory you mentioned a few books there and I've only mentioned Tony's I want to mention another book which relates to our previous discussion about Ukraine Lindsay Hilsson who we both admire channel four international affairs editor she's written a really good book called I brought the war with me stories and poems from the front line it's a very interesting memoir because it's sort of got these very short chapters about the many many many many many dangerous places she's been to but then she has a poem between every chapter that relates to the chapter before and it's a really really nice book and I just want to reach this one very short poem by a German called Gunter Kuhnert translated from the German by Michael Hamburger when the man was dragged from out under the debris of his shell house he shook himself and said never again at least not right away very powerful um so we we began with talking about our UK tour and people come join us people grumble that for Australian listeners they're not getting an Australia tour this is a shameless opportunity for Rory to talk about it so it was there a few weeks ago I was there a few weeks ago there but you're not about to go back again I am so that's a great opportunity for people to um here an engage I mean I'm really looking forward to it particularly after all our stuff with Peter Manoluska so just in case people in Australia would be interested in coming on to him in 21st of October I'll be in Melbourne 29th October Sydney 2nd November Brisbane 3rd November Canberra 4th November Perth and thank you to all our Australian listeners I mean I think you'd probably agree that one of the most um interesting and engaged listeners we have around the world are from Australia I got an email from friend mine in Australia telling me that Boris Johnson is going to be there in uh in December and if you want to go and get a signed copy of his book you can just have to pay ten thousand dollars for a table at one of his events and there you go and he'll be pleased to know Roy this guy I won't drop him in it by name you he said on the same day I got an invite to go and hear Rory Stewart speak I shall go and hear Stewart not Johnson very good because not least much cheaper all right well thank you very much no surprising see you but bye