331. Question Time: Murdoch or Musk — who has more power?

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1:36Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, we won't be taking any questions on the budget because that is happening Wednesday and we will be doing our response to it on Thursday morning, UK time. You'll still be in Australia. So my first question, Peter Judge, if you had to come up with a single target for the world, you can rule the world, Rory, in 2050, what would it be? My only thing would be climate. I think it's got to be, we've got to get this climate crisis under control. And I really worry that we're not doing it right now.

2:14Yeah, I mean, I think a very achievable target for the world to aim for is to eliminate global poverty. There are 770 million people living on less than $2 a day. And we could for very little money for actually less than we currently spend on international development, bring them out of extreme poverty. And that's very doable. The other thing I think about though is talking to Shashana about this with the car today. Just how much can change in 25 years? I mean, if you think the sort of period 1945 to 1970, I guess, how much the world changed because that's kind of the first time that people went from the minority of people having thush in water, electricity, indoor lavatory, telephones, et cetera, to almost everybody in the developed world having those things.

3:03Or the change in the 25 years from I guess, 1914 to 1939. So what the world felt like for the first world war, British Empire dominating the world, everything's seeming very peaceful, no war in Europe for nearly 100 years since Napoleon or no major big continental wars. I suppose Franco German exception, but basically a pretty peaceful time. And then suddenly it erupts. First world war, second world war, Hitler, madness. The world in 25 years time, if you and I sit around, is going to be a very, very different universe. One in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050. And that's before we even think about whether Elon Musk has managed to make it on to Mars in the next couple of years.

3:45I think he'd be being did by China by the way, but anyway. Right, here's another question for you coming up. Spoil ballots, Caroline's film and so Caroline's film and is a former colleague of mine, conservative, section state for environment, food and rural affairs and MP. As the conservative leadership contest scenario, I've heard voters discussing spoiling their ballot papers as they no longer support either candidate running, something I of course would be tempted to do. Can you explain the unintended consequences are doing this? So Caroline is obviously pointing out that although you might feel morally really good about spoiling your ballot paper in effect, it's not such a smart thing to do over you.

4:23Well, I think I guess the point she's making about those who are spoiling the ballot and that contest is that they're going to end up with one of the two bad luck or generic and maybe they just feel that they can't bring themselves to vote for either. But the spoiled ballot that I worry about is in relation to the United States at the moment and not just the spoiled ballot, but also what I see as the wasted vote. It was very interesting to me that Robert F Kennedy was one of the speakers at Trump's Madison Square Garden Rally. Scaramucci has always said that these third candidates have been all part of Bannon's plot.

4:58Steve Bannon, sort of hard right or right activist and strategist. So Jill Stein who's in their still fighting and you know very much on the kind of environmental agenda and also very much in favor of greater action on behalf of the Palestinian people. So people might think well they can vote for her and that's a way of sort of sticking it up to Biden Harris over the Middle East. But then effectively what that's doing is voting for or helping Donald Trump who is let's not forget the guy behind the Muslim ban. So I think that's what I would worry about in relation to that. If I had a choice of conservative leader between generic and bad not I'd find it very hard to vote for either.

5:42Who would you vote for by the way? Well it's a tough one, that one. It's a tough one. But the point the Caroline would make would rather kind of say. I'm ruined there day by saying you vote for one of them. Go on. Rue, Rue, Rue, Rue, Rue, Rue. You are increasing the power of those who do vote. So basically you're giving power to the people you don't like by spoiling your ballot paper. So don't spoil your paper. Now Rue, my favorite question of the week was Brian Crawford. It asked us Rue, Alistair, are you working people? Very good. Now this is a reference. People who don't follow the micro details of the British news.

6:21Kira Samu was giving an interview in which they were trying to push him on the budget and he seemed to suggest that people made income from shares and investment were not what he meant by working people. Gunter, tell us a little bit about what you thought about that response. Was that good or bad in different? Well, I ask you solve this question. Is that what you wanted to be talking about just before the budget that people who own shares aren't necessarily working people? Look, I think Kira Starmad does have a real problem with the way the media at the moment just seemed absolutely hell bent on taking the smallest thing and whipping it up into the biggest thing.

6:54But you've got to be very, very careful about that. As you go into a budget, there should be a framing strategy, which I think to some extent has been the black hole, tough decisions and so forth. But I will argue that we are working people, but we're not the sort of working people that Kira Starmad has in mind when he's talking about working people. I mean what he means by working people are people who essentially are living paycheck to paycheck, who are doing a paid salaried or possibly even hour by hour working for a living. I think one of the things that's changed in our policy is the definition of class.

7:33I mean normally when you think of working people, I think of working class people, but working class now, what is the working class? Is it the gig economy? Is it delivery people? Is it the people who ride around delivering your food at night, whatever it might be? I think we've lost the traditional working class and we're struggling really to find the language to describe what we mean by, if you like, the new working class because part of what we talk about is the importance of the middle class and aspirations to the middle class. So, I don't think there's a great debate to be having just before the budget.

8:05I also think that being pretentious, this is a biggest issue because politicians need to imagine citizens or voters and it was easier in the past where it was easier to stereotype people was voting in line with their work and working in big industries or big unions. What I noticed when I was in Cumberland, 92 % of my constituents worked for businesses employing less than 10. 27 % of them were self -employed, nearly a third work from home. I realized that every door I knocked on was different. I'd knock on one door, it would be somebody who's working as a telecom consultant in Dubai, the next person would be an aroma therapist, the next person would be doing fencing for the sheep industry, etc.

8:52You can imagine this is almost any kind of part of Britain. The result is that it's very difficult knowing what an economic development strategy looks like because it's not, I'm going to build a big perillee calf factory here. Nor is it very easy to know exactly who you're mentally addressing if what you're looking at is 60 ,000 constituents with almost 60 ,000 different jobs, and which aren't really even documented. This is a dirty secret I hadn't realized till I became an MP, which is the local councils don't actually know what people are doing because they're saying we don't collect data on this stuff.

9:27When I said, can you break down, you say 80 % of people work in services, what does that mean? People get a bit vague and a bit elusive, they can't actually tell you. That is interesting. Coming on from something I just said there, this is from end populace lies. It's proving to be a hideous mistake, says end populace lies, by labour not to implement leverson too. As we've seen a full on ban and playbook insurrection attempt against a new government driven by the mainstream media, what can be done to remove the corrupt, street stranglehold on the once world -renowned UK media? I think we know where end populace lies.

10:04Can I quickly tell people what leverson too was? So, Subrion leverson was a judge who started this investigation after journalists that used the world hack the phone of murdered schoolgirl Millie Dauller. The first part of the inquiry looked at culture, practice and ethics, the press and the second part meant to be an investigation through relationship between journalists and the police. And it was abandoned by Matt Hancock, who was then the culture secretary. And there was a lot of hope then that labour would bring it back. And oddly, and this is a couple of questions are getting at this this week, labour decided not to do that.

10:40And the other question I'm going to get us on to in a second is a question of three ports where again, labour hasn't gone against the old Tory policy. Tell us whether you think emplening leverson too would have made a difference, would have been helpful. Well, they obviously made the judgment that politically they thought it would be unhelpful because it would make the press very angry, running into election. And therefore, I think Keir Starmer made it clear with that it being a big deal that leverson too as it were was going to be dropped. And I think a lot of people were pretty angry about that.

11:11The question from end populace lies, well, there wasn't a question, it's a statement, they call it a hideous mistake. I don't know whether it's hideous, but I think there is an element in the politics of this that I think is a mistake. Because I think once you said to the press, well, okay, we know you've got to pull all sorts of terrible stuff, all sorts of corrupt stuff, all sorts of bad stuff. And we were very angry about it at the time, but we decided because we've got all these other challenges to face now that we're not going to bother with it. I think that sort of gives the green light to the press to do what the press likes to do, which is basically trying build up and destroy.

11:47Now, when we talked to Lisa and your leading, she was clear that the media landscape has changed so much that now it's much more the focus has to be on social media and the impact that's having on young people or what sort of stuff. Podcasts. Gotta go out to the podcast. Exactly. So I don't know where the end populace lies, thinks that we've fallen the category of mainstream media or not. So I do think there was an element of it being a mistake. I think it was essentially, I don't think you should be giving out too many signals of weakness. And I think I'm afraid I think the media did take it as a green light sort of do the kind of stuff which they're now doing.

12:22Now, maybe they would have done it anyway, but I definitely reached a point of thinking that the extent of the way that our media culture changed was doing real damage to the country and to our reputation. By the way, one of the key figures in the whole Murdoch, Levison, phone hacking stuff was well -luised. The guy who's at the center of this Washington Post stuff that we talked about in the main podcast. But part of the thing is this whole story about, as Lisa and Andy was getting out of you, getting out of just how much media has changed. And part of that is the story about Google and Facebook and what's happened to advertising revenue.

12:56I think as long as it goes 2018, something like 90 % of all advertising revenue was somehow being intermediated by Google and Facebook. And somebody explained to this to me very well that one of the problems with the newspapers is that now that Google can offer to micro target exactly the segment of buyer you want it. I know. Let's say I'm setting a Nature Valley crunchy bar. It can get me the 32 -year -old man who's interested in buying, I don't know, stretchy workout equipment. There's no longer the demand to put a big ad in the Times and the hope that that 32 -year -old man who buys stretchy workout equipment might read the ad at the Times.

13:33So they lost, by 2018, they lost 100 pounds of revenue for print and only gained three pounds in return in digital, which implies a kind of 97 % collapse in their revenue streams. I'm very, very critical of our newspapers a lot of the time. But one of the worst things that's happening in relation to the American election debate at the moment is that putting to one side the debate we had in the main podcast about the Washington Post and lost hundreds of times, not endorsing either candidate, is actually around the US and around the UK that financial change that you've been talking about has had a terrible effect on dozens and dozens and hundreds of local newspapers, which did play for a long time a very, very, very important part in local democratic and other debate.

14:24And that's the part of this equation that I really lament.

14:29We announced, I think, in the years running up to 2018, when in 2019 when I was running to be mayor of London, I think there was still almost a million people reading the evening standard. When it finally shot and went online, just a few weeks ago, to collapse down from almost a million down to 200 ,000, or just five years, and everything that I did in my constituency was all about the cumble in Westman and Harold, which my constituents were reading it and we could really get into local detail. I think it's a very bad for democracy and the other thing which I think connects to what you were saying with Jeff Bezos, who owning the Washington Post and not endorsing Trump, is it makes these newspapers now essentially lost making enterprises for billionaires rather than reasonable businesses.

15:17And given that Bezos basically is financing the Washington Post to lose presumably tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year because there's no advertising revenue coming in. That suddenly gives him the power to wake up in the morning and announce he's not going to be, you know, he's going to ignore the journalists and he's not going to endorse anyone, etc. And we're about to see the same presumably with a telegraph, right? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I want to think a lot of it about vanity and a lot of it's about what they think is the power that goes with being a media owner. But you know, query, I don't know but Elon Musk, I worry that what the new media world has created is a different form of oligarch that frankly at times seems worse than the old form of oligarch, which is pretty bad.

16:07So, Rory, as you know, we are powered by fused energy and we get loads of questions on energy. I want to ask you this because you're quite critical about a lot of labor ministers where streeting sometimes you're pretty praiseworthy of, dytopic, Kyle. But what I admit, Miliband, now do you think a Miliband is doing because he has got one of the big jobs, the mission, one of labor's missions is about green energy. So what's your take on Ed Miliband? So, I think he's very interesting. I think he's very interesting first because he is somebody who was the leader of the Labour Party, could have been Prime Minister.

16:41And unlike so many other people, including me, who sort of sloped off out of politics, he stuck around. And I think that's the first thing that he's really committed, obviously, to this job, which he's been leaning into and putting thought into for so, so many years. So I think that's the first thing. He's a completely different, quite a lot of the Labour Cabinet. I mean, he's been in the game much longer. He's much more senior. He was right in there. I guess in the early days with you in in 1997, and he knows the stuff that quits. And he's quite radical. And I think presumably one of the things that must be going on with somebody who's chosen, having been leader of the party to serve and somebody else's cabinet, is that he's become very mission driven and that this is above all the portfolio that he cares about.

17:30Before he was back in the front line, as it were, he wrote a book, Go Big. And it was talking about sort of some of the big policy decisions that needed to make, not just in energy, but right across the piece. And I think it is. I mean, you know, if you go through the five missions, I know you constantly complain that Labour don't communicate, they're well it up, but we know what they are. And one of them is this clean energy mission. And, you know, I think the strength of his commitment to cutting carbon emissions over the next decade, and to getting an investment, to driving innovation. Without it, then Labour are not going to be able to meet that mission.

18:04So I'm with you on that. I think it's, I think it's good that people have been at the top level of their party, stay in, even when they've lost the top jobs, they stay in, because they've got something to give. And I think I'm a bit of a, a bit of a convert. He knows I didn't vote for him in the leadership election against his brother. I still think David would have been a better bet for Labour at that time, but I think Ed Miliband is, is really found his passion. I think he's found the mission that drives him. And I wish him well. I guess the big question just to finish on this before we go to the break for fused energy and others.

18:37So just to remind people, fused energy is how completely by renewables and is putting its profits back into investing in renewables. But the challenge for Britain is that in a sense, we've got the low hanging fruit, a loss of the very dramatic reductions in carbon emissions in Britain, received by charging towards gas and closing coal -fired stations. Ed Miliband is now facing the really tough stuff. What do you do about the Drax power station, which is burning an incredible quantity of wood and is receiving enormous government subsidies. How do you sort out battery storage? How do you sort out transmission lines?

19:15I mean, to really make renewables work in Britain, there's going to be wires running across the countryside in every direction. How are you going to do all this when the cost of energy in Britain is nearly twice as much as it is in a lot of our competitors? And this is having a big effect on industry. What do we do about hydrogen, et cetera? So so much to talk about. And I guess the question, if you're a friend of Miliband, is apart from the big vision stuff, where's he going to be on the politics, dealing with communities, implementation, civil service, arguments about hydrogen, arguments around transmission?

19:45Anyway, all of that, all of that to come. And I think you had a final reminder about our signed copies. I know. A more book plug in, Rory. You can win a signed copy of our books with personalized messages by switching to fuses and using the code politics. Learn more at getfews .com slash politics. Let's getfews .com slash politics. Okay, Alistair Quick Break, then back with more questions.

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21:52Before we get into second half, I think we should definitely plug our interview with Tim Snyder, the American historian. It seems to me more relevant than ever as we're just a few days away from the American election. His take on Russia, Ukraine, his take on tyranny and the threat of freedom. I think people will find it very interesting and also quite alarming that we could be so close to seeing a Trump presidency again. Required listening, definitely for anybody voting in the American election. I thought I think he's so lovely and self -deprecating and funny and wise. No, it was great. And I said, just before we get back to you for question, what are things that's very interesting as this question around freeports?

22:33And you've raised them, I think probably half a dozen times on the podcast because you were very interested in what these conservative governments had done, which is basically set up freeports, especially economic zones, which are areas that avoid normal regulations and taxes and almost weird anarchic fantasies and there've been corruption allegations and T's port has been investigated a lot by private I and others. So you've been very critical of I guess you then might agree with Mitchell Bennett and Andrew Rifflin, who are both very disappointed that the Labour Party doesn't seem to be reversing the Tory party policy on freeports given you were against them.

23:17I quickly read those questions. So Mitchell Bennett, you're both pro -eul but the continued positive Labour stance on freeports is incompatible with closer realignment. Do we know enough about these ports? What are your thoughts on them? Andrew Rifflin, do you think the Labour Party adoption of Tory freeports explains their refusal to return to the EU's single market accustomed to? How can they justify freeport adoption given the loss of tax revenue and workers right? So over to you. Well, I haven't changed my view and I think the freeports are a bad thing. The freeports as they were designed by the last government and I haven't heard anything just just Labour are going to be that much different on them.

23:54I think they're a bad thing. I think they do allow organised crime greater access into our economy. I also think that the some of the corruption that's already been in touch to some of them is not being properly investigated and I think that we're coming up to the budget. If we're talking about taxation across the country, it should be something that we all understand that we are as it were sharing. Now I must read you, Rory, I bet you haven't seen this. You know you've been busy traveling in Australia. There was a headline about this on the BBC yesterday or today. No new freeports in budget after quotes comms cock up.