449. Starmer Loses Control: Will Andy Burnham Challenge the PM?

26:32He should run a man with his brother by the way I absolutely support that was controlling the board right I just think that the political strategy around this, to my mind, has not been effective. Because it sounds too much like reform. And also the other thing we sometimes hear is that you guys would have done it by sounding tough on a side of an immigration, but balancing it with progressive language to make sure that you reassured Labour MPs who care about equality and diversity that you're on their side and you're making progress for them. So one story is that what's missing in the chemistry is that Stammer is hitting the kind of right wing talking points, but he's not good enough about articulating the progressive message.

27:09And that is about the point I made the whole time, which is about having this big narrative for the country and the tribe of country which we're trying to create. Okay, so let's now get back into this question party discipline, which is really beginning to shock me. For listeners who aren't right in the political swim, it's a very, very strange moment when openly, back then, chimpes, this soon until the government start talking in the way that Richard Bergen or Ruth Cadbury have been out on the today program talking and the number of people now producing off the record briefing the developing view that if things go badly in the may elections with Wales, Scotland, local councils, Istanbul will go then the increasing conventional wisdom that he can't lead the party into the next election.

27:57This is very, very weird. I mean if I think back to my time in office, the response of the whips and the Prime Minister for a year in to Cameron's government senior back benchers were going out on the today program, say, well, you know, I will have to see how he's doing when he comes to May. It's kind of unimaginable. In fact, I remember the first people breaking cover and they were well out on the far Brexit wing of the party about to defect through reform ERG types and they were totally shunned. Everybody turned against them, you know, in the tea rooms, you know, this person's unbelievably disloyal.

28:32What a wanker, how dare they do this. And that was a long way into these governments. And the thing we kept hearing again and again, and I guess you would have reinforced this, is the way that governments lose, is when the public starts seeing, infighting the public hates and fighting at hate's dissension. So we would have had monthly meetings meetings with the Prime Minister, with the Chief Whips. And often with people at Linton Crossby who was then doing that, the election thing, just hammering home anybody who steps out and who dares to appear on the today program saying the Prime Minister.

29:03This is where the Goodwill bank comes in and the reputational bank comes in. I said last week that if a government is kind of doing well, then MPs who might not like some the things that are being done, they'll go along with it. If the government is thought not to be doing well, even by its own judgment. Now, there's lots of things the government pointed to say that they're doing well. There's £5 billion a day with Google. Somebody's worked very, very hard on that and so forth. And so there's a lot of things. And was a surprise because I remember hearing Ed Bull saying last week, he didn't think any tech deals would be in place and he knows.

29:37I mean, his wife was the home section, it's just becoming a foreign section, even surprise 10 did it got done? Yeah, so it's a you know and and likewise the stuff in English to the health services improving and there's lots of things they can point to but they cannot get away from the fact that as you go around the country and you talk to people and they know this because they talk to lots of people the general sense is not a positive one right now now to turn that around is going to be very very hard and I think that the point you're making there I think there's another point here that's worth making which is about the speed now the speed with which news moves, the kind of sense of every day, something big and bad happens, and we don't rest on it.

30:17So it's just on to the next disaster. And that's a very difficult landscape in which to operate. Trump operates in it by flooding the zone with shit to co -extee ban. And Johnson did it too. I mean, there were times with both Boris Johnson and Trump where actually you feel it advantages the incumbent that because there's so much of this stuff that the public can barely remember the scandal of last week. So it can cut both ways. It can create for Stama a sense of oh my goodness, this is total chaos. Or it could create the sense of public after a couple of years of this. Oh my god, I can't even remember.

30:51He was this guy, Nandal's son, why there was something about Angela Rainer and I don't know when somebody resided. That's kind of what I was, but that's not a strategy. I hope that people forget all this stuff is not a strategy where he is now. He's obviously not where he wanted to be when he started out. And there has to be a new mention on the emergency episode we did the other day, that after the reshoffle, the whips office, you mentioned the whips office, the whips office now is seen very much as a starma kind of operation. You mentioned Morgom, Swini's wife is now a whip free stomp, she's an MP up in Scotland.

31:25And the thing is again, that I think only works if there is that sense of reputation and goodwill out there. So I, one of the whereas I have out of that approach is if you think about the criticisms that are leveled at number 10 and this comes from we would call control freaks the whole time. But what you get from MPs is actually this really is a sense of you're either withers or against us. Well, the natural sort of conclusion of that is that once people find reasons to be against, they might stay there. So like, wasn't remotely surprised to hear Richard Bergen, but I wonder whether part of the consequence of the expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn.

32:08Was there a way back then of actually keeping you in? Which you did. I mean, this is something, unfortunately, that all the labour and piece I talked to keep referring back to your time in office and saying, well, you know, they didn't sack Jeremy Corbyn. They have a solution. Mr Morgan's approach was very much for reasons I completely understand, because about the damage and the hard left has done to the low party through history, was basically the labour party almost came in existential cropper with Jeremy Corbyn, even though he had strengths and he brought young people into the party and so forth.

32:39Therefore, that is the fight we now have to engage in and that is a fight to the death that we have to win. That's the kind of thinking. Now, once you're into government, the fights are different and the point I would say about our politics at the moment, and listen, don't get me wrong, this is a really hard landscape in which to battle. So we've grown up, you and I have kind of grown up in a country and in a politics where basically you've got labors the main party on the left and the Tories are the main party on the right. You've now got on the left the Labour Party fighting for the same support with the Greens, now with Corbin, in Wales with Clyde, in Scotland with the SMP and on the right, and the Liberal Democrat, sorry, sorry, yes, you're absolutely right, Royal, please Ed Davie, note, it was Royal who got the little devil's in this time.

33:27And then on the right, this battle between reform and the Tories, which right now the momentum seems to be with reform against the Tories, not least with this Danny Krueger defection. Let's just, we talk a little bit about them. Yes, well, let's do that. Let's take a break. And then I'd love us after the break to come back to talk about reform and maybe also to talk about the Tommy Robinson demonstrations, what's going on on the right in Britain. If that's okay, let's take a quick break and come back.

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36:13Welcome back to the Reciprojects, me, Aristocamal. And with me, Rory Stewart, now, Alistair, the other thing that's been very central in the news in Britain over the last week has been this big demonstration in Trafalgar Square, where Tommy Robinson managed to get 130 ,000 people and there's some very dramatic images of people all over Nelson's column and the lions and crowds up and down White hall. I think firstly it's a lot of people and it's a lot of people behind somebody who is considered so right -wing that Nigel Farage is distancing himself from it. He stood up there with Eric Zemour, who we've talked about, who's this far -right French politician who really is well beyond the French.

36:58Again, he's sort of beyond Le Pen and he was talking about the great replacement by Muslims that were being colonized by our former colonies. And then in the center of it all, this Elon Musk is projecting on an enormous screen, into the out of the square. He's clearly increasingly closely to Tommy Robinson, and he produced this extraordinary statement to this crowd of right wing, predominantly male, predominantly white British working class people, whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you, fight back or die. And what was your sense of Well, I found that part of it absolutely repellent.

37:35And of course, Musk is a classic example of one of these super wealthy people who now has the platform, X, and has the politics to be very well placed to help some delight Tommy Robinson exploit what Tommy helped Robinson is trying to achieve. And from, I think they've actually got different objectives. I think Musk's objective is to have chaos wherever it can be, to weaken democratic government, so that he can absolutely be above any kind of democratic or political control. And that's part of what he's about. The event itself was, there's clearly a lot of money behind Robinson. And I shared with you a piece that I think was from the observer about this very, very wealthy American -di -Shillman who has partly been a funder of Robinson.

38:29They're tied in real name Stephen and the Axley Land industry remind people, never trust somebody who changes their name unless they're spies. Even that maybe don't trust them. Well, he depends who they're working for or he. I once just thought that I once had a relationship with this guy who worked for one of the better -throwed security services of the world and he kept getting his business cards bottled up he had about 11 different business cards in his wallet. Anyway, which is just quick thing, two quick things that we'll go about to more serious thing. One thing is again I'm overly plugging leading because I'm so proud of it but one of the things that Cyrilic's younger points out for me ahead of MI6 is how much that world has changed.

39:13How technology and iris scanning and new digital records has completely changed that world that there is no longer a world of traveling under full identities. All those things that you read about in the standard spine novel of somebody reaching in and having seven passports and it doesn't work, right? If I travel that, if some of you are still going on. If I try to travel now anywhere in the world with another passport that I land at their immigration and they do their iris scanning and their facial recognition, suddenly alarms, I'm arrested, right? So that's a big old change. The other thing.

39:48Spines not what are used to be the only make spine great again. I said the other thing about this thing about names Is very interesting because you have to train very very hard To remember what your new name is and one of the ways famous see and I think people remember this from war films that People get caught Traditionally was with their signatures particularly when you had to sign credit cards or when you sign when you book into a hotel Because it's very difficult if you've signed your name 7 ,000 times remembering that today, you know, you're called Bob Wentworth instead of Alistair Campbell.

40:21Well, back to Stephen Yaxley -Lennon, who now signs his name as Tommy Robinson. Or Duffy. And who knows? And there was also, there was a, you mentioned Zemor, there was a very far -right Dutch guy there who was, was up there and said, said, we're all Tommy Robinson now. There was a New Zealand guy there, a far -right guy who basically said that burgers should be banned in the UK, mosques should all be shut down. So this was really heavily extreme stuff. Just on the on the sensitive, because I think the other thing that's going on, when we did the People's Vote March is we had about a million. So that's a perspective.

40:58The biggest march against us in when Tony Blair's Prime Minister, the two that spring to mind, Mom is the Iraq War and the other was the countryside alliance. If you're well organized, particularly in the modern age with social media and so forth. You know, it's not that hard to get big crowds together. However, I think people were genuinely taken about that on a Saturday afternoon when there are five huge football darbys going on in London and that over 100 ,000 people turned out for that. Now, what we've seen since is a lot of commentary on the crowd. Inevitably, a lot of media focus on the violence, which was pretty horrible.

41:35There was a lot of policemen being attacked. Police officers being attacked. Quite a few in the hospital. Not that many arrests. I imagine that was a police strategy. Let's just get through the day. And then lots of journalists sort of going around saying, oh, well, they all had this to say in that to say they weren't all Tommy Robinson fans. They weren't all Nigel Farage fans. They just sort of feel that the country's being lost. I think to turn out to a march rally that you know is being headed by a many times convicted far right thug. You're making a statement, I think, just by being there.

42:13So I don't think we should forget that. However, that there are issues that are driving people to feel exasperated about the state of the country. That is also true. In terms of journalists and how we understand these issues, so Peter can't have this phrase, you know, this is a claxon call to wake up and focus on what that crowd was saying. Trevor Phillips in the Times said this was a crowd, an Ewok -Tranden viewing them, which was about three things, stopping immigration, defending free speech, and reviving Christianity. And I just felt reading this, come on Trevor, let's go a level deeper and ask, what do you mean?

42:55What do you mean by revive in Christianity. It's not a hundred thousand theologians on the street. I'd love to know how many of them went to church on the Sunday. Yeah, exactly. I'll be with that many. So what is happening when journalists are doing this? Is Trevor prepared to go the next line and say, okay, you've said this is a crowd that's demonstrating to revive Christianity? What do we really mean here? And I guess what we mean is we don't like Muslims. It's not that these are religious believers. Correct. Correct. And I think we're going back to this guy, this billionaire American Robert Schelman, who funds a lot of this stuff and funds it around the world, he funded Charlie Kirk, he funded at one point Katie Hopkins, who also spoke, he funds Laura Loomer.

43:34Kat Candace Owens. And until she came out and said Israel was committing a genocide. Because there's a very, very strong connection and this is a great article actually. I thought from the observer by John Simpson, great piece of reporting. But what he points out is that there is this connection between Robert Schelman, something called the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Pro -Israel, think tank type thing. Exactly. And Horowitz is not dead, I think. And their story is that what they're fighting against, and this becomes more and more relevant when we talk about Charlie Kirk and the fight back around Charlie Kirk, they are fighting radical left and Islamists.

44:08And of course, that has a big application, Israel Gaza, where the radical left and the Islamists are considered to be the people who are making anti -Semitic criticisms of Israel. but it also really spills into this story about the UK, spoke Y, double O, K, Y, which is now a big meme, which is in the vision of people on the West Coast taken over by Islamist, where you're sent to jail if you're a social real or, you know, I had a friend over from Singapore yesterday who was saying to me, well, my friends said, do be careful when you're in London because all the social media stuff is giving this impression.

44:42It's kind of literally you can't step out of your door without being rugged on my head. So all of this stuff is driven a lot of it, as you say, by international funding. Yeah. If you look at some of the people in the Trump circle, so this guy's showman according to John Simpson's piece, this is not Jim's, John Simpson's, the BBC, by the way, this John Simpson, the observer, Laura Luma, there's another one, well she's now this kind of, you know, Trump whisperer inside the maddie crowd. Headed builders and the Netherlands, all of them. The way he's legal fees. Middle East Forum again, largely focused on Israel, paid for Tommy Robinson's stage outside the so what is it that's making a fundamentally pro -Israel movement, fun Tommy Robinson stage outside the Albany?

45:23Yeah, and then you can also, some of the, there's a lot of sort of football style chanting going on, on the march, a lot of it back here, Stama, but also quite a lot of it about Israel Parnestine. Can I ask you about the football stuff? So I had a friend who was watching this and he said basically it reminded him of 1980s football matches and that it felt like it was fun for a lot of people. People having great day out, a lot of them were drunk, a lot of them were shouting stuff that they felt they're not allowed to shout in the football stands anymore and they were having fun shouting their stuff.

45:55The way he described it, it almost sounded like a pride march, not in this case a gay pride march, but a kind of pride march for guys. Many of them probably not from very diverse mixed communities, many of them actually pyrodoxically from quite white communities coming into a demonstrator against much country. Did it have a feeling for you of a sort of 1980s football match? I think if you saw the stuff with the police, it was absolutely classic. You're trying to get to the other side, your opponents, this is the anti -fascist demonstration that was in Y -O, and the police are stopping you. And therefore the police become your enemy, and you have a far -reaching.

46:31And the other side tradition was the other football team support the police. Yeah, and the police's job is to try and keep you apart. And that still goes on. I also think the other thing, A lot of the old -style football hooligans say that football has become much more sanitised, you can't get into a ruckus as he used to be able to, and the other thing which feeds into this sense of inequality in the world. We mentioned Clive Lewis last week, a Labour MP who wrote a very thoughtful piece about Andrew Rainer's resignation. He had another one, I don't know if you saw he wrote a piece on the social media this week where he said that a friend of his that he went to school with who'd been on the march was telling him, why?

47:08And a lot, I think you mentioned football that football has now, again, four billionaires played by millionaires. And so there's that sense of, you know, we've lost football. Now I think it's nonsense and it's overstated. You can still enjoy football, although not when Liverpool get a penalty against you in the 94th minute Royal. That was pretty incredible. Not enjoyable. Well, I've got to say by the way, this, going into, I went to Burnley on Sunday and going through those, I got picked up at Preston with a friend and was driving through flags everywhere, flags everywhere. And driving into Burnley, there was a union flag on half mast on every single lamp post going down in the entire...

47:48And apparently half mast because they can't climb to the top of the mast, it's not designed as a half mast thing. Oh, I thought it was half mast as in we've lost our country. This is amazing, amazing conversation's going on about. I mean, as you say, it's a very interesting combination of spontaneous and non -spontaneous article by Will Davis, and I actually spoke to him at some length yesterday, is an amazing analyst of TikTok and particularly now teach the Goldsmith and Rodegrad article in the LRB. But he made a particular project of focusing on pro -Ferage, right wing, TikTok, media and Britain.

48:24And what he found is firstly TikTok, as you know, is quite unlike other media, because people don't use it, it's much more about video content creation, something like 80 % of people who like TikTok posts have created five or more videos themselves compared to 20 % on other media. So it's very easy to create video and people like it. So what you see if you end up getting yourself into these algorithms, it's very easy to get into these algorithms, is a sense of somebody sitting in their car looking at their phone, saying, why is this country such an effing jick? And then somebody else walking through a wood, have you had enough?

49:01And someone else standing with their gregs coffee saying, guess how much I paid for this coffee? And someone else saying, why are we not in civil war? And it's a sense of despair, a sense of everything's too late that Britain's gone to, that totally ruined, there's nothing to be done, cost of living's out of control, everything's a scam. And how come the government keeps saying there's no money when they're wasting all this money on asylum hotels and they're spending all this money on Ukraine. And this matters, and I do, this is quite a long way round, but this feeds the Tommy Robinson thing because it feeds this sense that you then get Tommy Robinson saying a civil war is coming, or Robert Genrex saying Britain is like a tinder box, or Nigel Farage saying if you want to know how bad Britain is have a look at your phone.

49:48And I'm intrigued by how social media is generating this image, both for the visitor from Singapore, for the person going on the demonstration. But it's all wrapped up, isn't it? Because the same people, and even though Trump is very nice to and about Kierstama, I mean, this is a guy who ever since he became president first time round, has spread messages about crime in London and the city can that is all feeds into the same thing. And I think what you've got to be very careful here is understanding that your phone is not the real world. I mean, I'm very conscious of this. So that, you know, what does the algorithm send me the whole time?

50:24Lots of politics, lots of right -wing stuff, lots of left -wing stuff, lots of football. So we're all being fed this stuff, must knows that, must controls that. The thing that really leapt out at me from that article and the observer was the Israel stuff. And by the way, we should say to listeners we'll talk about what's happening today, Tuesday, in Gaza. We'll talk about that in question time. Of course, it's pretty horrific. But so I think what we're seeing here is the consequence playing out of stuff that has been developing technologically, politically, socially, economically over the last sort of couple of decades.

51:01And what you've got is the political process and the political class that is still moving at the old pace, Trump is an exception. And the news and the endless kind of sense of being overwhelmed by bad stuff in the world is moving very, very quickly and leading to this people being able to see it in what is a great country. And this was the irony of the March, you night the kingdom, why can't you just be proud of your country? Whilst all the time say how terrible everything is. There's a massive irony at the art of it, but they're proud of the police while attacking them. Absolutely. Yeah. Just on your point about social media, because it is politics is more and more about this.

51:40One problem that people like World Davis who study the stuff have is that even they can't really understand how these algorithms work because TikTok won't release the nuts and bolts of it. But what they see is pretty disturbing. So an experiment was just done recently in Germany where people registered five new TikTok accounts and they followed each one of the major political parties. and they watched five videos from those political parties and then just step back and let the four -you feed generate content from 75 % of the content they saw came from the AFD the far -right German party despite the fact that four of them weren't supposed to be registering to support other parties We still don't know why is it that AFD Supporters generate more content Share more content like more content or is the algorithm driving people towards far -right content.

52:28But whatever the cause of it is, there's no doubt that the far -right in that case is getting far more visibility than anyone else on social media. Well, I think it's both of those things. It's the content and the algorithm. This is not just UK. I'm reading this book. I think even you can work out that. Yeah, yeah, it's a let's such a. The last chance and the new chancellor and the fight for democracy. And there's a picture of Mertz and Trump and Vital, the leader of the FD. And this is a guy, Robin Liesander, who's a really well -known kind of political journalist and thinker. So this is not just the UK.

53:00Now, can I do a transition from this to Danny Krueger, which is just to finish off this episode? So Danny Krueger is a conservative MP who has now defected to reform, saying Farage is the best hope, the last hope of conservatism. Now, I'm really intrigued by this. I've known Danny Krueger, he was at school with me, so I've known him. He's a bloody old etonian. And his art, political landscape. And known since he was 13, and he's a really interesting figure. A little bit like Jacob Riesmog, because he's very, very courteous, very polite, makes a great deal of the fact that he's very serious about religion.

53:41He spent years volunteering and supporting prison's charities. And he gets a very easy ride actually from left -wing journalists. I was very shocked. Because he wasn't for the caricature. Yeah, I was very struck, for example, that journalists who would have a real go at people like you and me kind of centrist are extremely deferential towards him because he's considered to be sort of authentic, not hypocritical, and they get very impressed by the fact that a bit like Jacob Riesmoghe can use long words, he quotes Roger Scruchen and Alistair Macintyre and talks about Greek gods and things. So you can see these, actually, surprisingly, sort of positive profiles and being written, and they seem to sort of great intellectual leader.

54:23I, though, have always been very aware that along with all these positive qualities, and this is true of Jacob Riesmog too, there is something very, very disturbing for me, which is firstly the right -wing views, and secondly, the way that those right -wing views then drag them away from stuff which which if you say it quickly, I sort of sympathize with, you know, tradition, conservatism, the church, the countryside. Quite quickly becomes owned by the way I'm going to be Boris Johnson's, you know, Parliamentary Secretary. I'm going to support Nigel Farage, which is the journey that Kruger has been on.

54:58And I saw it first myself with him at 2019. When I was running for the leadership, we were having these conversations about community, society, communitarianism. And the next thing I know, he's picking up the phone to me, saying, I'm very sorry, Rory, but because you have voted against Boris Johnson's hard Brexit deal, we are expelling you from the party, stripping away, but we're very sorry about it, because we thought she would be a great intellectual leader of the community. So, Honour me, you were fired by Danny Krueger. Pretty much, yeah. Don't Boris Johnson do not call me. It was Danny Krueger.

55:27Danny Krueger. And I... Fire, do you? I mean, it's a pretty humane issue. I think we did do. Do you block our party? This is... This is so low -red. It's so low -red. And when I tried to talk to him, I mean, I'm maybe I'm making too much of this, but when I tried to talk to him about what he was saying, what he's essentially saying was that he was going to work to turn the local party against me. He'd been calling my party chairman in Penra from the border to tell him and my party chairman to be fair very bravely stood up for me and said, bog off. You know, we like Roriss Jutt was sticking with him, at which point some very complicated shenanigans went on to try to find other people in my local committee to dislike me.

56:04And that was run by Danny Krueger. So my sense was, Danny, what happened to all this sort of noble, high -minded friendship, loyalty, belief? Now you are conspiring with Boris Johnson in a pretty peculiar way to do all this. And that was already a journey, wasn't it? Because he started out as a sort of Cameroon, didn't he? Started out as Cameron's speech, right? Yeah. Then he goes to, what was he under Theresa May? Well, he wasn't really going anywhere, didn't he? I was in a joint in his BPS. Yes, and then they become very close to Johnson. And again, I couldn't understand it because how do you, I just again, the question with a Christian right and Trump, how on earth do you make this whole deal out of honor, rectitude, social morality and all this stuff?

56:47And get behind Boris Johnson and say, he's the guy that's going to lead the country and churning things around. And now behind for us. So I'll finish it just by saying, this is the thing that is so disturbing and troubling about the right. And I'm afraid it's true of political commentators too. You know, Douglas Murray would be a big example. sometimes I worry about this with David Goodhart, but they get on a journey where they begin by saying perfectly reasonable things which are wrong with Britain and the modern society and end up being pulled into a whole universe of stuff which is anti -democratic.

57:20You know, Farage, let's be honest, Farage has now announced that he is going to deport 600 ,000 people out of the United Kingdom in complete contravention of UK law, international law, any kind of treaty, and Danny Krueger's system dusted. And this Christianity thing is fascinating because I mean I don't know whether Danny Krueger is one of those people who went to church on Sunday and of course Christianity isn't just defined by going to church. Somebody's saying I don't know who this guy is, he's called Rain Wilson, I think he's American, he's very interesting post. The metamorphosis of Jesus Christ from a humble servant of the abject poor to a symbol that stands for gun rights, prosperity through theology, anti -science, limited government that neglects the destitute, and fierce nationalism is truly the strangest transformation in human history.

58:08And of course we've seen this on the back of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which is horrible on so many levels, but the way that it's now been weaponized so that unless you're saying it is absolutely right that we bow down before everything Charlie Kirk ever said and did and we lower the flags then somehow you're just a really really bad person and you know Trump was asked yesterday about the Democrat politician who was who was shot and why weren't the flags lower for her he didn't know what the person was talking about he talked about it gave him the name and he said oh the governor never massed for that it's like all left is bad, all right is good, all right is Christian, all left is somehow.

58:57We should return to this, and maybe finish with this, but Stephen Miller, who is a real dark art specialist, his real idiot log, his deputy chief staffer policy, has now been gone on what used to be Charlie Kirk's podcast and said, this is the moment where we will unleash against this far left terrorist conspiracy in the United States and they better be ready. We're going to deploy the entire organs of the state to go after these people. Now, why have we got a return to this? What is this? What is this far left terrorist conspiracy? We don't know very much about him yet. He might well be an extremely disturbed young man on the killer.

59:39Yeah, the killer. The killer might well be an extremely disturbed young man who's been on far right websites before he went to the far left might have been the kind of person who in another context could have done school shootings and who's now been his ego and his brain has got involved in making this sort of public political assassination. But the idea that that means that suddenly the entire forces of the state are going to be unleashed on this completely undefined vague far left terrorist conspiracy. What does that mean? When someone goes to the United States and gets arrested at the Apple is that part of going off the terrorist conspiracy when you shut down demonstrations to university is that also about protecting the Charlie Cooks the future when you go off the Democratic Party politicians is that when you shut down newspapers because once you have a completely ill -defined conspiracy and a moment like that that is often where the fascists take all their strength that's what the 1930s was all about you find them out the Reichstag's being burnt down now we have to go off the huge conspiracy that's behind the burning of the Reichstag.

1:00:40And if you saw Stephen Miller the other day on the back of the Charlie Co. For example, saying his last message to me was we've got to take on these evil forces of the left. Well, yeah, was it really? And then you have Trump yesterday saying he's soon New York Times because they were against him in the election. You have him making increasingly authoritarian statements. You have somebody, a group of people the other day, getting up a restaurant, start shouting at Trump, They say free DC free Palestine Trump is the Nazi of our to Hitler of our time He says yesterday they should be in jail. I'm talking to Pampondi about it So it's shutting down any force of criticism of course What's so difficult to come back to the main the start of the podcast for Kierstama right now?

1:01:22I mean, there's going to be a demonstration tomorrow Wednesday I think it is because a lot of bridges people feel deeply uneasy at the fact that Trump is here and the King is being wheeled out show him how seriously we take him, etc. Now on the one hand we have to do that, but on the other hand it doesn't mean that he's not deeply unpopular. Final thing, which we're putting the UNU's letter, very interesting piece in positive news. We're always getting told we don't know, we're going to positive news, but it was an interview with a guy who was in the far right for a couple of decades, a combat 18, and who's now come out and is sort of going around the place, trying to sort of de -radicalize.

1:01:58But you know, so there is, it is possible to get into the rabbit whole this is a guy's managed to get out. Very, very final point for me then also the Americanization of British politics. Somebody pointed out to me that actually half my friends at the BBC haven't even heard of Charlie Kirk last week. And suddenly now he's absolutely the center of the news, everybody's carrying big sides. It's true that many people under 30 knew about Charlie Kirk because they didn't count on my TikTok, but it is really, really interesting how pretty well informed people. Suddenly you have to talk as though they've always known who Charlie Kirk was one of fact half my friends at BBC were calling me up saying, do you tell me who he is, had you ever heard of him?

1:02:34So question time tomorrow, we're going to talk about Garza, about Nepal, we've got time, we'll talk about Russia, Poland, we're also going to come back as we said we would to this subject of rape because this because freshers week at universities and we've had a lot of questions about it. Well, thank you, Honour Set, look forward to speaking to you, person.