Widespread bafflement and anger

0:00Well, we're going to see Dato has been dealing with us on Greenland. We need Greenland for national security very badly. The use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong. It is not the right way to resolve differences within an alliance. And I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. I mean, at least from an American perspective, it's embarrassing. So what should Europe be doing? They've been plagued. This guy is playing folks for fools. And it's embarrassing. Europeans think this is diplomacy and this will ultimately work. Oh, this is diplomacy with Donald Trump?

0:42He's a T-Rex. You mate with him or he devours you. One or the other. Welcome to The State of It, the weekly political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. I'm Caroline Wheeler. I'm the political editor of The Sunday Times. I'm Gabriel Pogrand, Whitehall editor at The Sunday Times. And I'm Patrick Maguire, chief political commentator for The Times. And Steve Swinford, the political editor of The Times, is away this week, but he will be back joining us next week. We've already had astonishing news this morning. A truth social post from the president of the United States who has criticised the United Kingdom for that Chagos deal.

1:23This is the deal that was done right at the start of the Labour administration to effectively cede sovereignty of Chagas to Mauritius, something which has been very controversial. And the president, who we thought had been on side with this, in fact, he'd said as much, has come out this morning and described it as an act of great stupidity. And of course, we're going to talk about Greenland. And another big news story which is breaking today, there's so many of them, is the decision by the UK government today to give its approval to that mega embassy for China, whether it's a national security threat or a strategically brilliant act of diplomacy on behalf of the United Kingdom, as we sidle up to the Chinese ahead of an expected trade mission by the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, potentially as early as next week.

2:13And of course, we're going to talk about that big defection last week, Robert Jenrick, after being sacked by the Conservative Party, joining Nigel Farage's ranks. Will there be others who are going to follow him? But we're going to start with you, Gabriel, actually, and a scoop that you have about what's been going on behind the scenes with that decision when the government decided to move and make that deal with Chagos last year. Thanks, Kyren. I mean, I suppose the essence of the politics of this true social post by Trump is the conflict between the Trump worldview and the multilateralism and the rules-based order personified by Keir Starmer.

2:56And Patrick and I have for some time been trying to tease out the genesis of this Chagos Islands deal, not least because the government has so often cited national security in attempting to defend it, but struggled to actually outline in terms what that means and why it is that the United States has been so ambivalent about it. You know, China sceptics have always been pretty squeamish about this because of the notion of ceding power to the government of Mauritius, which is a big China ally. So we actually heard this morning from a source who was involved in some of these discussions. And I suppose there were two details that are quite striking.

3:36One was that the political team in Downing Street heard about the Chagos deal itself last October in terms so improbable. It reveals something about the nature of power within Downing Street. I might allow Patrick to lay out what happened there and then tell you what happened next. Yeah, I think it's a vignette that tells you a lot or goes some way to answering and indeed posing the questions that hang over this entire government. You know, who's making the decisions? Who's giving the advice? Why does this government and this prime minister often take decisions that sit so uneasily or jar with what we used to understand the government stated political preferences to be?

4:26And as you say, Gabriel, the autumn of 2024, you had Keir Starmer's political team sat in their office in number 10. And as is always the case in Westminster, you're never in an office in Westminster without Sky News being on mute in the corner. And watching the ticker, although in Reform's office, of course, it'd be GB News. But in number 10, it was Sky News. And they look up from their desks and see a breaking news flash. And on the ticker at the bottom of the screen, it says the UK has agreed a deal with Mauritius to hand back the Chagos Islands to cede the British Indian Ocean territory. And they were completely baffled.

5:07It was the first they'd heard of a deal being imminent or being struck. And I think there was just widespread, well, I don't think that. We've been told by several people who were in that room and were in subsequent meetings about it, there was just widespread bafflement and anger in some cases. You know, why are we doing this? And that was a question they couldn't get a straight answer to when they spoke to the man, who then was a sort of diplomatic gun to hire for Keir Starmer, his special envoy in the Chagas Islands, Jonathan Powell, who is now, of course, his national security advisor and advisor on foreign affairs.

5:45But they went to see him, didn't they? And even he couldn't really explain what was going on. That's right. So I think the most sort of striking moment of the discussion characterised to us was when the political team went to see Powell. He had been Tony Blair's chief of staff once upon a time, had had this sort of colourful career as a sort of roving peace negotiator, conflict resolution expert. He is now Starmer's national security aide, but as Patrick outlined at the time, he was Starmer's point person on this negotiation. People often say that, you know, where Morgan McSweeney predominates on domestic matters, Powell is Starmer's chief of staff for all foreign affairs.

6:23And in this instance, a number of people in the political team were saying, well, how do we justify this? How do we explain this? What was the genesis of it? and apparently in this meeting in a kind of way which strained credulity and uh and only antagonized those already pretty doubtful about the deal power just kept citing national security that i can't go into that because of national security or the reason for doing this is national security and the riposte from one person was as follows well it's not going to be good for national security if reform wins the next election now i think that is such a revealing comment but it shows a couple of things the first is that at that time reform were not nearly as dominant in the polls as they are now they hadn't enjoyed that stretch of week after week month after month leads on Labour and the Tories but it showed at that time that McSweeney and a number of his lieutenants in the political team were mindful of what one of the big fault lines was going to be between Starmer and his traditional hinterland the Jonathan Powells the new Labour alumni the people that felt that there was room for one last roll of the dice one last heave for the multilateralist the people who are given to a worldview based on institutions and rules and then on the other hand people who they were deemed the arsonists that people who like Nigel Farage are now saying Britain's broken and so too with it the worldviews and orthodoxies paradigms that used to be the prison through which britain viewed and interacted with the world and i should say that um you know starmer himself as evinced by his abiding faith in the likes of richard hermer he's not fully retreated from the former um but but he is mindful that he has to articulate it possibly update it for the world as it exists in the year 20 yeah it already looks pretty quaint to read number 10 putting out statements saying you know we had to give this away because of a court order you know that is not the sort of geopolitical world in which we're living now now of course Keir Starmer and Richard Hermann and Jonathan Powell are the last people who would say let's ignore a UN ruling etc etc although my understanding is the previous government seemed quite happy to do so I mean well yeah indeed as I understand it you know when David Cameron was the Foreign Secretary.

8:43You know, once again, these proposals were put to him by civil servants. He was absolutely furious. And as it was put to me, the only person that seemed to think that this was a good idea in Downing Street at the time was Jonathan Powell. But of course, it's difficult to know at this stage what the motivations are of Donald Trump at this particular juncture, Because as we've alluded to, he did sort of stand by and didn't kind of slap down the deal when it was done and eventually sort of said that he thought it would be OK. And, you know, he thought it would be all right if it went ahead, which I think number 10 had been quite nervous about.

9:18But in the kind of in the moment that we are now where Donald Trump seems to be ratcheting up pressure all over the place to seemingly achieve two twin goals. Number one, obtaining Greenland and number two, getting all of the countries in the world to put a billion pounds towards the reconstruction of Gaza so they can sit on his peace board. It does seem like he's throwing absolutely everything out of the window. And this was one of those grenades that he could throw at the UK government to show that we're not immune from his ire and from his desires. But I think, you know, we should talk about Greenland in more detail.

9:52I think we should start with what one of our colleagues said this morning, which was Jerry Baker, about the chances of Trump invading Greenland by force. I'm here in Davos right now. Officials I've spoken to, both in European officials and American officials, do seem to be of the view that some kind of a deal is going to be done here. Yeah, the US is not going to invade Greenland. I'm reliably informed by contact by sources in the United States that if he did invade Greenland, there would be a mass resignation by senior members of the US military apart from anything else. And our colleague, Gerry Baker, is going to be co-hosting our sister podcast, The State of It, USA, with Katie Balls, which is launched next Wednesday.

10:32Well, that's extraordinary to hear that, you know, there is that feeling within the White House that this isn't something that they want to do, given how forcefully I think the president has said that it is his ambition to take Greenland by whatever means is necessary, in effect. And it's now really accelerating that decision, which we were talking about in the podcast last week, about saying that eventually, if something happens on Greenland, it is going to force not just Sakhir Starmer, but Europe to very much pick sides about where they're going to be and how forcefully they're going to stand up to Donald Trump.

11:06And we did see the Prime Minister, Sakhir Starmer, on Saturday when we first heard about the prospect of those tariffs, saying very clearly that it was a bad idea for Donald Trump to do this. But subsequently, he has addressed that press conference and effectively said that we're going to do nothing, that we're going to stand back and let it play its course. But I think that that tactic is rapidly looking like it won't work. You've already got European leaders, Emmanuel Macron, talking about using the big trade bazooka, my favourite term of the week this week, which is the anti-coercion tool that they can use imposing tariffs on the US, which would have a limited but an impact.

11:48But we are going to have to pick sides, aren't we, Patrick? Well, it is approaching the point where it'll be difficult to sustain the line Keir Starmer spent a long time explaining at number 10 yesterday. I think you're right, which is to say, look, I know there are lots of detractors of my approach, my sort of softly, softly, quiet word in the ear, phone call approach to Donald Trump. But, you know, it gets results and it's the only thing we can do. speaking to two senior people in number 10 last night there was a sense from them that they thought what emmanuel macron was saying was performative you know that yeah you can slag off america or you can shout and scream and holler but ultimately as the text donald trump the sensational text donald trump put on truth social overnight from mark rucher and emmanuel macron which were all sort of djt we love you man you know you're the best president ever you know or maybe disagree on Greenland, but in Macron's case, please come for dinner with me when you're finished at Davos, all that sort of thing.

12:54So they think shouting and screaming and kicking and screaming about what Trump is saying and doing on Greenland is pointless. The problem with what the Prime Minister said yesterday, there is less and less proof of concept for not making a choice working, as you say. And what do I mean by that? Well, Keir Starmer has always justified not being as forthright or critical as certainly lots of the Labour Party would like him to be, and actually large sections of the British public would like him to be, because he's saying it defends the UK's national interests, right? You know, look at the trade deal, look at this, look at that.

13:31But now it's sort of Trump is still making threats towards Greenland. He's still threatening Britain with 10 % tariffs for sending, as you put it before we came on Caroline, one military attache and his dog to Greenland in a show of solidarity with the Danes. And then the next morning, after all of that, he comes out and says, you know, I know you were in the Oval Office and I said the Chagos deal was fine. I know my Secretary of State said it was fine, but actually it's the worst decision ever. And I think it's really stupid. And I'm trying to make an argument about Greenland. So I'm going to throw you under the bus to defend myself as I face international criticism on Greenland.

14:07So with all that in mind, I think Keir Starmer is going to face a lot of pressure to, in inverted commas, make a choice. And the difficult thing for him is he can't do what Zach Polanski, even if he wanted to, he couldn't say what Zach Polanski said yesterday, which was leave NATO, kick the US bases out of Britain, et cetera, et cetera. As he said yesterday, and this is the tragedy of his political situation, he's basically right in that are independent deterrent, leased from the Americans, serviced in America. There are 13 US military bases in the UK. What is he going to do? And his approach to Europe is, you know, again, I used the word quaint before to describe the notion of citing international courts for a geopolitical decision.

14:54I mean, we're all also trapped in an old negotiating mandate for Europe. He doesn't want to go further on Europe, even though there are some people in government who think that's the obvious solution to integrate more closely, harder and faster with Europe on trade and defence. But yeah, I mean, when you set it out like this, you sort of think maybe this is just a decision, a plaster for the next Labour leader to rip off. And when you speak to these senior number 10 people, you know, about 15 times since I first revealed on this podcast in November, I've heard the same argument, you know, do Labour MPs really want, or can they really countenance 12 weeks, six weeks, heard many weeks of leadership candidates having a go at each other over who's more critical of Trump and who's more pro-EU.

15:37Actually, given that the one thing Keir Starmer is good at, foreign affairs, he's now looking shakier on, maybe actually Labour MPs will like the sound of that. And maybe actually, if you are a Labour leadership candidate, you can make the argument that's in the national interest, right? That it's not self-indulgent, saying, look, we have to make a choice to be close to Europe in the name of the national interest and I think that's probably where we're heading. Forgive my foray into cliche but on the topic of the US I mean there's a as Rumsfeld put it a known unknown now which is does the last year and a half actually started before the election possibly two years of diplomatic work from Starmer and co actually count for anything and then if the answer is no then you are in this world of well is there some big strategic pivot that Starmer is going to come under pressure to make to the EU.

16:26And I have spoken to a couple of, spoke to one foreign policy expert in Downing Street recently who was saying that there are a lot of people around Starmer who have always been of the Atlanticist school. The word seriousness is often appelled to Starmer and people say, you know, the only form of true seriousness is to be close to the United States. Well, what if the United States isn't up for that? Part of the problem is that it's really hard to know what the game plan is here because, you know, you can look at what Donald Trump's doing and you can read it in so many different ways. And you've got even people in Westminster now openly speculating, MPs included, about whether, you know, Donald Trump is actually a Russian asset.

17:07And this is all part of, you know, upending the world order in the interests of President Putin, who, of course, has just been invited to use his peace board. And in the middle of all of this, you've got the situation in Ukraine, which, you know, as I understand it, you know, we were expecting Davos to be a moment in the kind of march towards peace. This£800 billion US-backed reconstruction deal had been scheduled to be agreed in Davos this week. And now I understand that there isn't even a bilateral meeting scheduled between the president and President Zelensky, which means that, you know, that's all being caught in the crossfires of what's going on, which, you know, once again, throws into question the entire world order and what the kind of determination and the kind of, you know, main objectives are of this US administration.

17:54Yeah. And look, what's interesting is, speaking to somebody, a senior government person yesterday, they were sketching out there are sort of two camps. There are those who think the answer is show a close relationship with Trump that can work for Britain, be that on trade, you know, look at the tech deal negotiated by Peter Mandelson and Varun Chandra, the prime minister's business advisor. and there are a growing group of people, not necessarily at heart of government, but certainly a few people in the cabinet and within the Labour Party on the back benches, certainly. The New States reported this week that Tom Watson has made it his mission to take Britain back much closer to Europe.

18:33And when Tom Watson names his mission, he usually gets it. So keep your eye on that. But what's striking about both of those two camps, be you a cabinet minister who wants a more assertive line on the customs union or you are let's take the actual example of peter mandelson both of those signs are now saying regardless of what happens we need as peter mandelson wrote in the spectator of the week uh you know hard cash and hard power to enhance britain's national security and to ensure europe pays its own way right? If you think that, if your view is Britain needs to stay close to America, we can still be a reliable ally, we can still have a constructive relationship, you've got to spend more money on defence.

19:19If you think actually this is a new kind of America, it's not a reliable ally, it's becoming a liberal autocracy, then you've got to pay money for your own defence either. So either way, this government quite quickly, regardless of who's leading it, regardless of who's prime minister, regardless of who's a chancellor, is going to have to put their hand in their pocket and start rearming quite quickly. There's no escape, regardless of what your analysis of Donald Trump or what the Labour Party or what Britain should do now is. Well, I think that neatly brings us to the end of part one. And we will be back shortly.

19:52We will be talking to you about the UK government's decision today to approve the new mega embassy for China. And we'll talk about the defection of Robert Jenrick and whether there is going to be a whole litany of other MPs following him out of the door. And we're back and we're going to start by talking about the decision by the UK government this morning to approve the Chinese mega embassy in London. Now, this has been super controversial since it came on the cards. It's already been rejected once. It's now seemingly been given the green light by Steve Reid, the housing secretary this morning.

20:28This is on the backdrop of an enormous amount of coverage of this story. Stories about basement rooms in the embassy that people are concerned could be used for detaining dissidents. Stories about there being fibre optic cables underneath the embassy, which are delivering sensitive financial data to the city of London. And many, many concerns raised about the national security implications of basically having what many people believe will be used as a spy hub in central London for the Chinese government. Now, you've also been reporting a lot on this, Gabriel. What do you make of the decision today?

21:04And how much do you think it's interconnected with the fact that we may well see a visit next week by the Prime Minister to Beijing, his first since he entered Downing Street? I think what it demonstrates is Number 10's belief, Keir Starmer's belief, that he can walk and chew gum at once. What do I mean by that? Well, there's long been this notion that Starmer has to pick between strong alliance with the United States or some kind of rapprochement with China in an attempt to resurrect relations, if not to that 2015 peak of President Xi and Cameron sipping on... Green King IPA. Green King IPA in a pub in the Cotswolds, if not quite to those lofty heights, then at least to a place where we can do business and possibly get some political and trade reward for what some people in Down the Street say is the reality anyway, which is the unignorable fact of China playing a larger and larger role in the world and in the UK and within the UK economy.

22:07and the security services as well we should say um appear also to have arrayed themselves behind the application i suppose this is one of those moments where you know what politicians want and what security services want may diverge essentially the intelligence services appears to be of the view that it's worth china having their embassy so the uk can have its renovated embassy in beijing but no let's make no mistake this is this is a big moment for number 10 in foreign policy terms and also it sets up a pretty big question which is well does this decision actually last with the top casey already lined up on behalf of residents and tower hamlets could it be the case as i think steve swimford has said this morning that one of the world's largest and most imponderable indecipherable bureaucracies that is the people's republic of china ends up being thwarted by an even greater accountability and clarity black hole the british planning system could it be that in due course this ends up coming across but i don't know it sort of feels like this story is is hotel california it's the story that never dies i'll just make one last point as well which is i've been looking for a home for this little revelation and as events moving so fast i'm going to deploy it right here right now which is there is this diplomatic term in note verbale which is a sort of piece of paper that codifies a country's position on a given matter sent to another country's diplomatic mission or embassy and it's long been known that there is this note issued by boris johnson when he was foreign secretary to the chinese giving his in principle backing um for this application and i've been trying to get my mitts on it for a while and uh the foreign office in a freedom of information war keeps saying know and they recently sent me a letter outlining one of the reasons why they didn't wish to divulge this piece of information to me and they said that in the event they did it could be misinterpreted and cause damage to the uk china relationship so we were once upon a time in the era where say under teresa may there was a studied ambivalence on matters of uk china relations we're now in the world where the government is overtly saying we do not wish to upset the people's republic and i think that uh alongside the approval of this embassy today is a big deal and a clear signal of intent from the uk government my understanding is that note of is the thing that certainly the people that might be bringing the judicial review think is could be central to their case in that it could prove that it was a predetermined decision that this embassy was going to get planning permission when the transaction, the actual money changed hands.

24:59And I do think, you know, from speaking to the people that are interested in bringing this planning application, they think that they have a fairly strong case. And in fact, their case, he has said as much based on that, which is maybe why they're not too keen for you to have this note for Barley because it could put a spanner in the works. But look, I think you're absolutely right. And we'll say very clearly, this is about consolidating the Chinese estate because as some rather excellent reporting in the Sunday Times found, there was around 58 other properties owned by the Chinese state in the UK, which had a kind of national security implications.

25:33And they're saying that they now have a framework, and I use the word framework loosely, because that, to me, is not an emphatic commitment, that they're going to bring all of those people and those structures into one place now. And therefore, the security services think that that'd be easier for them to keep control of. Now, I think that's an interesting argument given that we also know that the number of diplomats that have been coming in to the UK from China has increased exponentially every year. There are many questions about those cables that I've mentioned given that the Royal Mint was in fact the trading floor for the likes of Deloitte and BlackRock.

26:11I think it's been extraordinary the way that this government has responded to the question of those cables. In fact, at Number 10 Downing Street telling me repeatedly that they didn't exist, that it was a fabrication of my mind, that I had invented it. And it subsequently transpired because the US in particular have raised concerns about it, that these cables do indeed exist. I'm told that some MPs were told not to worry about those cables because actually, in some cases, those cables themselves were made in China. And I have spoken to cabinet ministers and ministers who think that this is a really unhelpful distraction, given the kind of geopolitical landscape we currently find ourselves in, given, you know, for example, that if the Iranian regime, for example, were to collapse, where is the first place that the Ayatollah might look to go to?

26:59Well, Beijing and of course Moscow would be one of those places. Well, I mean, it's all quite the backdrop for Keir Starmer to finally take off to Beijing in the coming weeks, as you said, Gabriel. So it's given that Keir Starmer wants to tell a story about the cost of living and his global trips. That's an early test of that, especially if you have the Americans expressing reservations because what's Donald Trump talking about when he's talking about Greenland? He's talking about Russia and China having designs on the same territory. So I don't know, maybe when we get out of the studio, Truth Social will have lit up with more invective about the UK's international relations, but it's going to be quite the trip.

27:41Keir Starmer embarks on to Beijing in the coming weeks. First UK Prime Minister to have gone since Theresa May in 2018. Well, we can't end this podcast without talking about that extraordinary defection of Robert Jenrick to the Reform Party, having been sacked by Kimi Baden-Walk after she found that irrefutable evidence of his treacherous negotiations with Reform. We know, subsequent to that, that she has been concerned about whether or not there's going to be others that follow her out of the door. I'm told there was a meeting last night amongst a number of MPs where she was seeking to basically stop them from defecting, to persuade them to stay.

28:19And having interviewed Kimi Bainock on Saturday afternoon, just shortly after she had left the Chinese embassy protests, she was very clear to me that she needed more time, that she wanted those MPs who might be thinking of defecting to hold their nerve, that this was the beginning, not the end of a project. and also to look at what Robert Jennerick done as a test of character and did people really want to be that person that plotted behind the backs of their colleagues and then defected in extraordinary style, doing with it an extraordinary takedown of many of the colleagues in which he had sat with in the shadow cabinet.

28:55But I did get the sense from talking to other people in the party that there was really only one person they were particularly worried about defectually and that was Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary. but whilst they were concerned about her defecting they weren't exactly bothered. It was a sort of, you know, sense was that Suella is already a bit semi-detached from the Conservative Party but it's going to be an extraordinary couple of days. I don't know if any of you have got any insight as to who the Labour or the former Labour MP is likely to be. Lots of people talking about Kate Hoey, some people perhaps suggesting Simon Dunchuk although I think both of those, it would be a slight stretch to suggest were senior Labour figures.

29:32Patrick? Yeah, well, Simon Dunchuk actually stood for reform in the Rochdale by-election. So we already have the test case for whether Simon Dunchuk is a good reform defector in that nobody noticed the first time. He's now so insignificant, Simon Dunchuk, in the eyes of the Westminster bubble that, you know, people are still speculating about whether he's going to do it. Kate Hoey, look, she's been in the Lords for a while. And I think, you know, she's priced in, right? She was appearing with Farage in 2016. I would suspect they are looking at people on the sort of right of the trade union movement.

30:06So people have always been opposed to the influence of the left in the unions. Reform know that sort of, you know, they're making, they're still very preoccupied with how they prove their bona fides to that sort of part of Labour's historic coalitions. So I think it's probably a bloke of a certain age with a strong union pedigree, but who? I have no idea. I did spend Thursday with Nigel Farage last Thursday in Scotland, and I was trying to get him to tell me who it was, and he wasn't giving anything away. But he seemed quite excited about it. And obviously, they postponed the announcement that was due for today, accepting for once reform that they don't control the entirety of the news agenda, though they give it a good go.

30:49But I think, as you say, Caroline, the bigger issue, the more urgent issue, you know, for reform, the Labour defector is a nice to have. What's Nigel Fry's number one mission right now? It is destroying the Conservative Party. It's replacing the Conservative Party as the main party of the right. And it's very easy for the Tories to say after the fact, you know, Robert Jemrick is this, Andrew Rosindel is that. But with every person like that who leaves, others look at it and think, hmm, even if they're only motivated by, as Kemi Baden-Koch put it, personal ambition. Well, that's a huge, as we all know from the politicians we speak to all the time, that's a huge motivator in politics, often the most powerful one of all.

31:30so if kevin bonnock is saying yeah you know the ambitious thing to do is join reform if rosendale is going is gemrick is going you know it's not to say these people are sort of you know giants of conservative history although robert gemrick i think is certainly a very very significant defection he certainly thinks he's a giant of conservative well you know let's see let's see sheriff in town yeah but i don't yes yes as our colleague harry york reported i i i agree i kind of in a way for me um what you just said perhaps reminded me of some comments which john mcdonnell had historically made which uh came back to haunt him or at least with a subject of much debate uh following corbyn's election which was the labor party was a tactic and it was a vehicle and a lot of people in the parliamentary labor party clutched their pearls at that and were dismayed that anybody could contemplate the notion that the labor party was in actual fact a means to a given end wasn't a sort of secular religion yeah and wasn't a secular religion well actually you know in this instance if people on the front bench or in the shadow cabinet no longer feel that it is the best vehicle for the realization of small z conservative principles then of course that's not about that's not a good thing for kemi badenock but it seems to me that what last week represented was possibly a tactical victory for kemi badenock but a massive strategic victory for for reform is that right but it just seems like she essentially she responded fleet-footedly very elegantly to the defection um she preempted it she sacked him she you know shored up her credentials as being bold and dynamic but in the end as you say people looking at reform and they think that it it not the tories is the best vehicle for the center for the center right yeah the curious thing about this story is that literally everybody you speak to about it is delighted right Kemi Badenock and her loyalists think, I've done my spring cleaning, I've kicked Robert Jemmerick out, and I think it was a good day for Kemi Badenock, but is it good for the future of the Conservative Party?

33:30Where I landed, having quite literally landed at a South London airport with Nigel Farage on Thursday, having watched the whole thing unfold, I came to the conclusion that all it had done was accelerate a conversation that was probably going to happen in May anyway, not just about Robert Jemmerich, but within the right. Who is the main party of the right? Who stands the best chance of getting rid of the Labour Party? Who's the dominant partner? Are Tories going to go as supplicants to reform or are they going to reach some sort of accommodation or are they going of their own accord? It's massively sped that conversation up.

34:11I think in the course of us recording this podcast, a member of the Tory shadow cabinet in Wales has been kicked out by their party leader for having these same conversations with reform. There's a drip, drip, drip of this happening. That's not to say the Tories can't turn that to their advantage in some respects, but I think this is accelerating a conversation that was maybe going to happen until May and maybe Kemi Baden-up would have had more time to recover. That's what I think. I know lots of smart Tories I know disagree with me. What's interesting though is you speak to people in number 10 about this and they are really chipper.

34:46They say this is great for us. This means we can easily prosecute an argument that reform are just the Tory party 2.0. But in the medium term, I think I'm very bullish on what this means for reforms place on the right relative to the Conservative Party. I think there's going to be more people that are going to look at the map and think, well, am I going to be an MP at the next election if I don't make this pivot. So I think there will be more defections and I think that we'll see other big figures eventually coming over. But look, that's all we've got time for today. Who knows what we'll be talking about next week given the pace of change and the pace of political news and geopolitical news seems to move so quickly at the moment.

35:27But join us next week. And all that remains is for me to hand over to Gabriel to thank our wonderful producers. You and Daughtry and Monaguinis, thank you so much. And we'll see you next week. Thank you.