Cheat Sheet | Reeves rallies MPs, online abuse crackdown, Max Whitlock returns

0:01Sophy Ridge:Good morning and welcome to Cheat Sheet, the podcast where we do the work so you don't have to. I'm Wilfred Frost.

0:08Max Whitlock:And I am Sophy Ridge. It is Tuesday the 25th of November and this is what's happening today. So the Chancellor is encouraging Labour MPs to present a united front behind her budget. Let's see how that goes.

0:20Sophy Ridge:The US and Ukraine say they've drafted a refined peace framework after discussions in Geneva.

0:26Max Whitlock:and an Olympic legend is making a comeback for the 2028 LA Games.

0:31Sophy Ridge:Sophie's quite a fan.

0:34Max Whitlock:So it is the kind of budget eve, a bit like Christmas Eve but with more tax rises. The Chancellor's told MPs in her party that they must stick together ahead of her budget tomorrow, which is no surprise really the message there from Rachel Reeves. She met backbenchers last night as she's preparing to deliver her plan, which I think just shows how concerned she is about how Labour MPs in particular react to what she's going to say. Her message is that it's not a pick and mix. So you can't just pick the good bits. It's a package. So you've got to take the pain in order to get any increased spending in things like the NHS.

1:11Sophy Ridge:I like this sort of fighting talk. I must say, she says, I'll show the media. I'll show the Tories. I'll not let them beat me. Particularly the line in the middle of it about the Tories. because you do wonder as you approach these big moments in politics whether if they can't unite against their common opposition, then they really are in trouble. And one would think this week they should all fall in behind. And I'd also just raise this question for, we don't know quite the level of manoeuvring against Keir Starmer within the parliamentary Labour Party or not, but you don't think this would be the moment to do it.

1:48Sophy Ridge:You kind of want the budget to be done. even if you do want to move against them. So I think sensible rhetoric from her and kind of wonder why you haven't seen that more to try and unite the party against the opposition as opposed to always being the sort of focal point of the criticism.

2:05Max Whitlock:I think that's it. And we forget how long it is that we've had a Labour government presenting budgets. The Conservatives have been in power for an awfully long time. This is the Labour economic vision and I think that's why there's so much riding on it. Obviously, the individual budgets matter, but it's also Rachel Rees, she's the first female Chancellor as well. You can sense that she feels like she's got an awful lot to prove, that there can be a left-wing, economically credible vision put forward. But at the same time, the headwinds are so difficult. You've seen, of course, our report from Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates about growth being downgraded again.

2:43Max Whitlock:She's going to have to put up taxes. There have been hints that there is going to be more spending. It looks like around energy bills and particularly the NHS. No surprises perhaps there. But then she's going to open herself up perhaps for more criticism as well.

2:56Sophy Ridge:By the way, if you want more early morning politics analysis, listen to politics at Sam and Anne's as well. Drops every morning. So Kirsama has got a very busy week. Of course, budget is front and centre, but he's also trying to help secure peace in Ukraine. I think a lot of the Europeans obviously have feared their bystanders on this, but they've got a big call that he's hosting, a virtual call with European allies. It follows talks within the US and Ukraine and Geneva, where they've been going through this 28-point plan. We're now told it's a 19-point plan, so they've slimmed it down from the original version that was seen as too favourable to Russia, in particular because they think the current front line should be the basis for discussions, and in particular because they don't want any restrictions on the size of Ukrainian army after a peace deal.

3:49Sophy Ridge:I just think this shows how massive a gap there is between the two sides. And I think it's slightly skeptical that it will lead to anything. The one thing I'll just say, as much as everyone understandably thought this original deal that President Trump seemed to back was very unfair on Ukraine, he does make one good point in the last week, which is that Europe still buys a lot of Russian energy products.

4:12Max Whitlock:It's true. It's completely right.

4:14Sophy Ridge:And it comes, by the way, Russia is actually pretty weak at the moment. One story that's got a lot of attention in the financial markets is they're selling their gold reserves in a way that they hadn't had to before. They're short on cash because a couple of weeks ago, President Trump did add sanctions to foreign companies in China, in India, that are buying Russian energy products. So Europe kind of has to step up a little bit more as well in this regard. But clearly, the 28-point plan was not acceptable to Europeans and Ukrainians in particular. I fear the 19-point plan won't be acceptable to Russia.

4:50Max Whitlock:So the BBC's chairman has insisted he is not going to resign. It was at a hearing ahead of MPs after the difficult few weeks that the BBC's had. And Samir Shah, he said his job is now just to steer the ship and also, of course, not least, to find the next director general because the last one resigned as well as the head of news as well. He actually said, interestingly, he's tried to stop Tim Davy resigning as director general. This was over the misleading edit of Donald Trump in a Panorama documentary, which, to be honest, I think reinforces the sneaking suspicion that Tim Davy's resignation was also because he was like, you know what, this is the hardest job in the world.

5:29Max Whitlock:and being shot at by all sides, who would want to do it?

5:32Sophy Ridge:Yeah, one also slightly wonders the extent to which had Tim Davies stayed, would the chair be more under fire now? Because it is slightly ridiculous. You can't quite find a new director general without the chair. So it's a way to be slightly protected in the short term. But it was fighting talk from him. The other quick headline, Michael Prescott, who wrote this report, the leaked memo that has led to so much of this, His testimony was very interesting for two big reasons. He very, very clearly suggested he wasn't the person that leaked it and said he passed it on to various government departments and to Ofcom and it was leaked shortly after that and was quite sort of positive about the BBC and didn't suggest he felt there was an institutional bias.

6:21Sophy Ridge:Ofcom's come out with new guidance, and this is to try and get tech firms to do more to protect women and girls. And these guidelines are obviously focused on platforms like Instagram and X and Facebook. They include things like prompts that would tell users to reconsider harmful messages, to reduce or stop payments, make it harder to advertise alongside content that's misogynistic or includes sexual abuse. and ensuring that the for you tabs, which exist on some platforms, i.e. the algorithms that push the content, include more perspectives to stop toxic masculine echo chambers. I guess the first question I have for you is, do you think it's going to work?

7:01Sophy Ridge:And do you think this is a really important step for women in high profile positions?

7:05Max Whitlock:I think it is an important step, I'll be honest, particularly for women and girls, but also for everybody actually in these spaces too, because I know that men can get a lot of this abuse as well. Because the idea of it is to silence somebody, right? The idea of it is to make someone's experience so awful that you just retreat from the public debate, which I think our whole country would be much lesser for. And you also see it, you know, not just in the online world, if you like, where people deliberately are choosing to engage in these social media sites, but also we saw it after the Euros, you know, the lioness Jess Carter saying she'd questioned, in her words whether she'd have the courage to go back on the pitch and play again because of the abuse she received i mean how awful is that you know someone who's just won the euros it's extraordinary i'm a bit skeptical though because my experience of trying to block people online is it just doesn't work like it's um so i'm pretty skeptical i have to say well it's gonna work and

8:02Sophy Ridge:so are other important groups on this because this is guidance it's not enforceable um so you're kind of going to scratch your head a bit and say, well, is it really going to lead to anything? The broader point of it, which I think there was a moment in time, 2016, 17, 18, where there's cross-party consensus here and in the US to maybe do something about it. And I remember discussing this extensively with Senator Mark Warner in the US, who was leading the charge on it, where you could have said, when you and I post, if someone chooses to follow me and say, it's the same as us having a conversation, but in the digital age.

8:35Sophy Ridge:But if a company pushes a post, then do they have to start to take responsibility for that post that ship sailed it never happened it's a free-for-all and what this although it's just guidance it's not enforceable it's not a law is starting to get at is to say your algorithm has to start looking at the content so the reason i'm well it sounds very sensible but i'm the reason i think it's i'm skeptical of it is a it's guidance but b this was a debate that might have had a chance when there was a sort of cross-party consensus and everyone was like do we need to do something but that's like almost a decade ago so i just i don't know that this is gonna really go anywhere

9:19Max Whitlock:britain's most successful gymnast ever max whitlock is going to come out of retirement he's won three gold medals already but he wants to take part in the la games at the grand old age

9:31Sophy Ridge:of 35 it's easy to come out of retirement for something like this what do you think Like, honestly, I ache every morning. And the idea of being a gymnast in the first place is the most impressive thing to watch, I think, of all the sports.

9:45Max Whitlock:I love Max Whitlock because I have such a clear memory of watching the Olympics. And I'm a sucker for the Olympics anyway. And we were rubbish at gym for ages, particularly... At gym. At gymnastics. Okay, the technical term, gymnastics. We were worried...

10:01Sophy Ridge:I was rubbish at gym. Always, still am.

10:03Max Whitlock:We were rubbish at gymnastics. particularly the men. And then this kid comes out, Max Whitlock, on the pommel horse and is completely amazing. And then after that, it just felt that he just pushed this whole focus on male gymnastics and they had this wonderful team who ended up doing, like outperforming in all the Olympics and he always struck me as a really, really nice fella as well.

10:25Sophy Ridge:So good for him. Good for him. Get back into it. Very easy thing just to slot back into. No problem at all. Right, that does it for today. It's Cheatsheet. Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to email us stories you want us to cover. Cheatsheet at sky.uk.

10:44How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.