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- [00:00]
Steve Rosenberg
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Our man in Moscow. I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia as the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine and try to silence dissent.
- [00:18]
Chris Mason
The sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.
- [00:22]
Steve Rosenberg
Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our man in Moscow. Watch with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC. Visit BBC.com docs to learn more.
- [00:39]
Adam Fleming
Chris and I have returned from the Excel Centre where we did a lot of walking yesterday, to see David Lammy.
- [00:44]
Chris Mason
We really did. It's that way. Oh, down this escalator. Oh, no, there's another escalator. And then you walk past 17 coffee shops and eventually get to the railway station.
- [00:54]
Adam Fleming
It's a very, very, very big convention center. Now, Chris, before we start this episode, Miranda, who is producing this episode, has written me a note about what's coming up. Done it all in caps, so it feels a little bit like a Donald Trump truth social post. Shall I read it out? As presumably Miranda intended, let's pay some
- [01:12]
Chris Mason
attention to this matter.
- [01:14]
Adam Fleming
Where will you be at 7:00am on Friday?
- [01:17]
Chris Mason
Oh, is this to me or you?
- [01:18]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, it was just rhetorical. We will do a livestream following the results of the Gorton and Denton by election. Newscasters can join in live on BBC Sounds iPlayer and the BBC Sounds Instagram and TikTok pages. Don't miss doesn't say thanks for your attention in this matter, which does slightly spoil the gag, but it does reinforce the message that Chris and I and others will be here at 7 o' clock on Friday morning with the results of that very, very important by election.
- [01:45]
Chris Mason
Yeah, and I'll have been up all night and be hoping that, you know, I manage to make my phone work and join you for an interesting conversation about a by election where, whatever the outcome, it'll be quite newsy. I think that's probably the best way of putting it.
- [02:02]
Adam Fleming
So here's a slightly less crazed and more chilled episode of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [02:10]
Faisal Islam
Fat Boy Slim and me in the
- [02:11]
Adam Fleming
classroom doing our violin lessons.
- [02:13]
Chris Mason
I was the tattletale in the closet.
- [02:14]
Steve Rosenberg
Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody that Daddy has
- [02:18]
Adam Fleming
to sometimes do strong language.
- [02:20]
Chris Mason
Next time in mosque.
- [02:21]
I feel Delulu with no Salulu.
- [02:23]
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [02:25]
Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour.
- [02:27]
Chris Mason
Blimey.
- [02:28]
Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio
- [02:29]
Chris Mason
and it is Chris at Westminster and
- [02:31]
Adam Fleming
we'll be joined by Faisal Islam shortly because there's a story with lots of numbers and even more politics and even more passion attached to it, which we will talk about in the second half. But the first half is. I mean, I'm trying to think, Chris, of an adjective to describe this back and forth between Lord Mandelson, Peter Mandelson's lawyers, and the speaker of the House of Commons about Lord Mandelson's arrest, which happened very publicly the other day.
- [02:58]
Chris Mason
Yeah, bizarre, I think, is probably the best word. So if you think of the Lord Mandelson story of the last, well, a week or month or whatever time frame you put to it, this is kind of chapter 5B or whatever. Maybe it's 55B now, I don't mean by that you should turn off, because, newscasters, I think you'll delight in some of the details of all of this. But the big development in the last 24 hours or so was the news that the police had decided to arrest Lord Mandelson because of the suggestion that he might leave the country. What we've now found out is who it was who told them that they thought or had evidence that he might do that. And that guy is the speaker of the House of Commons. The added twist is it looks like there was some mistaken identity thrown into the mix. And the geographical epicenter of this story, in an unlikely twist, is the British Virgin Islands.
- [03:54]
Adam Fleming
And this is how Sir Lindsay Hoyle explained all of this in a limited way to MPs at the start of Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday lunchtime.
- [04:02]
Sir Lindsay Hoyle
Members will be aware of comments in the media regarding the arrest of Lord Mandelson. To prevent any inaccurate speculation, I'd like to confirm that upon receipt of information that I felt it was relevant, I pass this on to the Metropolitan Police in good faith, as is my duty and responsibility. It is regrettable this rapidly ended in the media. As this is a live investigation, members will understand that it would not be appropriate to make any further comment, and I'd like to caution members from doing so.
- [04:44]
Faisal Islam
Okay.
- [04:45]
Adam Fleming
Quite a lot to unpack there. So, I mean, it was Parliamentary half term last week, so it would not be a crime for somebody at Westminster to go on holiday. Was Lindsay Hoyle on holiday in the British Virgin Islands?
- [04:55]
Chris Mason
He was on a work trip, so he was seeing kind of his opposite numbers and politicians in the British Virgin Islands in The Caribbean, about 4,000 miles away from Westminster. And that had been publicly announced in advance that he was going to do this kind of thing. It's the sort of thing that speakers do in the, in, in their line of work. They go to other kind of, you know, parliamentary democracies and meet people and, and all that kind of, all that kind of stuff. So we know that he was doing to Lindsay Hill between Monday and Thursday of last week, and we know that Peter Mandelson was arrested on Monday tea time. We also know through Peter Mandelson's lawyers that he, Lord Mandelson, was expecting to voluntarily attend an interview with the police in March, so relatively soon, but not immediately. And his lawyers have made it clear that it was completely wrong to assume that he was planning to leave the country either permanently or temporarily. The twist was that last night. So we're recording it, what, early evening on Wednesday. On Tuesday evening, the Lord Speaker, a guy called Michael Forsyth, Lord Forsyth, put out a statement in which he said, I've got absolutely nothing to do with all of this. And at the time, no one quite joined the dots to think, well, maybe the Met, the police force have got the wrong speaker at Westminster. Then at lunchtime today, we get Lindsay Hoyle saying what you've just saying what you've just heard. And now the Metropolitan Police apologizing. They've been to see Lindsay Hoyle and have apologized. You heard a polite version of his frustration, Lindsay Hoyle's frustration in that clip there. And the. The Met are now saying they have apologized to the speaker of the House of Commons this afternoon for inadvertently revealing information during an investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office. So clearly, Lindsay Hoyle a little peaked that this has become public. We also understand that the Met had kind of stress tested the information they received before deciding that it was sensible, in their view, to arrest Lord Mandelson. What we don't know is what that information was.
- [07:27]
Adam Fleming
I think what's interesting for me is that initially this seems like, are we in a new kind of territory when it comes to criminal investigations, where people start issuing statements on the record or to their friends about what's going on and then you have the speaker talking about in the House of Commons, trying to clear up the things. But then you think about it a bit more and you realize actually these are not comments on the investigation or a potential crime or anyone's guilt or innocence or anything that's going to be put in front of a jury in a court if ever there's a prosecution or someone's charged. This is actually comments on just, just almost like the soap opera around. Around the criminal investigation.
- [08:06]
Chris Mason
Yeah.
- [08:07]
Adam Fleming
So that's why it's Maybe a little bit more. A bit more fair game for people talking about.
- [08:12]
Chris Mason
Yeah, so. So I don't think this changes any of the fundamentals of the story. I mean, think what is how Lord Mandelson's lawyers. So I understand that Lord Mandelson's lawyers were twice told that the Lord Speaker, Lord Forsyth, was the. Was the source of the tip off that the Metropolitan Police acted upon. We now know, because he said it out loud, that it was the Commons speaker and we'd already heard from Lord Forsyth that it was. Wasn't. It wasn't him. So it's curious that Peter Mandelson's lawyers would find out about the Metropolitan Police's sources. But as you say, and, and the Met have since apologized around how all of this has kind of, you know, burst out publicly. But as you say, none of this is about the fundamentals of the inquiry that the Metropolitan Police continue with, which is investigating this suspicion of misconduct in public office in connection to those files that were published a few weeks back now relating to Jeffrey Epstein.
- [09:23]
Adam Fleming
And, okay, Lord Mandelson's lawyers have let it be known what they feel has gone on over the last 24 hours. But just remind us what we think Lord Mandelson's position is on this.
- [09:33]
Chris Mason
Yeah. In the interest of fairness, Lord Mandelson has not himself commented publicly in the last few weeks. As you say, there have been some. There has been some commentary from his lawyers about the. The process, if you like. But on the big picture, my understanding is that it is his view that he has not acted in any way criminally and did not act for his. For his own financial gain.
- [09:56]
Adam Fleming
And just another little update on a political story. The government's deal with Mauritius for them to take over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, where the British military base Diego Garcia is part of it. And that will involve the UK leasing back the military base for 100 years. Has that been paused or is it still going ahead? Or are both those things true simultaneously this evening?
- [10:20]
Chris Mason
Right, so here is the potted summary of this, which was happening in the midst of all of this stuff about Lord Mandelson and the Metropolitan Police. So the government says there is no pause in its Chagos Islands deal, despite the fact that the Foreign Office Minister, Hamish Falconer, who was answering questions from MPs, said the UK was, quote, pausing the process while discussions happened with the United States. So our minister said there was a pause. The government then said there wasn't a pause.
- [10:50]
Adam Fleming
What do we make of that? That's it.
- [10:53]
Chris Mason
What we make of it is that they're in a colossal bind because the Trump administration keep changing their mind about what they make of this deal. That I think is the bottom line of all of this. Yes, there's a domestic political row about whether this deal over the Chagos Islands is a, is a wise one, is a good one. But the bottom line in terms of what causes them a lot of grief at the moment is we have seen repeatedly because it's not just been A, America originally said A and now it's saying B. It's, it's, it's sort of flip flopped between those two places several times. That is what is at the crux of all of this. And, you know, not for the first time, but it is a case study in London peering across the Atlantic towards Washington and not quite knowing what on earth President Trump is going to say next.
- [11:45]
Adam Fleming
I wonder, though, for what it's worth here, is that there was always going to be a gap as this deal went through its process through Parliament. It's just a question of what that gap is being used for. Maybe in a world, if Kamala Harris was the US President, that would just be a normal gap in Parliament, like there exists for lots of things. But because Donald Trump is president, that gap is maybe being used to try and sweet talk the Americans back on board.
- [12:08]
Chris Mason
I think there's a fair amount of all of that. And then this topic is very live domestically and very live internationally. So every word, including today's word beginning with P, is scrutinized to the nth degree.
- [12:23]
Adam Fleming
Now let's welcome Faisal Islam back to the newscast studio. Hello, Faisal. Faisal.
- [12:27]
Faisal Islam
Hello, Adam.
- [12:28]
Adam Fleming
Right, this story has been brewing for a while and we haven't really covered it on newscast because it never quite hit the threshold of kind of the news that day, but it did today because it came up at Prime Minister's questions. And it is student loans for former students in England who were studying between 2012 and 2023. Chris just set the scene for how this then sort of exploded into Prime Minister's questions.
- [12:54]
Chris Mason
Yeah, so the Conservatives for a little while now have been having a run at this. And the crux of this is there are a whole bunch former students who have a fair chunk of debt. And even though they may be paying it off or paying a certain amount per month in an attempt to pay it off, their, their mountain of debt is actually growing, which clearly politically is an awkward spot to be in when you have former students saying, hang on a minute, this surely isn't fair. The other couple of things I think worth mentioning is one, crucially, a whole chunk of people who are in that category have become, if you like, have come of political age. So there's loads of MPs who are in that situation, there's loads of people in and around Westminster in all sorts of other sort of influential jobs who are in that situation. So I think that raises its salience. And then the second point is, broadly speaking, if Labour hoped to hold together a kind of voter coalition, you know, at any encounter with the electorate, broadly speaking, people in this situation are likely to be a reasonable chunk of it. In other words, trying to keep them on side is. Is probably important. And the indications, both publicly at Prime Minister's questions, but then also in the conversations that we have with the Prime Minister's team, is that they are trying to work out what to do about this. The indication is they want to try and do something about this. It's not necessarily easy for all sorts of reasons that Faisal can no doubt talk about in the context of the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves and, you know, tight budget, etc, etc. But there seems to be a keen awareness of the problem within government and a desire to do something about it. What we don't know is precisely what, when and how, and we'll talk about
- [14:44]
Adam Fleming
possible and rival fixes in a second. But Faisal, the actual change that we're talking about here was introduced in the budget last year. Not much fanfare on the day itself. A lot of fanfare since, though. Just explain the changes to the so called Plan 2 system that Rachel Reeves and her colleagues introduced.
- [15:01]
Faisal Islam
So the key feature of this is that there's a threshold which, after you've graduated, you have to earn before you start repaying back a relatively high rate of interest. And that is just under £30,000. And normally that would have gone up with earnings, but the Chancellor chose, I think, was to increase it for one year, but then freeze it just under 30,000, which means that more and more people, as, as incomes go up, as wages go up, would be caught with having to pay this back at what would be in real terms a relatively smaller wage, and it would take up a significant proportion of their income. So. So that's what happened. That was the choice that was made by the Chancellor. As you said, there was many things going on in that budget. But I did certainly raise my eyebrow amongst the chaos of the leaked OBR document on the day, as you remember,
- [15:53]
Adam Fleming
and 100 other measures that were in there.
- [15:55]
Faisal Islam
Indeed. And so, you know, that's A real, you know, it's a real concern. And if you take. Go back in the history of all of this, the, the creation of the student loan scheme, and I remember going, you're going back to the sort of Tony Blair government here. There was a big debate about whether you have a graduate tax or you have a loan system. And there were consequences for the public finances that were really arcane but had some substance, substantial impact on how you treat this. But essentially it boils down to this is if you had a graduate tax or something like a graduate tax, people shouldn't feel put off by. Go by the amount of the debt. It's a sort of notional debt, isn't real only because.
- [16:38]
Adam Fleming
Focus on the number.
- [16:39]
Faisal Islam
Yeah.
- [16:40]
Adam Fleming
Focus on how much you're repaying every month.
- [16:42]
Faisal Islam
Yeah, but we have a loan system and, and the more the threshold is lowered effectively in real terms, the more it feels like a real debt that you will have to pay back. And it doesn't feel like a graduate tax, it doesn't feel optional. And I think that's the sort of situation that they're concerned about. And they're concerned not just for the solvency of those previous students, but for the attractiveness of the further education, tertiary education. It in general. The Conservatives obviously come up with this plan where you somehow recycle the money from less popular courses they were lighted upon, like creative, creative art.
- [17:16]
Chris Mason
But.
- [17:17]
Adam Fleming
So the issue we've got is it's neither a loan, but it is a loan. It's not a tax, but it is a tax. And also, Chris, because of an interview that the Schools Minister gave to Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight earlier this week, it now no longer is purely designed to fund higher education because she said, Georgia Gould. Oh, this is to do with all the other spending pressures that the government is under, which then allows Kemi Beijingok at Prime Minister's Questions to say, oh, this system was sold as paying for universities and helping to stop them go bust, but actually it's paying, in her words, for benefits.
- [17:49]
Chris Mason
Indeed. And so that becomes another strand in the Conservative argument. The Conservatives are absolutely of the view that they want to pick up and run with this and carry on asking plenty of questions. They detect that the government is going to move that may or may not, depending on what happens, allow them to claim that it might be another about turn, etc, etc, in the knockabout of the politics of all of this. And as I say, the indicators, both publicly and then in the background, chats pointing in the direction of the government doing something, but then that poses difficult questions for Rachel Reeves and for Keir Starmer about. Yeah, how you do it and with what consequence, what are the trade offs, etc. Etc.
- [18:30]
Faisal Islam
Yeah. And I spoke to the Chancellor on other topics on the energy price today, but I did throw in a couple of questions and she certainly did seem in keeping with the idea that things are being looked at. And it's interesting because I think only last month she was sort of ruling it out and defending it. She said, of course, we'll continue to look at how we can make sure the system works. But she also mentioned that part of the problem is the. Is the threshold I just talked about. But obviously part of the problem is the high interest rate as well, which
- [18:57]
Adam Fleming
is pegged to the retail prices.
- [19:01]
Faisal Islam
The retail price index.
- [19:02]
Adam Fleming
Exactly. Plus 3%.
- [19:04]
Faisal Islam
Exactly. Which is a higher and somewhat arcane and old form of inflation the government doesn't use anymore. But she said that because inflation was coming down, because interest rates were coming down, the overall interest payments, that was her answer, would also come down. So the high levels we've seen are going to sort of flush out of the system because of the general macroeconomic recovery, as she sees it. That was her answer. But I did detect exactly what Chris has just said in her answer, some willingness to look at something. My question would be, is this a tweak of the sort she's being lobbied to do by either the conservatives or campaigners like Martin Lewis, or is it something more substantial? Because it's very intriguing, the political economy of this, isn't it, to have the conservatives sort of try and appeal counterintuitively to this younger voting demographic because they're
- [19:53]
Adam Fleming
the party of the triple lock for pensions.
- [19:55]
Faisal Islam
Well, well. And, and you're starting to see also this demographic assert itself, become the key middle aged, dare I say it, demographic.
- [20:06]
Adam Fleming
They'll say it like that.
- [20:07]
Faisal Islam
Demographic. What are, what is this generation? Is that a millennial, or is it.
- [20:13]
Adam Fleming
I think, again, it's something millennials. Y.
- [20:16]
Faisal Islam
It.
- [20:16]
Chris Mason
Right.
- [20:16]
Faisal Islam
Okay. Well, they will determine they'll be the key swing voters in elections. The Conservatives are making a. I don't know what Chris thing a pitch for them because reform has taken away the older voters. I don't know. It's intriguing to think that they will be in play when we assume maybe they're more in play for the Green Party. I don't know.
- [20:31]
Sir Lindsay Hoyle
Yeah.
- [20:31]
Chris Mason
No, it's intriguing. Someone was reflecting on just this to me earlier today here, saying that on the one hand, you can see the logic in Kevin Beijingock having a run at this because she detects and she would see it an injustice and also the potential for the government to, to change its mind in some way or change its outlook, but that actually securing that change might ultimately be more beneficial to the Labour Party than it is to the Conservatives. If you reassure those who might, broadly at least some of them be inclined to back you as the Labour Party, but they're not so keen if the sort of debt mountain is piling up. But if the government does something about it, maybe you'll run back round.
- [21:10]
Adam Fleming
And so just, just to be clear about what the various options floating around are, so Kemi Badenok and the Conservatives are saying use a lower interest rate that feels less punitive to the people paying back the loans. Martin Lewis, the money saving expert, says, actually, no, it's more about the thresholds at which people start repaying it. Those are the two big options.
- [21:30]
Faisal Islam
We should chuck in another option which we've seen increasingly in American politics, which is just cancellation of some of these nets. Are they going to become onerous? We can't detach this from the reality which is the returns to this university education has, for many people that have these debts, that's not, not been what was promised, right, the value of a university education. And that was even before we got start talking about the impact of AI on, on entry level jobs. You know, this is really going to mess with the economics of all of this big time. You know, you're suddenly thinking, well, hang on a minute, that entire route straight from graduate being a graduate into a medium earning job that promises to be a high earning job that gets you a mortgage and buys you a house, a flat and then a house. That entire route each, each sort of journey, point, waypoint on that route is up for question right now. And so does it work? Does the idea of a loan system function and work? There are much bigger questions and a changed environment for young people generally that is now being reflected not just in this fiscal maths here, but also, as Chris has pointed out in the politics of this.
- [22:39]
Adam Fleming
And also, Faisal, you quoted the Tony Blair years. But Chris, I mean we were, we were just starting out when this was a big deal and there was, there was protests in Whitehall and students chucking stuff and getting imprisoned and throwing off smoke bombs outside. Conservative Central office. Wasn't there when this was introduced?
- [22:56]
Chris Mason
Absolutely. I, I remember those moments kind of very keenly because some of those, some of those protests were, I mean, to put it gently, quite something.
- [23:06]
Adam Fleming
So it was kind of the wildest Whitehall has ever got.
- [23:09]
Chris Mason
Really? Yes, yes. I mean, it probably is. So, yeah, the, the various INC incarnations of this row that has gone on for more than a generation now around the funding of higher education and who should pick up the tab and when and how the sort of societal distribution of that should be because, you know, you'll have, you'll have people who make the argument that. That over time, certainly historically over time, those who go to university on average earn more over a career than those that don't, has been the historic argument. And therefore why should all of society, if you like, pay for the benefit only garnered by a certain proportion? But at the same time. Yeah, absolutely. This argument around where things are now and then, crucially, how governments decide, as Faisal was reflecting on a few minutes ago, how governments decide to brand things. So, you know, and hence this idea of what. When is a debt a debt? When is it a, you know, a graduate tax? But the word tax is one not, not, not a word that politicians will, you know, gladly use enthusiastically most of the time. But, but would I. Would a billing of it in a different way at the outset of. Have made things easier to sell in this situation? Now maybe.
- [24:24]
Adam Fleming
Faisal, you mentioned your chat with Rachel Reeves. You cannot but help when you watch it on tv, think of a particular energy company because she was doing it at the HQ of Octopus and there's just Octopus branding everywhere and there's even like stuffed octopuses in the background as well. It does look a bit like an advertisement. And that was because the off gem announced the new level of the price cap for, for domestic energy bills in a few months time. What's your take on that? Because it's going down and it's going down by more than 100 pounds for the average household, even though that number is kind of meaningless because everyone's energy bill is different in a different way.
- [24:59]
Chris Mason
Yeah.
- [25:00]
Faisal Islam
It's a substantial and real cut by the standards of these moves. It's on electricity bills specifically. And so there will be a differential impact depending on if you've got an electric car, you know, if you have a gas boiler, all that sort of stuff. And I think what was notable for me was the. Well, it was unusual. Right. This is a direct result of a strategy from government.
- [25:23]
Adam Fleming
Yes. Because this wasn't the usual thing of, oh, the wholesale markets that the energy companies buy their power on have changed. We're going to pass that on to the consumer. This was actually government policies.
- [25:33]
Faisal Islam
Yeah. And it wasn't. They specifically sought out policies. So they were going back to September. They sought out the treasury policies that would yield this sort of impact, that would enable the Chancellor to do the sort of interview she did with me today, and that would have a tangible impact on the overall rate of inflation, which this will, when we get the figures, I think in May for April, it could even bring it down to, at or below the bank of England's target of 2%. And that's unusual, to sort of use the levers of the treasury and tax policy, essentially to shift this into the tax system away from your bill to try and manage the actual inflation rate. That is actually what we've seen. And in turn to get a sort of double whammy, because you will get interest rate cuts because inflation is low. Although. Although there are some doubts about that, but that's the theory and we may well see that in the next few weeks. So. But I thought what was intriguing was the attempt to sort of sew this together with a broader story. Although there's a lot of doom mongery around about the economy, literally in the last few days, we have seen some numbers on retail sales, surveys of economic activity, we've seen borrowing numbers, borrowing costs, a couple of other metrics that are going. And not, you know, not just slightly turning, but going in a fundamentally better direction. On the other hand, we've had sluggish growth figures at the end of last year. We've had unemployment going up, particularly talking about young people. But you can see them attempting to use this as a launching pad for an attempt to G up business confidence and consumer confidence.
- [27:06]
Adam Fleming
Well, and it's interesting you say that because. Because it stopped raining. I've been cycling more the last few days. I mean, I know, Faisal, you're not a fair weather cyclist. You've been cycling throughout. I've gone back on the bike in the last few days and you see everywhere on the digital billboards an advert for the great giant rail fair freeze. Yeah, it's really. The adverts are absolutely everywhere because that's,
- [27:28]
Faisal Islam
that's a, that's a public sector, that's a governmental thing.
- [27:30]
Adam Fleming
It's another budget measure that is now taking effect now, and which the government just wants to like, whack everyone around the chops with as happening.
- [27:37]
Chris Mason
And I'm going to try and tie both of those things together. It's fascinating, that point about the billboards, Adam, and then the language that the Chancellor Faisal was using to you talking about we're beginning to turn a corner. And then you, you take that language and you look at the argument The Prime Minister was at Prime Minister's Questions today where he was teasing Kemi Badenoch, saying, couple of weeks ago all you wanted to talk about was the economy. Now I want to talk about the economy and reeling off some of these metrics. And then you rewind to the very beginning of this calendar year where the government launched the very campaign that you've been seeing as you've been peddling in the sunshine, Adam, around railfares and the frustration within government that the million and one things that have happened in the news in the last seven or eight weeks have, have kind of drowned that story out, whether it be Greenland or tariffs or Venezuela or Peter Mandelson or the former Prince Andrew, etc. Etc. And I just detect a sense, I, I detected a frustration from some very senior ministers a few weeks ago when they were seeing some of the, some of these economic indicators, but didn't think, well, they just knew there was no bandwidth to talk about them because everything else was going on. And now they're tentatively stepping into wanting to sound a bit more positive, but as ever, with political leaders knowing that the, they need to do that tentatively because clearly not everything is rosy and they wouldn't want people thinking, oh, hang on a minute, they're all sounding super, super optimistic and bouncy and things are actually quite difficult. But speaking to people in government, they, they really think things could just about, well, as the Chancellor puts it, beginning to turn right.
- [29:11]
Adam Fleming
That's it for this episode of Newscast. Faisal, thank you very much.
- [29:14]
Faisal Islam
Always.
- [29:14]
Adam Fleming
Pleasure, Chris. Thanks to you too, Tara. And just to say, just before we started recording, the Ministry of Justice sent out the details of the new courts bill, the actual legislation, which will put in place all the stuff that David Lammy was talking about on the previous episode of Newscast. And so if you haven't heard that and you want to understand some of the battles ahead and some of the potential changes to the court system in England and Wales, it's worth listening to what David Lammy said to me and Chris in the previous episode. That's all for this one, though. Bye bye. Newscast.
- [29:42]
Chris Mason
Newscast from the bb.
- [29:44]
From one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on +4403301239480 be assured, I promise you listen to everyone.
- [30:29]
Steve Rosenberg
I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Our man in Moscow. I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia as the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine. Ukraine and try to silence dissent.
- [30:41]
Chris Mason
The sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.
- [30:45]
Steve Rosenberg
Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our man in Moscow Watch with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app. Visit BBC.com docs to learn more.