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- [00:01]
A
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com.
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B
Welcome to the rest is Politics. Question time with me, Rory Stewart.
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A
And me, Annista Campbell. Hillary Coates. First question. Rory, what are your thoughts on Keir Starmer's mini reshuffle? Will fresh faces bring some hope or just more inconsistency and chaos? I'm guessing Hillary's not very impressed by the government thus far.
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B
No, I think more inconsistency and chaos doesn't sound great, does it? We both watched this amazing short social media clip that number 10 have brought together of Starmer announcing his mini reshuffle and it was a pretty peculiar piece of communication, quite sort of Starmer, like he says, at least as far as I remember. I'm delighted to announce we're now entering phase two of the government and we brought in a new team and there were sort of pictures of him at his desk and then he's walking up the stairs in number 10 and then.
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A
He'S at Elect and none of the Civil servants faces were shown.
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B
And at no point did I discover what Phase two was about. I kept thinking, we're going to hear now in Phase two, we're going to do something. This is the vision, this is the direction, instead of which it seemed to be largely about the fact that he was reshuffling. But I didn't see reshuffling to do what?
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A
Yeah, the only thing is, is it even a reshuffle? Because people normally associate reshuffles with Cabinet ministers being moved. Now, one Cabinet minister was moved, Darren.
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B
Jones, but just sort of moved sideways.
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A
Well, he's been. I actually, I'm. I'm a bit of a fan of Darren Jones. He was the Chief Secretary of the Treasury. He's now got this new job that never existed before, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.
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B
Can I, Alistair, just sort of quickly on that. I mean, what is this job? What sort of roles in the Bear administration do you think were covered by this? I can't really work out in the Cameron government or the May government.
- [01:54]
A
I think what it is is that Keir Starmer has come back from the summer, the domestic debate. I mean, I resent the way that the BBC yesterday said that, you know, reform and flags and hotels has been the story of the summer, given we've had stuff going on in Ukraine, Gaza, etc. Etc. Etc. But certainly Nigel Farage and Reform have commanded an awful lot of airspace over the summer. Keir Starmer's come back and basically said, I've got to change things to try to get more of a grip. And on delivery, I think he sees Darren Jones's job as his driving delivery. So there wouldn't be, I guess the nearest equivalent might be in our time, Michael Barber, who was head of the.
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B
Delivery unit, or Jonathan Powell as the Chief of Staff.
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A
Yeah. But then he's got a Chief of staff, which is Morgan McSweeney, who's the sort of strategy guy.
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B
And it certainly worries me because the way that Theresa May did it is she brought in Gavin Barwell, who'd been a minister and an mp, as the Chief of Staff, but he'd left Parliament.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So he was full time.
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A
No, it's a tricky thing is because the other thing about politicians, once they become politicians, they, they are seen differently internally. But I listen, I think Darren Jones, I, I really like him, I think he's a very good communicator and I think he's a detailed guy. But I, I. What I worry about of this setup is even that we're talking about it because, you know, Keir Starman did an interview on the BBC yesterday. Here I am, I'm back, I'm dealing with the small boats and I'm shaking up the team. That's not a message. The message I want to hear from the government is what are we doing for the country, medium and long term? And the other change yesterday was Tim Allen, who was my Deputy in Opposition, and then briefly he stayed around for a few months but then went off into business. Very successful PR company that I'm still associated with, Declaration of Interest, Portland, and he's now coming back into, into the kind of public service sphere. And what I'm hoping from that is that the sort of. The strategic messaging becomes clear, because that's the bit to me that I think has been lacking.
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B
Final analogy, I guess if we're going real inside baseball. When Dominic Cummings left the Boris Johnson setup, Steve Barclay, who was a Conservative MP from Cambridgeshire and had been in the Cabinet Animaster, came in to do this sort of role, which may be a sort of comparable. He was the sort of Chief of Staff. Yeah, for Boris. I mean, I always worried about it at the time because I was very, very conscious as a Member of Parliament that you're balancing having to be quite rightly with your constituents and do your. The only person who gets a pass on that basically is the Prime Minister. The rest of us really have to be in our constituency a lot. The whips are driving us to vote in Parliament. And I think these jobs are best done by somebody who isn't a Member of Parliament because I think it should be a real 14 hour a day, seven day a week job. And that's very difficult to do if you're an Alexa representative.
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A
I think the other thing that may be part of the thinking is that Pat McFadden over in the Cabinet Office has been doing a lot of the sort of communications troubleshooting when things are a bit tricky and the total safe pair of hands. And I think Darren Jones is similar in that. So look, this is a new.
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B
Wait a second now, it sounds difficult, right? It sounds to me as though there's a potential. I see. My point is, I think Morgan McSweeney, Pat McFadden and Darren Jones, there's going to be some ambiguity amongst civil servants on who's actually driving this. Right.
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A
No, the point I was making about Pat is then that frees Pat to do more of the kind of governing strategy and the political strategy, which he did very effectively in opposition with Morgan McSweeney. But look, this, this, my worry about this is this is sort of the third or fourth kind of shakeup of the communications team. Right. And ultimately the communications has to be driven by a very clear, compelling medium and long term strategy, which you then turn into a communication strategy.
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B
Right. And what it wasn't, it's not a reshuffle in the sense that Rachel Reeves has been replaced or Bridget Phillipson's been replaced, in fact, on the economic side to add to the complexity, they've brought in Minou Shafiq. Now, Minou Shafiq is your chief economics advisor, is that right?
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A
Yeah. Which to me as a journalist going back in Thatcher time, because one of the reasons for the ultimate sort of crumbling of the Thatcher government was the fact they had this long running battle between her and Nigel Lawson over her independent economics advisor, a guy called Alan Walters. Now, I don't know whether Minou Shafiq is of that sort. Who's going to cause that sort of trouble?
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B
Well, I'd be interested to know what you think minutia is there to do. Is she there to say, actually we need a very, very radical, clear economic program that everybody can identify, we're going to take risk, this is the big idea? Or is she supposed to be a sort of competent senior civil servant figure who's going to smooth Things. What are we looking for? And Manish Hafiq is a born in Alexandria, she's from quite a prominent Egyptian family. She grew up in the States. I first came across her because she was the Director General in DFID and then the Permanent Secretary of DFID for a few years in the early Cameron government. She then went on to run the lsc. She then went to Columbia University in New York where she was earning well over a million dollars a year, but got caught up in the Palestine Gaza protests and barely lasted a year and managed somehow in the course of that to end up being attacked very, very strongly by the pro Palestinian side who blamed her for bringing the police to clear protesters.
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A
So when was she at the bank of England? Because she's also been Deputy Governor of.
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B
The bank of England between those, between the LSC and dfid.
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A
Right.
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B
So I mean she's incredibly charming, she's very, very smart. It must have been very bruising in Colombia because she didn't quite work out how to handle that politics. But what do you think Keir's doing? I mean, is he bringing in a sort of very senior, well known figure to reassure people? Is he grooming her to be the next Governor of the bank of England? I mean, what's this role about?
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A
Well, I think what Starmer has been thinking is that his operation has been better on the foreign policy side of things than on the domestic policy side of things. And I think some of that, and a considerable amount of that is down to Jonathan Powell being a complete grown up, not an ego, just gets on and does the job really, really, really well and is completely loyal and that he hasn't necessarily had that same sense on the domestic. And of course the single most important part of the domestic agenda is the economy. And I think that maybe within number 10 there was, there's been a feeling that the, the number 10 in the treasury, the two most important buildings in government, and that he's very much left things to Rachel Reeves, which is fine. And he's totally supportive of Rachel Reeves. I actually saw him not long ago and was really struck by how absolutely supportive he was of her. And not listening to the people who were saying she was this, she was that, the other.
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B
Not listening to the Rory Stewart view.
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A
Correct. Not listening to you, Rory. However, I think maybe understanding that no matter how close you are to the Chancellor, you also do have to have your own mind on the economy and your own thinking in the economy. And I think that's probably what he's looking for. I Don't know, though. I don't know this, I've never met mine. You've met her. But I think generally, if I make a general point about this, interestingly enough, Peter Hyman, who used to work as part of our team, in fact, he and Tim Allen, back in opposition, worked really closely together. And Peter's written this very interesting substack piece today where he's analyzed a note that Tony Blair sent to us by fax sometime around 2000. He's just got four paragraphs, but what it shows. We'll put it in the newsletter because what it shows is that our operation was driven all the time by relentless, never ending conversation, iterative conversation about strategy. And then at the weekend, Tony would kind of formulate his and our thinking and set it out on paper.
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B
So this famous sofa government stuff is presumably a description of you, Jonathan Powell, Angie Mandelson and others sitting around talking.
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A
And it's Gordon and it's the politicians, but it's. And it's. People outside. It's a never ending, iterative conversation.
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B
So he enjoyed debate ideas. He'd get you in and he. All the time and he'd play and argue with you. And then at the end of every week he'd say, this is what we're now doing.
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A
Yeah. Sunday evening, the fax would. This fax machines were still around and. Well, I know they're still around and apparently the National Health Services remains the biggest purchaser of fax machines in Europe. Stop getting fax machines nhs. And it would whir in and it would essentially be, we've got our morning meeting to start the week tomorrow. This is what I want to talk about.
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B
And do you think that was helped by having Jonathan Powell or Gus o' Donnell or someone draft this thing or bring it all together?
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A
No, Tony wrote this.
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B
He did it himself.
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A
Tony wrote it right at Checkers usually or wherever he was at the weekend. He wrote it himself. And, and sometimes it would be. It would say things like Russia underlined, and it would just say, speak to me. In other words, I still want to talk a bit more about this.
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B
So.
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A
But it was a guide.
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B
This is him also calling you over the weekend and playing his guitar to you and this kind of stuff.
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A
This is. And he's calling other people and he's just. And, and he's. And he's talking to Gordon and he's talking to Robin Cook when he was Foreign Secretary, whatever it might be. But then he would sit down and I think this is the point. The strategy at the top has to be driven from the top and understood by everybody. And the only way to have people, everybody understand it is for them to be part of that discussion. And I think that's the bit that I, I hope Tim Alan, because he of course was, you know, part of that team, particularly in opposition, I hope that is what he tries maybe to impose upon this. I often hear from ministers, for example, that there isn't. It's not a kind of thinking ink political operation. There's not this sort of relentless kind of iteration. Now they may think it's a waste of time, I don't know. But I would argue that a year in, are they in the place where they want to be? I don't think any of them are saying yes. And that means there's got to be a reset. And it may be in the end that you do need to have a kind of change of economic course and some of the big decisions that have been made. But at least I think Kier has a sense of the problem. This is about trying to address that problem. But ultimately my message would be strategy has to come from the top.
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B
Okay, well, next question. Gary Harvey, who's a TRIP member from Chelmsford. In light of the reform leader of Nottinghamshire County Council banning local journalists from speaking to him or members of his party. Do you worry, like me, that with the expected increase in reform local and national politicians that it's the start of the slide to Trumpism, given Farage's friendship with Trump? Just a little bit of background on this for listeners. The council banned the Nottingham Post, its website nottinghamshlive and the BBC funded local democracy report quarters from access to councillors press releases and events. Absolutely extraordinary. I mean, one of the things that healthiest about local democracy are what remains of our local newspapers. My whole time as an MP was a lot about the Cumberland Westmoreland Herald, for whom I wrote a weekly or bi weekly column, but also the Westland Gazette, the Cumberland News, BBC Cumbria. I mean, these things are really what holds you to account the way the national newspapers come. I mean, there's an online thing called Cumbria Crack, but basically that's what told voters day in, day out what was actually happening on a suicide.
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A
Yeah, and one of the worst consequences of the whole social media revolution and you know, the kind of gradual takeover of local media has been the sort of death of local newspapers and local media organizations. So the question about whether this is Trumpism. Yes, it is. Richard Tice, the Dubai based MP for wherever, he's the MP for not for Dubai. He's not the MP for Dubai, I know, but he's basically saying that they have the right to decide who they talk to, which of course is totally Trumpian. That Caroline Leavett, brilliant profile of her in the new world, by the way, this week. She's constantly basically picking and choosing who can be in the White House room. And one. Now what gets my goat about this one though, one, as you say, is that local people who vote for local politicians, whatever the view of the papers covering them, have a right to know what they're doing in their name and local media is important for that. But secondly, I imagine if they're listening to the BBC, Nigel Farage's most loathed media organization, which nonetheless gives him the easiest ride, they will doubtless be covering the fact that Nigel Farage is on his way to America. Why is he on his way to America? He's going to give evidence to a Republican controlled congressional inquiry about the threat to free speech in Britain. He's going to talk about what a tragedy it is that Lucy Connolly, this sort of Mother Teresa figure, was locked up for suggesting that immigrants should be set on fire. He's probably going to talk about the way that the media is completely controlled by the government, a government which by the way gets, you know, probably the worst treatment by the press than, you know, even Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot did. So the hypocrisy of this is what gets me.
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B
Can I though just. There's something that's, that's always worrying me often when we talk about Farage. You quite rightly point out that he gets a lot of media coverage and you quite rightly point out that he's managed to skip accountability for Brexit. And of course most of our left leaning listeners very much love this because then the story is basically Farage is just a product of a stacked media system. But presumably there is another part of this which is he's also talented, he's also playing the system well and it'd be lovely to get you to reflect a little bit on a couple of things that he does well because I think it's dangerous to get in the mindset of, you know, as the Lib Dems tend to at the moment, we're not doing anything wrong, we're making all the right speeches, doing the right. It's just nobody will ever cover it or. The Labour government were terrifically successful governments, just oppressive ice against.
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A
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Look, if I were to make an analysis of Nigel Farage, he's a very, very good Communicator.
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B
And what makes him good? What makes him. What sort of things do you do?
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A
Well, remember when Nicolas Sturgeon, when we interviewed her recently and she said that a lot of the Labour ministers, when they come on the television, they speak and then after they've gone, you don't quite know what they've said. Nigraji is very clear about what he wants to say, both on the micro. Here I am, I've got a 30 second clip. This is the message I'm going to land. And on the macro, his big points, you know, now I disagree with a lot of them, but you know what he stands for. He doesn't like Europe, he's very fond of Trump, he thinks that health service is a bit dodgy and should be kind of, you know, revamped there. He doesn't like to talk about that too much, but you know, where he comes from. And the other thing he has, I mean, I've noticed this whenever, you know, I mean, as you know, I've been trying to get him to come on the podcast for some time. He sort of says yes, but then never quite commits.
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B
I. I managed to interview him on one of my BBC programs. Yeah, but that's part of the general sort of.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So, for example, when he had an LBC show, I used to go on it regularly because I quite like engaging with people whose views I fundamentally disagree with. But the other thing I would say, he's very, he can be very charming. If I turn up, I might sort of, you know, want to go straight ahead and pilot and say all this bullshit you're talking at the Congressional inquiry. He'll probably say to me, oh, God, you lot were very unlucky at Old Trafford the other night. He'll always remind me that he's a Crystal palace supporter. Love to know if Crystal palace fans have ever seen him there recently. But anyway. But he's charming and he can be funny. And the other thing I would say about him, he really studies this stuff and he's relentless.
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B
I think another thing that I've observed about politics, doesn't matter whether you're talking about Liz Truss or Jeremy Hunt said.
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A
How much do you want it?
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B
Jenrick or Farage? I mean, famously, he failed to get elected to Parliament, I think, is it four times?
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A
No, more than that. Eight, wasn't it?
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B
And then finally makes it right and just keeps plugging away resilience. And he will shut down parties, found new ones. He survives every type of scandal. Strange funding patterns coming in from his mates, failing to Disclose his. But he just doesn't stop. And for 30 years.
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A
But it's Trumpian. It is Trumpian, but the thing about studying it. So this is what such again, underlines the hypocrisy about this Nottingham Press thing. Nigel Farage told me he still reads every single national newspaper every day. Now, I think that's a waste of a politician's time. That takes a lot of time to do that. Now, he's not reading every word, but he's flicking through and he says what he's doing is trying to work out trends and he's also working out who should I talk to, who's pushing the buttons I want to push. So, for example, he's got an interview in the Daily Express and the front page headline is, Farage to Starmer, I'll take your job right now. It's not much of a message in terms of, you know, policy or any of that stuff. It's a message in terms of I'm playing the game better than they are. So I think it's a combination.
- [19:31]
B
So he thinks a lot about me. So what I'm asking. He's reading the newspapers, he's circling headlines, he's underlying people he might speak to, he's putting a question mark. Should we be tacking this way? Oh, that's quite an interesting angle.
- [19:42]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. Which is. Which is kind of different to what I would see as a good strategy, which is kind of, you know, being clear and then you dip in and out of that. But he's obsessed with the media. He is a creature of media. When you meet him and when you bump into him, just have a chat and stuff, he will mainly talk about media. He won't really talk about policy.
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B
The thing that struck me about him is how strange his life has become, because he basically said to me last time I saw him that it's very difficult for him to walk through the streets. He gets a lot of abuse, very angry with him. I think he has security guards with him, he can't walk, he has to travel in vehicles. So there's a sort of odd dynamic going on. On the one hand, he's a populist politician who's about having a pint of beer in the pub. And on the other hand, actually, he's increasingly having to live a life which is quite kind of distance from.
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A
I'm not sure, but I think. I think the. I think the security thing is a bit status driven. I'm not saying he doesn't get death threats and all that stuff, but you Know, lots of us do, but. So I think it's partly a sort of status thing. It's making him look. Look more kind of I'm important. And actually, I think he does still go into pubs and, you know, you hear stories of him sort of just wandering in. And so he. Look, he's got a way of talking and communicating that is quite trumpy. And it's sort of, you know, he's. It's conversational, it's flowing, it's often funny.
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B
And the interpubs thing is, I also think is almost necessary now in the modern world. It doesn't matter whether you're Zoran Mamdani in New York or whether you are Jokowi, who did it a lot in Indonesia. That ability to be seen with people, to be open to people, to be out on the ground. Not quite seeing enough of that from Starmer. And it's a pity because actually he's quite natural with people. One on one.
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A
Yeah. Look, I think the other thing, though is that it's like I saw a video they put out, Labour Party social media put out on of him playing football. Well, we know he plays football. That's fine. But I think when you're, you know, that's a part of it.
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B
Okay.
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A
I think for Farage, this is why I do relate it to the way that the media treats him. The fact that he can do that stupid video he did last week that we talked about with the white fur coat and pretending he's a rapper, what he would say. And he said this is a phrase he uses a lot of the time. It's just a bit of fun. Okay, well, it's not just a bit of fun when, as a consequence of your policy and a consequence of your relentless messaging about immigrants and immigration, we are back to a place where, as happened in, I think in the northeast of England the other day, the P word is now being daubed on Basham.
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B
Where he's talking about full Trumpian. 600,000.
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A
600,000 deportations driven there, by the way, by the fact that Rupert Lowe. This is the other thing about Farage. Farage is not a team player. Farage can't keep a team together.
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B
They keep collapsing, they keep going. But it doesn't seem to affect him.
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A
No, it doesn't seem to affect him because ultimately it's about him. And actually he quite likes having somebody to the right because he can say, oh, I'm not as bad as Tommy Robinson, I'm not as bad as Rupert Lowe. But the consequence of him and Also the media, you know, the right wing media. Look, I saw a thing on social media the other day, this crowd of people, it looked like, you know, you see it with football fans when they're sort of charging through railway stations. But this was just a group of people basically shouting, racist, chanting, racist abuse. Okay. Another thing I saw yesterday, kids with one of their parents in front of them filming, saying, go on then. And they started this chant about, what do we want? We want them out. When do we want them out? We want it out now. Talking about immigrants, all waving flags and all this nonsense. And so I think he knows what he's doing and he does it, but then he slightly pulls back.
- [23:25]
B
Good exchange on Twitter between Paul Hilder and Douglas Caswell. Who was this, who was this Tory mp, then became a reformer, I guess it was those days, a Brexit party MP who's now moved to the States. And Hilda's pointing out that when he was with Carswell in 2014, he saw a sort of right wing figure that he could still quite respect, who was prepared to call out racism, who was prepared to talk about the genuine contribution made by immigrants to British society. And now Carswell's gone well off and is saying, we don't want Abduls in Britain, I think was the phrase. Right. And so Hilda is saying, what happened to you? What's happened over the last 10, 12 years? And Carswell's like, I'm not going to get into your gotcha star finally. But fundamentally what we're doing, talking about is somehow what once looked as though there was a sort of respectable right wing kind of, you know, maybe sort of sub Jacob Rees Mogg covered. You know, we're worried about immigration, but we're respectful towards immigrants, we're not racist. Is now becoming with people like Carswell something much, much more troubling.
- [24:39]
A
Yeah, but in this, don't, don't underestimate the impact of Trump on that. Trump, Trump and the kind of white supremacists in, in the States are, they're out and proud now. They don't feel that they have to sort of trim their views. And I think, look, I do think Brexit was a turning point in this. I think that made people who really don't like having too many foreigners in the country feel emboldened to say so.
- [25:01]
B
On this subject because it's kind of mesmerizing, the different type of politicians. And we're talking about this kind of popular style. But I loved the leading interview that we've just done, which is available now to everybody with Jonas Gastora, who's the Norwegian Prime Minister. Fantastic. He's the serving Norwegian Prime Minister, but my goodness, he's a very, very different sort. Hugely thoughtful, brave, but in some ways a kind of sort of old style, quite good looking, distinguished establishment politician. Quite, quite different feeling from Fraj. Did you enjoy that?
- [25:32]
A
Very much so, yeah. Yeah. Well, I've known Jonas for a long time. I think he's a great guy and a, and a really impressive politician. Of course, Norway was in the news here this week because they bought this British frigate, biggest ever frigate order from the uk, beat off France, Germany and the United States. I loved, I also loved. What did you, what did you think he was saying about the Nobel Peace Prize?
- [25:56]
B
I think he's definitely, definitely signaling that he's, he's not going to deliver it for Trump seemed to be the. Because he can't. Because he doesn't control it. I just thought he was such a wonderful man. And, you know, sometimes I think maybe people won't have heard of the Prime Minister in Norway, but it's amazing hearing a head of government speaking so fluently and interestingly about the world. Here's one for you then. Online Safety Act. We've got so many questions on this. Just to explain, from 25 July, the Online Safety act came to force, which means that social media and other Internet platforms, platforms that are required to implement safety measures protecting children or face large fines. So you have to upload a photo ID or a selfie which gets analyzed to check if it's an adult trying to access the site. So here's Laura Harrison, Staffordshire. I can't stand Farage almost as much as Alastair can't stand him, and that's saying something. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. His concerns about the overreach the Online Safety act do make me wonder. While the theory sounds fine, it is the implementation veering into dangerous territory. Could this be a slippery slope to censorship, data privacy breaches? If so, how worried should we be? So this is a big thing. I mean, this goes back to us interviewing Peter Malinowskis, the Premier of South Australia. That connects to what we did yesterday on Southeast Asia. Singapore's got pretty ferocious act about controlling online traffic. And on the one hand, you and I feel, my goodness, social media has contributed so much to polarization, undermining democracy. And in the case of online safety, pornography, self harm, we need to control access to it.
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A
That's where I am.
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B
On the other hand, of course, people point out that when governments get control of this, the line between what is or is not legitimate to say gets a bit blurred. So in Singapore, it seemed as soon as sites started questioning the Singaporean government's foreign policy position on Ukraine, they were pretty quick to shut those things down. Down. On this side, I've got two, two great sources, Ploy, who runs Digital Reach, and Ben, who runs the Merdeka center, who look at Southeast Asian social media and point out that this act in Singapore, which is called the Protecting Agents Online Falsehood and Manipulation act, begins being used by governments like this to make sure that you control discussion.
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A
Look, this online safety thing is a massive debate that's gone through Parliament. I know Peter Picard ended up being criticized for quotes, being too close to the tech giants, etceter. As you know, I'm a bit of a technophobe, so I can't pretend remotely to be an expert on this. I do nonetheless think that whether we like it or not, we have entered a world where we are constantly giving our data away. And because it's giving us things that we want, we don't necessarily want to think too carefully through the consequences of that. If I can just underline the hypocrisy point though, Farage and Tyson, these guys coming out against this, I think one of the reasons is that they rely on misinformation. They're licking their lips at the way that AI is going to change campaigning. They didn't mind remotely that the whole Cambridge Analytica thing allowed them to sort of be more, more effective as campaigning in, in Brexit. And so I actually think that where they're coming from on this is these are tools that we, we can use. And I just don't buy the line that they're worried about, you know, somebody having their data nick by some tech giant.
- [29:19]
B
Well, there's an extraordinary fact just to finish, which people will be aware of, who follow this stuff closely, which is that one of the biggest pairs into the British economy last year is a new site called OnlyFans, which is for younger listeners, what we call an adult content site. Paid £148,000,000,000 in corporation tax last year. It's, it's. We talk about innovation in Britain, productivity in Britain. This is one of the big British economic success stories. But it's a deep.
- [29:49]
A
What does it say about our country, Roy? What does it, what does that say? I mean, part of me thinks, yeah, innovation, blah, blah, and, you know, sort of tapping into the tech revolution and at least they're paying tax, unlike Google. I get that. But what does it say about our country?
- [30:07]
B
It's terrifying. It's terrifying. And adults.
- [30:09]
A
Am I being a grumpy old man?
- [30:10]
B
And adults may wish to look in more detail at what exactly this site does. It's the most peculiar business model you've ever seen in your life.
- [30:16]
A
There we are. What a bloody world. Just say to listeners and viewers, we're going to come back in the second half with a quite somber discussion about journalism in Gaza. Mama Papa, mi cun ridmo alarmante il arropa.
- [30:43]
B
Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel foreign Mariam Abu Daga Mohammed Salama Ahmed Abu Aziz Moaz Abu Ta these are Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza.
- [31:17]
A
Just last week, an Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital took their lives alongside at least 15 other Palestinians.
- [31:26]
B
And there are so many more. Over the last 22 months, more than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army. At the rate that journalists are being killed in Gaza, there will be soon very few people able to report on the conflict at all.
- [31:43]
A
Maryam Abu Dhaga, one of the people we just mentioned, was just 33. A freelancer for the Associated Press, she'd written her will. At 33, her only wish was to see her 13 year old son again after 18 months apart. And she never got that chance. For 22 months of war, she reported fearlessly from some of Gaza's most dangerous places and her images of death and devastation sparked global outcry.
- [32:11]
B
This has become now the deadliest period for journalists in contemporary history. More than 70% of journalists killed since October 2023 have been killed in Gaza.
- [32:24]
A
A generation of accountability is being wiped out to make way for impunity. And without journalists, without their eyes and voices, we cannot know what is truly happening.
- [32:36]
B
And the most recent attack, this hospital strike, what seems to have happened is the Israeli military hit the hospital, then waited for the journalists and medical workers to come in to report on the strike and then once they were in the building, hit it a second time.
- [32:53]
A
All being filmed. And of course what they say all the time is that they were taking out a Hamas operative. But we never quite get to see the name or the face of the Hamas operative. For all these reasons, the rest is politics is supporting the media blackout campaign, standing in solidarity with Reporters Without Borders and Avaz working to protect journalists in Gaza.
- [33:14]
B
We join with more than 250 other media outlets across the world to condemn these killings, we call on the Israeli authorities to allow independent access for the international press in the Gaza Strip.
- [33:29]
A
Right, Rory, this is definitely one for you. Gillian Andrews, do you both use AI software in your day to day lives or you do a of lot lot. And specifically, Rory, do you let your young children use it? I'm concerned by studies coming out which show that ChatGPT could be making us dumber. Should I let my children use it? This is from a worried mother in Exeter.
- [33:53]
B
I mean, this is something that I began to notice in my own life. And when I talk to American scientists and AI specialists about it, they tended to. I had an extraordinary debate with a very, very well known American scientist about this two, three months ago, where I said I was beginning to feel that actually my brain capacity was being affected because if my, you know, if one of my children, for example, said, could we make iron at home in the past, I would have thought about it, scratched my head, got all the neural networks going, trying to work out how you'd make iron. And in Chris, I was just going, ChatGPT. So I want to ask ChatGPT, right.
- [34:29]
A
What did he want to sort of start? Blast furnace in the kitchen.
- [34:31]
B
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Innovation, exactly. So I was beginning to think, actually this was a little bit like instead of walking up the stairs, getting in the lift and, you know, I could begin to feel that my brain was getting less smart. I talked to this American scientist, he was like, no, no, David, ridiculous. Rory and I. What are you worrying about anyway? And. And I had this extraordinary debate with leading AI entrepreneurs, entrepreneur, who said to me, the wonderful thing about AI is that I can now write poetry and suddenly we can all be poets. And I remember thinking, have you gone mad? If the AI is writing the poem for you, you're not a poet. That's like saying you can bench press 3 tons because you own a forklift. I mean, the whole thing is kind of completely mad, right? So anyway, what's happened now is that MIT has done a study which has compared people using ChatGPT, using Google search, or just using your brain and then run ECEG brain networks. And they found that using the AI is genuinely leading to a situation where your cognitive ability is being impaired with some weeks of effect. And basically, I think in the end they haven't fully produced their theory. And we can share the MIT research. But my best guess is that basically the brain, like our muscles, requires work. And if you subcontract all the work, as increasingly everybody's doing, I mean, Let me just sort of develop it next stage. Most of my friends who are now teaching at universities and teaching at schools are completely open about the fact that they simply cannot distinguish a AI written essay from a normal essay written by their students. Almost impossible for them. Even with AI, they can't distinguish. They're having to discover new ways on doing examinations, including making people sit either without computers or talking. The Chinese government has done some very radical things of shutting down AI models using the digital Great Wall during the exam period. So people can't do this. But I noticed that my son, I mean, he, he was asked to write a story for school during the summer holidays. He claims that every single one of his 10 year old fellow students are just using ChatGPT to write the story, which it can do in three seconds.
- [36:43]
A
So this is possible that within the education system we end up going back much more to sort of pen and paper system where you have all sort of modern tools taken away and you have to show that you're capable of critical thinking on the spot. Yeah, bring it on, says the technophobe.
- [36:58]
B
I don't know whether you find this. We'll just sort of finish on this. But if I do research on AI, and it's very, very good at doing research, you know, I could give her 17 questions, draw weird links and it could generate stuff. But do I remember two, three weeks later what it said in the same way as I would? Absolutely not compared to actually reading books, taking notes, using my hand.
- [37:24]
A
Well, there's a great link to the next. I think it'll be our final question from Nancy Wallbank, who's a TRIP member from Lancaster. As the new academic year starts, what policy changes would Rory and Alastair like to see to accompany the National Year of Reading? What changes could be made to reverse the decline in children reading for pleasure? And what past policies may have led to the erosion of encouraging children to read just for the love of a good story? And there were some figures about this recently, weren't they, showing a decline in terrifying.
- [37:53]
B
I think it's gone from 30% of people reading down to 16%. I actually thought even 30% was surprisingly high. But yes, reading is declining in the us, it's declining in the uk. Oddly, that doesn't affect bookshops, which are still getting pretty expensive.
- [38:09]
A
Yeah, they do really well. Yeah. Is that because those who read are reading more?
- [38:12]
B
Those who read seem to be buying more books. Whether they're reading more, maybe they're like me, they're buying lots of books and just skimming them. I don't know what's going on, but were all your kids great readers, all three of them, or did one of them read better than others?
- [38:21]
A
No, I think because the technological revolution was kind of happening by the time they were at school, I, I think there is a sort of tendency to think that laptop and phone is where you, where you go. They do read. Not as much as Fiona and I read. I think the. In answer to Nancy's question, I think giving children books is a really good use of public money. You know, you, I know do this and so do I. Publishers have so many books now. Some of them do give them away, right? They have so many books that never get read, never get sold. Give them to kids, pump them into schools. I've got this great guy, I'll give him a shout out. He's a wonderful guy, very wealthy, successful business guy called Joe Hermani. He, and I'm not just saying this because he buys loads of my books, but he does every time I bring a book out, he buys loads of them and sends them to schools and libraries. That is proper philanthropy to me.
- [39:19]
B
But let me add another dimension to this, which is I think the real key, I imagine, for getting kids to read is to make sure that the books they first pick up are genuinely enjoyable and ones that they've chosen themselves. I think the way to get addicted to reading, and I feel this because one of my children was a very, very early, very active, extreme reader. He can read a 450 page book in a day at 10, my other child is slower to get into reading. And the real thing is learning as a parent that what I shouldn't be doing is making him read what I think he ought to read, but making sure it's something that's funny, amusing. For people with mild dyslexia or more serious dyslexia, there are wonderful dyslexia friendly books which have slightly different vocabularies, different storylines. Lovely. Audiobooks can be great. There's been a huge audiobook revolution. And one way to encourage children to read is to read along with an audiobook if they're slightly slow readers. Graphic. Graphic novels are fun as a way of getting people going.
- [40:22]
A
I think a lot of this always is about parenting. I mean, I agree with you. You don't want to be saying, read this, it's good for you. But to be surrounded by books, I think is, is a good way to get kids into books. I think one of the reasons I became a journalist was because I can't remember what age I was. But I remember my dad reading the Sunday Post, which is a sort of Scottish, very traditionalist Scottish newspaper that we used to get sent down to England. And I can remember my dad reading it and really reading it and thinking, that's really interesting. Why is he doing that? And then after he'd finished it, I started reading it and really being captivated by it. And then I can remember some of the first books that I. You know that feeling you get about 8, 10, 15 pages in where you think, I'm really going to enjoy this book. I think it's one of the best feelings in the world still. And unlike Fiona, who if she starts a book, she still feels she has to finish it. I don't mind giving up books because I love that feeling of. Of getting into. I've actually had two this week that I really got into. One is an author in I never. This is tragedy because when I looked him, I realized he's really famous writer. Miza Selimovich, Bosnian born, written in Serbian. And he wrote this amazing novel called the Fortress, which actually a guy sent to me saying, you really would enjoy this novel. And I did. It was written some time ago. Brilliant. And then the other one I'm reading, we've got to get on the podcast. I'm reading Malone, Georgia Maloney's biography in German, because I saw it at Frankfurt airport and I just picked it up and it is. It's a compelling read. It really is. I mean, halfway through. And you can. But that feeling I got in her introduction almost from the first line, actually, almost from the first line of the book, I thought, this is going to be good. And that's. That's a feeling that's, you know, all kids should get that.
- [42:07]
B
Well, little, little shout out for me for. For couple of books that I've been reading over the summer, which I've really loved. On the more serious side, I've been in Orkney and really loving an amazing book on Neolithic Orkney written by an emeritus professor from York University. But on a more jolly note, Nick Harkaway, who I think is John Le Carre's son, has written these extraordinary novels that I've just begun to discover. Titanium Noir, which is an amazing detective story set in a future dominated by semi immortal tech giants, which really would play into a lot of your dystopian fears about Elon Musk and the shape of the world. And the second one, which is Tiger man, about a former British colony in the Indian Ocean, which is basically about to be blown up because there's been a chemical spill with a British sergeant trying to follow a crime through it. That just wonderful and wonderful in relationships. His relationship with a boy he's trying to adopt, with a woman he's falling in love with, with patriotism, with the military. So, I mean, a real extraordinary sort of heir to his father. It's very unusual, actually, to have, I think, two generations of great, great writers. Alexandre Dumas, maybe. Yeah. But otherwise not that common.
- [43:29]
A
Yeah.
- [43:30]
B
Kingsley Martin, Amusement.
- [43:31]
A
Of course. The other Orkney novel that was recently made into a very, very successful film starring Saoirse Ronan is the Outrun story of an arc. Were people talking about that when you were there?
- [43:43]
B
No, a lot of. Lot of talk about George Mackay Brown still.
- [43:46]
A
Okay.
- [43:46]
B
Extraordinary SAS poet.
- [43:48]
A
Yeah. Because the Outrun, I got a sense from some people that they felt it sort of portrayed or in not a great way, but it's a brilliant novel and it's a brilliant film. So there we are. I think a publisher should get onto the government and say, look, why don't we find a way of giving books to children? Not books that they read and then leave in the school, but books that are their books. Because it's terrifying how many kids live up in home, growing up in homes actually without books and without reading.
- [44:19]
B
On the subject of immortal tech giants, billionaires, there is, of course, now available for members, which people can subscribe to. We've released a miniseries put together by Anthony Scaramucci and Caddy K, following on from our JD Vance miniseries. The new one is on Elon Musk, which people may enjoy. And then we've got more of our own content to follow.
- [44:38]
A
So for that, you just head to the restispolitics.com okay, Rory, all good. See you next week.
- [44:43]
B
Looking forward to it. See you next.