Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Eyes Offices.
Joined as always by Helen Lewis and Adam McQueen.
Uh, Ian's away this week.
So we're gonna trash the place.
So we've got a few things that have been either in the mag or in the
news since the last mag, or that might be coming up in the next mag.
And thing.
One that has been actually all over the place is defection time.
Which of us is going to defect to the Spectator who can say, yeah, some
faces being pulled at prospective.
I did write quite a
Helen: rude piece about the Spectator quite recently.
I think they might not be that keen to have me, they might be even less
keen to have me than the Labour Party was to have Natalie Elick.
Andy: Yes.
So Natalie Elick, um, Dover, was it Dover?
And, um, she's a Labour, she's a Labour MP now.
And that's, that's fine.
Or it's not.
And it's dreadful.
Adam: the most profound question I've heard on this entire topic came from
my husband last week when she was on the news standing next to Kiss Armor.
And you said, why is she dressed as an air hostess?
Helen: It was very BA cabinetry.
Really?
He was, wasn't it?
She had this red, white, and blue knotted scarf, and I thought, that
looks, she looks like she's gonna ask me if I want a gin to, can we answer?
Yes.
But yeah.
Yeah.
So she was married to Charlie Elit, the previous, uh, MP for Dover.
He was then accused, uh, by, of sexual offenses, by multiple women.
Mm-hmm.
Um, launched a liable action against the Sunday Times about
the reporting of these claims.
Uh, went on trial for a different offense to that was convicted.
At that point, even the Tory party went, well, you're probably gonna
have to probably have to kinda give up the seat now, aren't you?
She ran for it, won it, and has now since defected to Labour.
There was some good stuff in the paper over the weekend by Robert Buckland, the
former Justice Secretary, saying, well actually, you know, she came to me and she
said some terrible things about couldn't I sort out getting a different judge and
I mean, she's all terrible and she'd be an investigation into it and everyone went.
Wow.
That sounds like something that was also a scandal last week
when she was a tour MP Robert.
Adam: This woman's dreadful.
No, but this is the great mistake that people make when they defect is they
forget that there's a whips office in their old party that's got a big
book on them and it's got all of that stuff in that we, they were, they
were protecting them over and taking care of them over up until this point.
But now it's just gonna be open season, isn't it?
Andy: The thing, the thing I.
Think most surprising about the whipping operation is that Gil
Brandeth was ever part of it.
He was a junior whip, wasn't he?
When he was.
It just does seem slightly extraordinary, doesn't it?
And I think Matthew
Helen: par, well, the man would at least trust with secrets.
I like the idea being summon to see Giles Brandreth and one of his comedy
juMPers and himself absolute like,
Adam: can we go back to defections then, please?
Right, yes.
The bizarre thing I think about Natalie Alpha is the, uh, the case that, that,
that Helen has just, um, just outlined is.
The one thing she's known for.
And I don't think any, presumably the thinking as far as it went in
kiss arm's head was MP, fed Dover.
Lots of stuff to say about small boats.
Therefore I will look tough on immigration, which is a good, um, good
message to be sending out to Tory voters who were thinking of switching sides
and other people who were concerned about, uh, illegal immigration.
Helen: Yeah.
I also think when the fact that she wasn't kicked outta the Tory party for any of the
defending her husband post sexual offenses convictions suggests that they don't
care that much about it and they don't think she's done anything that wrong.
Mm-Hmm.
So I think the calculation on the Labour side was.
Having someone who's the MP for small boats saying, Rishi Sinek
small boats plan has failed.
Brilliant win.
And no one normal will really pay attention to all of this stuff.
But it's also, it was
Adam: the second time she's been in trouble over the, uh, trying to interfere
in her husband's court case, isn't it?
Because she, she was suspended along with three other, to MPs, uh, from the
commons for a while, for sending in a letter to the judge, um, atteMPting
to influence the judge's decision.
Yes.
Which is a fairly major scandal to have behind you.
And again, we think makes it not an ideal.
Person to recruit to your party.
But
Andy: it's exactly as Helen says, parties are in this constant state
of triangulation between what's going to appeal to their members.
Mm-Hmm.
Uh, their MPs and their voters and all, and all sorts of different constituencies
have to be played against each other.
And clearly the idea is, I think there was a good article
about this by Patrick McGuire.
He said, Labour is siMPly prioritizing the voter.
Above absolutely anything else, no matter how much it annoys members
of the party, no matter how much it annoys the MPs, which is a case you can
make in an election year, I suppose.
Oh, it's
Helen: grubby.
I mean it's grubby, but it's probably effective.
And they've had under Morgan McSweeney's the kind of um,
Emin Re of the Starmer project.
Andy: The Svengali, yeah,
Helen: exactly.
He is very much, um, they've had this whole idea about the hero voters,
which are Tory to Labour switches.
And so, um, Tom Hamilton used to work for Labour at very good Substack post about
this, and Dan Pooler the previous, um.
Defection saying what they want to do more than anything star wants to do
is say if you voted Tory last time.
Lots of people like you are now switching.
That's not a weird or abnormal thing to do.
It doesn't say you were wrong last time.
It says the Labour party changed and you've, you know, you've had
a crappy time, and this version of the toy party isn't for you.
So they want to normalize the idea of moving from the torries to Labour, and
that's part of the defection strategy.
Andy: It's a very different.
Tactic to Labour strategy last time.
One, which is, why don't you go off and join the Tories?
Mm.
You love them so much
Helen: and, and low andhold people did, people didn't work out so well.
Yeah.
Andy: Okay.
I, I wonder on the de defect thing, is there a, what if all, what if
all the conservative MPs decided they wanted to switch to Labour?
Is that a legitimate way of winning an election?
I appreciate it's probably quite unlikely to happen, but basically
Helen: at the point that Rishi Sun devotes to Labour, I think you to get the is up
Andy: actually, if you just get a majority by means of another 40 MPs switching
conservative to Labour, you then have the majority in the House of Commons.
What happens then?
It'll be quite an ask.
I mean, it's
Adam: quite rare that people cross the floor, isn't it?
I'm getting another 40.
I are there actually enough left.
'cause most of 'em have said they're stepping down in the next
election anyway, aren't they?
That's true.
And the same true in both of these cases.
Danter and Natalie Alfi both said.
That's it.
We are not standing again for Labour in the next election, which
you know, is probably a good idea.
Yeah.
Because I think that is a point where the voters in Dover would say, on
both sides would say, well, hang on, I think we've had enough of this.
This is a bit off.
And the
Helen: CLPs, the constituency Labour parties, particularly in the case of
Natalie Alfred, the clp is not happy.
Should I tell you the boring answer to your question, which
is that a Prime minister governs by being able to pass confidence
and supply motions in the house.
So Rishi Sinek would run a minority, uh, administration with whatever Tory MPs he
had left, at which point he would try and.
Either the opposition parties would try and put through a no confidence motion.
If he lost that the government fell, he'd have to go to the palace, or
he'd try and put a budget through.
And if that failed, that would be treated as a confidence issue.
So he, but he could carry, even if there was just him and Jacob in a
committee room somewhere, he could try and carry on and just try and get
through votes on an individual basis.
And this
Adam: effectively, sorry to come on All Adam's history corner on this.
we've agreed we're have some loot music whenever we do Adam's History Corner.
Matt, the producer is not looking happy about this
All: fuming, but
Adam: that was effectively what was going on in the last, uh, couple of
years of John Major's, uh, administration was that it wasn't, there were a few
people who crossed the floor, but um, also it was mostly by elections.
That and kicking people out over.
Um, votes on mastery and things.
He ended up running a, a, a minority government.
He, he didn't actually have a full majority to get votes through
and had to do it on various kind of confidence and supply.
Mm-Hmm.
Arrangements with the Democratic unionist party.
I think it was at that point, wasn't it?
Uncle Bless Paisley and people, yeah.
Andy: Presumably using Giles Brandreth and his, his dastardly whipping operation.
Yeah.
Which was so effective, as we can clearly see.
At that point, he'll tell you an anecdote about the queen and then he'll hit
you with the stuff they've got on you.
Yeah.
Um, okay,
so there have been rumblings, murmurings that this is gonna happen again before
the election because Dan Pool was a fortnight ago, or three weeks ago.
Natalie Vic was a week before we were recording this podcast.
Are we seeing a point where I.
The event horizon is slowly getting closer.
We're gonna see a Dr.
An hourly drumbeat, uh, of defections.
Or is this not gonna happen anymore?
Helen: I think it's very unlikely because defections are relatively unusual.
What you've got instead is lots of tour MPs just going, I've seen
enough like the Queen with Liz Trust.
I've seen enough, I'm out.
Um, so I think that's more likely to happen.
But you know, it, the momentum would be, I mean, label would
love to keep the momentum going.
Do you remember the heady autumn summer when people kept
effecting to the Lib Dems?
Do you remember the No, I
Andy: actually don't.
I might have remember holiday or so do remember.
Do
Helen: you remember Tig?
Andy: I do remember the, the TERs.
The, the independent group.
Helen: The independent group always
Andy: made me a teeth hitch bit.
The fact that the T was part of the acronym.
I didn't like it.
Helen: Well, the, yeah, but otherwise it sounds like a racial slur.
So I think I can see why they didn't do that.
But, um, but then, you know, Luciana Berger went and took Rama went,
uh, various people went and, and there was a kind of in the run
up to their conference season.
They kept going and welcome to the Lib Democrat, Sam Gemma, and
everyone went, who's Sam Gemma?
Adam: Mm.
Helen: that's what happened.
And I think probably if you were ki Dmi, you'd want another
couple before conference season.
But again, you do need them to be people where you say,
welcome to the Labour Party.
I mean, did you see the great funny graphics?
I, people would, making fake ones.
Welcome to the Labour Party, Barron Harken.
Oh, you have to be, you know, somebody who your, your back bench is greet with a
certain level of appreciation and respect.
Otherwise, it's not, it's not quite.
So exciting.
Adam: I mean, Dan Polter was not exactly a household name prior to
defecting a couple of weeks ago.
Was it?
Well.
Andy: Depending on which paper you read.
He was either a, a senior conservative and former minister, or he was a
nobody, and we've never heard of him.
We didn't need him in the party anyway.
It's always my absolute favorite nonsense journalistic phrase
Adam: is a senior back bencher.
It's like, unless you are actually talking about Peter Bottomley,
who is the father of the house.
Then, you know, they, they enter unless they're really quite old,
you just say, yeah, there is no such thing as a senior back bencher.
Yeah.
Helen: Yeah.
But that's like, I mean, there's a version of irregular verb, isn't it?
When I worked to the New Statesman that you either used to be, or Wells
magazine, or it used to be like the House Journal of the Left, or it used to be
kind of, you know, small circulation, socialist rag, and I'm sure a version
of ham, a private eye as well too, depending on what, on what, whether or
not people agree with what you're doing.
Andy: Yeah.
Helen: Do you know what I wish we had Andy?
I wish we had some kind of quiz.
Andy: Me too,
Adam: actually.
Yeah, that would've been good.
I should have thought of them.
Oh, oh, hang on.
What's this?
I've got written in my notebook in fronted me.
Yes, folks, it's quiz time, right?
It's time for the Grand Defections quiz.
Would you like to select your weapons?
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, do you want to, oh, I see.
So would you like the bell?
No, I
Helen: think, no, I think actually it, it was hard.
Remember everyone
Adam: wants the hooter, don't they?
He remember was looking enviously at the hooter,
Helen: I remember from Christmas that that actually requires
quite a lot of grip strength.
So well let, I'm gonna leave that to you.
Let's see if
Adam: I can, okay.
Okay, we're back, back, back.
So Helen goes and Andy goes,
Helen: I think there's like a second delay on that.
I think you've taken a handicap on this.
Yeah, you're
Adam: right.
Okay.
Fingers on whatever things, which MP has changed parties twice in the
past year with hardly anyone noticing.
Helen: No, not the Anderson Bugger.
Uh, George Galloway.
No, not George Galloway.
You can't just
Adam: name all the MPs
Helen: that come on.
I'll go in there.
Andy, do you wanna
Adam: come in here?
Do you want a clue?
I'd need a clue.
Pothead or Andrew Bridget.
Andrew Bridget is the right answer to get from that clue that potato pot takes.
I know
Andy: the way Adam thinks the problem, he think he sees a potato, he thinks Andrew.
Bridget does it do
Adam: Very much.
Yeah.
It makes meal times extremely difficult, but it's very good
'cause I'm off the carbs.
Andrew Bridget was kicked outta the Tories in May, 2023 for
saying that, uh, coMParing the vaccine rollout to the Holocaust.
Um, he, a little while after that, joined Lawrence Fox's reclaim Party.
Oh, so Reclaim, actually had an MP for a little while, but not for all that long.
It turns out because he left again a few years later and is now
running as the independent candidate for his, um, seat of Northwest
Lestershire in the general election.
Although, weirdly.
As the, I revealed in January.
He's still being bankrolled by Jeremy Hoskin, who, uh, is the Bankroller
also for the reclaim party, but just a bit too embarrassed to be
associated with Lawrence Fox, I think.
as you said, there were two defections from the conservative party to
Labour in the space of a fortnight.
But who was the last person to change parties directly?
Not after being deprived of the whip and kicked out and becoming an independent.
The first person to crossed the floor, first MP to do that
before Dan Putter in April.
And that's Helen
Helen: Christian Wakeford.
Oh, very good.
Adam: No.
Helen: Oh, not very good.
Adam: Oh, I've got a second chance, but that was the name I would've said.
Okay.
Do you want to try, you wanna throw in?
You were one in 650 chance?
No, I've got no idea.
Was Lisa Cameron?
who's she you asking?
S October, 2023.
She left the SNP for the conservatives.
Helen: Ooh, that's spicy and unusual.
Uh,
Adam: she's the MP for East Kil Bride Strathaven and Les Macau.
Um, and she said at the time that the, uh, the s and p was a toxic environment,
which was affecting her mental health.
Well, that you think she's joined the modern conservative party.
She's a former clinical psychologist, so she knows a thing or two about that.
Okay.
Um, and in order to disprove her claims, the s and p President, Mike
Russell said she was just having.
A rather odd tantrum from somebody who was going to lose their seat.
So not toxic at all.
As you can clearly see, he was sort of ego driven politics
that was deeply unattractive.
when was the last person to defect directly from the
conservatives to the Labour Party?
Go on Andy.
Andy: Uh, I'll say 1996.
Helen: 1979.
Adam: No, go, go, go higher.
Go.
More recently,
Helen: 2015.
Adam: no, 2007 Quentin Davies.
Any idea I had?
Absolutely none.
He was conservative.
MP four Grantham and Stanford.
Now, um, uh, Lord Stanford, 'cause funnily enough ended up in the House of Lords, but
he'd defected on the day that Gordon Brown was elected as leader of the Labour Party.
Saying that this was a leader he had always admired.
Unlike David Cameron, who has a towering record and a clear vision
for the future, which I fully share.
And indeed, he fully share by chair by having stepped down at the
next election in 2010 when Gordon Brown was swept out of office.
Didn't go so well before that.
Never heard of this one either.
Robert Jackson, January, 2005.
Oh yeah.
Robert Jackson.
Yeah.
You know the one, you know, the one saying that the conservatives had dangerous
views on Europe amongst other things.
Helen: Okay.
So quite a lot of these defectors have been proved right by the tides of history.
I will say
Andy: yes, but it seems like such a, a difficult and unpopular thing to do.
I'm amazed that anyone, especially in that chamber, you've got two sides.
One of them is your side.
Mm-Hmm.
It must take real.
GuMPtion or real confidence to do it, to walk across.
Helen: But that's a a really, that's why I think the Starmer project
is so interested in defectors.
'cause most people will never, ever admit that they were wrong about anything.
Right?
Mm-Hmm.
They won't, they won't say, I regret doing this.
I regret voting this.
I've spent my entire life, as it turns out, coMPletely pointlessly on a lie.
So you have to provide some plausible psychological mechanism, which is why
they are so intent on stressing in the Labour Party that Labour has changed.
As in, of course, you wouldn't have voted for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
Party, but you're fine voting for ours.
That's not, you know, you're not saying that you were wrong to vote
for the conservatives last time.
You're just, you know, now we've got, you've got a better choice.
Andy: Sort of de tribalising things.
Yeah.
Adam: which MP, who you definitely will have heard of, changed parties four times.
Andy: I've dropped, I've dropped the horn in excitement.
Which, and a
Adam: drop go on Winston Churchill, you are correct.
Yes.
For a bonus.
Can you name the parties?
conservative
Helen: liberals.
Adam: Two of them, 1904, switched for the conservatives to the liberals.
Helen: Did he have a cheeky bang as a Labour MP?
That seems unlikely, but
Adam: no.
That's one of the ones he doesn't do.
How
Helen: about a bit of time as a
Adam: Whig
I think the Whig were the Liberals, weren't they?
Oh, no.
Pretty much.
Okay.
Yeah.
1924 stood in a by-election as an independent Mm-Hmm.
A bit later on the same year in the general election,
stood as a Constitutionalist.
Very nice, don't they?
And swiftly ended up back in the conservative government as
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
That's the end of the quiz and, uh, I'm reliably informed that the winner this
week it is, Andy, thank you that that Winston Churchill, uh, biography I read
really, really came through for me.
In the end, what we've established here is that the only politician
that two private eye journalists can name accurately is Winston Churchill.
So we're doing really, really well.
Andy: Oh, lord.
Well that was a really difficult quiz, Adam.
Thank you.
Helen: I knew that Emma Nicholson was a Tory Pier, and
I thought, well, that's funny.
I, I didn't actually know that she was a Tory Pier about Then you, you foxed me.
Andy: Patrick trick question.
You don't like losing quizzes, do you?
I'm really upset.
Right.
Let's move on to, uh, story number two of the week, and this is off
the back of another bit of audio.
This was something that, uh, was on the Today Program.
Uh, at the weekend.
They've been running a series about housing and especially the problems faced
by tenants, and that's because there's a new bit of law, um, slowly working
its way through, which is called the Renters Reform Bill and the Today Program.
At the end of their week's programming on the subject, they had Michael Goff, uh,
who's the Secretary of State responsible.
Uh, and he was on, and he was interviewed about, uh.
The housing situation about the progress of this bill and obviously, 'cause
that was the sort of culminating point, there wasn't, there wasn't a follow
up to that, so I thought it'd be fun for us to provide that follow up.
Helen: Can you, um, run me quickly through the re reform bill?
I'll tell you what my basic level of knowledge is.
Yes.
It wants to get rid of no fault evictions.
That's how it started off.
Mm-Hmm.
And change from having fixed tendencies to kinda rolling tendencies
where you have to come up with some reason to kick people out.
Trying to move us more towards the European standard where
people rent for a long time in much more stable arrangements.
But then my theory, my feeling was then landlords got it watered down to
the extent that the housing charities withdrew their support for it and
said, this has been terribly muted.
Can you give me more than that?
Is that a reasonable pricey?
Andy: You've said everything I know about it.
No, no, that's, that's exactly, that's exactly what has happened, basically.
So there were two really clear, uh, pledges going into the, the last
election by the conservatives in 2019.
We're gonna build lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of houses.
300,000 a year, a million over the course of the Parliament, which isn't
the same number weirdly, um, 'cause they will have built a million, but they.
Fallen very far short of 300,000 a year, which was the target.
And there was this renter's reform bill to ban no fault evictions, where
your landlord can basically say a very short notice is you're out.
Um, so just like someone frantically doing their homework right at the, you
know, right before the teacher comes in and collects it all in the government,
and now finally trying to get this passed, um, there are thousands of
these no fault evictions every year and.
The rule at the moment has been watered down as it's passed
through the House of Commons.
So, for example, um, the new rules will allow landlords to evict tenants if
they want to sell the property or if a close family member wants to move in.
Now, it's not crazy if you own a home that you're renting out.
To think, well, I want to sell it.
You know, if I need to fund my old age, whatever, like this was actually gonna
be my really stupid person question, is
Adam: that you're allowed to sell your house.
You're allowed to sell it.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
And can I say
Helen: that I read the exemptions and my favorite one was that the house is
required for a ministry of religion.
Adam: Wow.
Helen: You can say, well, I'm really sorry.
I've just got, I need to move a rabbi in.
Actually, he really needs to be there.
This Vick has just turned out, oh, nothing I can do.
Andy: Well, you're kind of getting to the heart of the problem with this.
So, so the, the other exemption is if, if a close family member
wants to move in right now.
The rules have been changed and they've been, they've been
altered and altered and altered.
So now there are plenty of extra powers for landlords to kick people
out, uh, under Section eight different the law, uh, at two months notice.
So it used to be just if they or their spouse or civil partner wanted to move in.
Now it's a whole load of family members, all the children, all the grandchildren of
any of this whole load of family members.
The second problem with it, is that this is really hard to enforce,
Helen: right?
'cause the thing is, you could presume you say, I'm very sorry, but my second
cousin once removed needs this flat.
I'm gonna kick you out.
And what is the enforcement mechanism for going back in six months time and checking
that they really are then living there?
Well, it's
Andy: supposed to be local authorities now, local authorities.
As anyone will notice, are a bit stretched at the moment.
Uh, and also are tenants really likely after they've been kicked out, they've
noticed three months later actually your granny didn't move in, in the end.
So are they really likely to go through all the hassle and the pain of a, a
tribunal or whatever case it might be?
Uh.
Because it is just not likely to achieve anything for them.
And also, if the landlord does move someone in, they're then not allowed to
market the property to be let again a whole three months after that's expired.
That's not very long
Helen: because the story that I kept hearing was people, you know, say
your rent was 1500 pounds a month.
Mm-Hmm.
Your landlord would kick you out and then would put the flat back on the
market for two and a half grand a month.
Right?
Yeah.
That there were lots of.
Because the housing market is so squeezed because rents have gone up so much
that there was kind of essentially, you can't say it's, you know, it's, it's
market adjustment, but somehow it looked like very much like price gouging.
Yeah.
Mm-Hmm.
Um, and I'm not sure, and I think that's one of the things that this bill was
designed to address, and I, I think it was struggled to do that without very
heavy handed regulation, which the government doesn't seem to be up for
Andy: is this a sign that the government really can't pass anything?
You know, because conservative back benchers are the ones who manage to get
the bill effectively neutered and about.
A fifth, the last time I checked, I once very Labouriously checked through the
entire register of members' interest to see how many MPs of which parties
were landlords in their own right.
And it was about a fifth of conservative MPs were landlords,
Helen: right?
Whereas very, very few of them are renters or maybe some of 'em are renters
in their second home, but they're not.
They're not.
It would be a tiny,
Adam: tiny proportion of people who, who have, um.
Members of Parliament who do not own a property.
It's a very tiny proportion.
So the argument then is about, you know, whether Parliament
gives us a true representation of, of, I mean, we, we, we made this
argument, you made this argument.
In fact, um, Helen on the podcast not so long ago when you said about
Charlotte Owen going into the House of Lords, actually getting a few
younger people who have different life experiences into our legislator
may not be a bad idea, might you?
Helen: I'm afraid I have, I'm, I'm both a YIMBY and very landlords skeptic because I
just think that having housing as an asset class has worked out quite poorly for
basically everyone in Britain under 45.
Andy: And this is one of the things that go said in the interview, which
I found so interesting, which I wanted to kind of review his, you know,
appearance because he, he pointed out that housing has been, become seen
increasingly as a good investment.
Hmm.
And well, okay.
Who's been in charge for the last 14 years.
He also said that housing is a repository for hot money, especially in London.
Same question, also blame the crisis in part, at least on, um, on the number
of people coming to this country as he, as he phrased it, quite delicately.
Well, okay.
Who's been in charge of those, you know.
There's a certain point after which you say, right, you have created
this situation in large part.
Helen: Right.
But you know, I, I think it, you are right about not being
able to pass any legislation.
If Michael Gove, who, whatever else you might say about him.
You know, my secret love of Michael Gove, he's in a very effective minister.
He is renowned as somebody who absolutely understands his brief.
He gets on top of it.
He can push things through, he can prioritize.
And he's got, traditionally has had a lot of buy-in, in the party
and the ability to get things done, but he cannot get this done.
Yeah.
Suggests to me that the to party can't get it done.
And I think part of that is the fact that almost every local election
caMPaign is run on, on NIMBY grounds.
And you know, the, the liberal Democrats are absolute fiends for it.
They're brilliant at voting this kind, but you actually get even.
Labour MPs recently, John Ledge, um, who swept me at New Statesman has been catalog
clogging, like the Greens opposition to, to housing is obviously incredibly
high because if you are a none of the above party running in a, in a local
election, uh, or a by-election, then one of the most popular things you can do
is oppose any new housing developments.
So we have all these incentives just at the local level for people
to, to block everything, everything at all, even if it's like.
Turning a derelict warehouse on Brownfield's site into some,
into a six story block of flats.
People, some nonetheless come up with some reason, whether it's
like some boll weevil or something that they can't, they can't do it.
Andy: Those people are the bananas, aren't they?
There's the NIMBYs, there's the NIMBYs, and then there's bananas who are
built absolutely nothing anywhere near anything, which is very, yeah, it's a lot.
It's a great acronym.
There's a lot of them.
And the other problem with this, the, with this bill, which is really
interesting, it's a, it's a court thing as well, and it's another reason why.
Housing charities and various organizations who are quite fond
of the idea have slightly gone soft and withdrawn their support.
So lots of the backend es opposed to the renters reform bill in its original
state said, well, the courts are gonna be overwhelmed with coMPlicated cases
and tribunals and eviction cases.
We have to delay this until the courts have capacity to deal with
the new cases that might arise.
So The ban on section 20 ones will not be enacted until a full probe
into the courts has been held.
Uh, and there's now gonna be a full review of the courts.
And you know, the government have claimed that on top of that, they
will give six months of notice before ending section 21 for new tenancies.
Nevermind.
Existing tendencies.
These are only, only the future ones.
Adam: So this is not even kicking it into the long grass, is it?
This is boosting it sort of right out, somewhere beyond the green belt.
Helen: But I think Labour have said that on day one they
would ban no fault evictions.
Right.
So it may, it may be possibly, I couldn't say I haven't
seen the polls for some time.
It may be that, that, that, you know, it will require a change of government.
Yeah.
And this is the stealthy argument.
If you are a ybi for a massive Labour majority is that you need to be able
to have a big enough majority for the Labour party to afford to annoy
some constituency basis, you know, to force through some house building.
Um, and I think that unfortunately, because realistically you wouldn't
need all these huge gamuts of legislation if the market worked better.
If you as a renter could approach and have a, like look at a decent number
of properties at a decent level of.
Pro prize where you want to live.
Yeah.
It would de efficiently sort itself out.
Bad landlords, people wouldn't have to put up with them.
The problem at the moment is there are far too few properties.
Yeah.
And so it gets stuck.
You know, there's no, the market, there's supposed to be a market
and that market is not working.
Andy: Hmm.
And that's why all the solutions that are been proposed that are basically
altering the market a little bit like a very, very, very long mortgage term.
You know, 40 year mortgages or, or we'll, we're going to do help to, we're gonna do
share to rent, or help to rent, to share, to buy, you know, all of these schemes.
they're really coMPlicated, but they're much easier in themselves than building
another 3 million homes, which is actually the, the only thing that would Mm-Hmm.
Really in a long term, concrete over Cambridgeshire
Helen: built another reservoir.
No, I didn't say that.
Don't write, don't write into me people from Cambridge.
But you're right.
Like we did at one point.
Remember, in Bridge History, we built entire new towns, garden
Andy: cities.
Helen: That was used to be a thing that we thought was a reasonable thing to do.
Andy: I know.
Well there, and there are lots of reasons why they, they
are much harder to build now.
Part of them.
Part of it, a small part of it is grid constraints.
You know, you actually don't have the electricity supplies to, to get
these developments up and running.
Adam: It's not just electricity, it's water as well.
I mean, we've, we've run stuff on how many reservoirs have been built
in Britain in the last 30 years?
Yeah.
It's a big fat zero.
It's zero it very, very low.
Uh, I mean my entire town down in St.
Leonard on sea last weekend was cut off for four days from water
entirely 'cause one pipe burst.
I mean, the infrastructure we got in this country is in pretty
much the same state as the road.
So there's an awful lot that has to go with it.
There isn't just building houses, isn't
Andy: it?
Helen: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah.
And not to go too far on, you know, this is not fully statistically backed,
but it does make me wonder whether that leads to more of an appetite for
more radical change, you know, or.
Saying we, we really actually need to crack on and build entire new
towns, which is I think one of the planks of Labour policy on this.
Helen: Yeah.
And they, I mean there have been, for example, Cambridge North has been
quite, um, developed as far as I know.
You know, there is, there are places in Britain that you could build if
you had sufficient political will.
But I think if you look at HS two and the fact they're gonna put half of
that through tunnels at vast expense to avoid spoiling people's views of fields.
Yeah.
This is not a country with a ravenous appetite for, for building.
Andy: Yeah.
And it's.
Because housing is such an intractable problem, but we, we often forget the,
the really, really sharp end of it, which is the, I think it's a hundred
thousand, um, families who are in teMPorary accommodation, um, which is,
is often extremely unfit to live in.
Yes, I've been
Helen: wondering about this.
I live in Lewisham and there's um, there's a premier in, and there's also a
travel lodge, and it's almost iMPossible to get rooms at the travel lodge.
And I, my assuMPtion is that's because Lucian Council is putting up families.
And that's definitely been the case in other, um, ho like relatively
affordable hotel chains is that you get, but you know, you get an
entire family of four that is living in a kind of premier in room Yeah.
For months at a time.
'cause they just, there just physically isn't anywhere to put them.
Andy: That's right.
And that's sort of, that's the current situation.
Often you get social housing tenants who are in work.
Still qualify for, for housing allowance, which then goes directly to the landlord
of the property, which was a social house until it was sold off under right to buy.
And then the landlord, so the, the, the con the money passes straight
from the government via the social housing tenant to the landlord.
What in what was once a social house, so
Adam: was pointed out to me by an MP.
I was talking about this a little while ago.
Mm-hmm.
That landlord doesn't even necessarily live in the
country, let alone in the area.
You know, a lot of this money is going straight out to coMPletely
different places where people are, are controlling large property empires from.
Helen: That's the bit where I think protectionism kind
of is on the rise, I think.
I think people are more open to the idea that we shouldn't be, you
know, in the same way we shouldn't have a kind of huge outsourcing
conglomerates being charged of things.
Maybe we also shouldn't be treating housing as a way of making
people in other countries rich.
Mm-Hmm.
But you know that and which is interesting 'cause that now I say
unites the left and the right.
And that kind of opposition to like ultra free market neoliberalism
is now quite popular amongst sort of almost everybody really.
Adam: Mm.
But it also has become intractably associated with, in, in the public
mind, with the fact that you make money on houses, you want houses.
I mean, that's a.
Your daily mail and daily express headlines that we're always printing
spoofs of, of, you know, nuclear war could have effect on house
prices and that sort of thing.
But people are genuinely, I mean, people over 45, as you mentioned, you do kind of
have it there as your security and your Nessun egg 'cause pensions aren't doing,
doing so brilliantly and, but in a lot of cases, that's the thing I, whether
this is a generational thing because also there's people over 45 have now got kids
of 25 or 35 still living at home with them because they can't afford to move out.
So I think it gradually, it's not the sort of straightforward oldies versus youth.
Kind of, um, issue.
It has been David
Helen: Willetts who wrote The Pinch, which is about
generational, uh, intergenerational unfairness said that to me.
He said he thought the tipping point would come when you had people who were
very happy with the fact their house has gone up by 400%, wondering why their kids
are now having grandkids and they've got the baby in like a bassinet in the, you
know, in the, in the corner of their room.
And they haven't managed to move out.
But it really exacerbates.
Social un it is a, it's a real, you know, tion of social mobility, right?
If the people who've already rich parents who've got houses in the southeast
can pass those on or pass on some of the equity to allow their kids to buy
houses, that is just rigging the system against new entrant to an absurd degree.
You're,
Andy: you're getting into a fully predetermined view of what your
life outcomes are going to be.
Yeah.
Based entirely on, on whether your parents happened to snap up
a house in the eighties or not.
Yeah.
Um, someone should write a really sort of funny gripping
thriller about this kind of thing,
Helen: but not you.
Andy: No, no, no.
Helen: When, uh, how is, uh, it's a beginner's going to breaking and entering?
I believe that's right.
That is, tell me, me.
Is that available in all good bookshops?
Andy?
It's
Andy: tragically we only put it out into bad book shops, which is my mistake.
But, you know, go to your.
No, nevermind.
Look, anyway, let's press
Helen: It's all right.
Well, for in order like achieve b BBC balance, I should say that
uh, Adam's book of Ghost Stories is coming out before, yeah,
Adam: next October available for pre-order from, uh, all bad book.
It's got
Helen: a lovely cover.
Adam: Um, and I just, that's the quote that's going on.
The paperback, Helen Lewis goes on lovely cover and I've just
Helen: filed my book.
So at some point that should come out next year.
So we'll basically, isn't that lovely?
We've
Andy: all got product to flog.
Goodness me.
Um, can I finish off, can I finish off this bit with a quote
that I think is quite revealing?
Is it about your book?
No, no, no, no, no.
Okay.
Just listen to this.
Owners of property found it convenient to close their eyes to all, but the handsome
revenue they obtained from their unsavory tenants and the municipal authorities were
not apathetic, felt themselves helpless.
That's from a book called The Housing Problem in England
that was published in 1907.
Wow.
And it was at a time where the vast majority of people, I think it
was 80% rented, right at the turn of the 20th century, 80% rented.
There was then an enormous amount of house building, and by the
turn of the 20th century, 70% of people owned their own homes.
The numbers have now started trending downwards again.
So I think that's a really telling comment on where we've got to.
Helen: Well, it is, um, the, the first Alan Johnson memoir, which is
very beautiful, is he talks about growing up in a sort of slum with
ice on the windows, and then they all get kind of, that all gets cleared
and they all get moved out to these.
New housing estates that are built and for the first time people have
got their own bit of front goad and they've got somewhere, you
know, to kind of call their own.
They're not jammed into these unsanitary conditions.
And I think the way that he writes about that is quite moving about what it meant
to people to have a kind of space of their own somewhere that they felt secure in.
And that's when you read so many of the stories about the private
rental sector now is the, what comes across as insecurity anyway.
You are living on prog probation and could be kicked out at any time.
It's Victorian.
It's Ed Edwardian, technically.
Very nice.
Thank you.
Andy: right.
Well that's quite enough.
Uh, incredible gloo about the housing situation.
Let's, let's have something cheerful instead.
What's been on telly lately?
Helen: I've been watching a lot of telly because I haven't been able to go out,
'cause I've been, um, writing stuff and I, I sent to you and I gonna have
a fight about this, but I would like to nominate as an incredibly good TV program.
Clarkson's Farm on Amazon.
Andy: Okay.
Helen: I think it's the greenest program on television.
Wow.
And you know, all you woke bicycle munching, lettuce riding.
Yeah.
Woke mind virus people.
Won't I get this?
But the thing he's done in this series is divide it up between Caleb, the assistant
and him, and say, you know, Caleb is gonna manage the bits of the farm that have got
traditional arable crops on and he's gonna try and make money outta the other bits.
So he tries and, um, yeah, like pigs, he tries to have honey.
He tries to harvest his hedgerows.
All that kind of stuff.
He has a bloke from Groove turn up to tell him about the fact that we're taking all
the nutrients out the soil and actually should try and grow beans and stuff like
that across as well as conventional crops
Adam: from Groove.
Yeah.
Helen: Yeah.
What
Adam: has happened with this music to Environmental caMPaign?
I think.
They all made Mele Sharky started this Yeah.
A
Helen: load of money in the 1990s, didn't they?
Like, well, Alex James from Blair and his cheeses, it's a
Andy: very long established thing that, I mean, Ian Anderson of Jethro
Toll as a salmon farmer these days.
Yes, indeed.
Didn't know that's, um, it's a bit less environmental actually, given what,
quite considerably less environmental, what privat has written about salmon
and its horrors over the years.
Um, but yes, so, okay.
But the thing,
Helen: I think it does a couple of things.
First of all, it is a very soft way of talking about climate change
because they talk about the fact that.
For example, the last year they were doing it, it, the spring was so rainy,
they had to plant a lot of, I think, their barley and stuff later than usual.
And he talks about the fact that the costs, the spiking of costs, you know, the
fuel costs, the Labour costs, everything that's gone up, that's contributed
to your food being more expensive.
And explaining that supply chain process and the fact that working for the
supermarkets, you know, something that private eye has covered a lot over the
years is on those wafer thin profit margins that, uh, that farmers are
being expected to kind of live with.
Yeah.
All of that stuff is covered while also.
He cried over some little baby piglets that died.
Oh, that's what's
Andy: got you.
You've gone for the story about the piglets.
Adam: It's sad little piglets.
The, that would've been, so are we essentially, are we essentially saying
this is Clarkson is the new arches?
'cause the arches famously were sent up in 1951 to educate, um.
Uh, British radio listeners about, about the countryside.
Um, and it used to be long, long sections of Doris and Dan Archer reading out
sort of milky old quotas to each other.
They're slightly more integrated into the storyline now.
Helen: No, but there is a lot of that.
And to go back to our last segment, there's a lot about his running
battle with West Oxford Paris Council that seems to want to keep the Cowa
as essentially a kind of museum.
All: Mm-Hmm.
Helen: Rather than like the, the letting him run the farm shop, for example.
They're just sort of, they are, they are bananas I think in many ways.
And so watching him, Emmanuel have a sort of pick a fight with a wall hanging,
have argue with them is quite enjoyable.
But yeah, it ha I feel it has genuinely educated me about how the
challenges of being a, a farmer today, well, frankly, people like you would
do well to remember that, Angie.
Andy: Oh, get away.
Okay.
I just, I'm gonna.
Push back a little bit about this 'cause I haven't seen all of Clarkson's farm,
so you're better informed about what happened to the poor baby piglets.
No, before they would've been turned into sausages.
Um, but yeah,
Helen: but that's what the guy, the butcher comes on and says that this
is the thing about farmers love their animals and then he hands him
some sausages and goes this way.
You can love them twice.
Adam: Crumbs.
Okay.
Speaking of someone who used to eat his own goats, can I just
say it is possible to love your animals and also love them twice?
Ensure that they have a very, very good life before.
Not having to be cart off the slaughterhouse.
Andy: Well that alright.
That's fair enough.
But I think, I think that, well the thing that a lot of people,
Helen: sorry, like me, the fact, speaking of someone who had to
eat his own goats, it's just,
Adam: oh, it was so exciting.
No, no.
The, the so glossed over that a bit, and this is a big change in farming, is
these days everything has to go through the slaughterhouse in those days.
So you, you get animals being, and this is true deer as well,
which is most extraordinary.
You killed, you killed goat.
I did not personally kill, I'm nine years old.
You used to, but used to see signs.
You used to see signs at the side of the road.
Didn't you kill your own goats?
You come in and, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not running for vice president.
I'm not in the habit of going out and shooting goats.
No, we have slaughterman used to come around.
'cause in those days you didn't, you know, you didn't have to pack animals
into the back of a lorry and take 'em off all terrified and, and, and, and,
and into a horrendous environment.
It could just quietly be done in their own goat shed.
Uh, and mom and I, mom and I would take the dogs for a very, very long walk, and
my dad would deal with the slaughterman.
But there was the, the thrill of being able to go and look through the crack
in the garage door and see the, uh, body hanging up, bleeding into a bucket.
Going, oh, that's, I think we've gone quite far into, we've gone
deep into my childhood now.
Andy: it's really iMPortant, you know, seeing how your food arrives is something
that almost nobody thinks about.
'cause the number of people working in agriculture has declined
so much over the last century.
So now we're very, very disconnected from it.
So it's great.
It's, it is great to see that.
I, I think one thing that Clarkson has got wrong.
On plenty of occasions is he's been a consistent denier of climate
change or that there's, there's any need to change our activities.
And now he's moved on slightly from that 'cause he is literally
farming his land and he can see that half of it's underwater.
But he's moved on to the next stage towards actually realizing things
can be done and should be done.
So he was interviewed by the, I think the observer just as
to plug this series basically.
And one of the things he said to them was, well, you know.
Look, the fact is politics isn't gonna change any climate stuff.
It's all gonna be solved by the science, which is a, I'm afraid, a really classic.
You are just past the denial phase.
It's just, well, it'll be sorted by science and it's not gonna be politics.
And then with the very next breath, he said, I would never drive a Tesla.
I've got eight cars or with V eight entrance, whatever.
And I think the thing that he's not putting together
there, he's so close to it.
That's the thing about Clarkson, um, is that.
Science does not exist in a vacuum.
You might be able to invent the electric car, which means you
never have to burn petrol again.
You know, you don't have to transport it across the world.
You have to get it outta the ground, refine it, transport it, put it
in the petrol station, put it in your car, and then burn it once.
You can run it off renewables, you can effectively run it off sunlight.
But you need politics to roll that out.
You need politics to change the status quo, to bring people
with you to make sure it's not prohibitive, prohibitively expensive.
That's the politics and that's where they dovetail together.
And I think Clarkson has, has frequently siMPlified things, partly
for comedy and partly for, you know, popular effect, but also sometimes.
Quite far, quite popular on that.
Yeah, he's super
Helen: attached to the idea of himself as a kind of beer everyman.
I think that that, that stops him.
But you're right.
One of the interesting things that's happening in the US for example, that
Tesla is having a lot of problems, but one thing that does seem to
be going well in their business is rolling out the superchargers.
Because one of the things you need to do if you want to make electric cars work is
obviously you need to be able to charge them and be able to find those charging
points relatively easy and conveniently.
Yeah.
And that kind of stuff.
You do just need, you know, I think we've benefited enormously from
subsidies and encouragement and support from the government by kind
of long term plans about this will be worth your while investing in this.
A private coMPany.
Yeah.
But yeah, so, okay.
He can, he can't stop his essential Clark's ity.
You can't expect that.
Do you don not think he'll get there
Adam: though?
Do you not think it's one more outrageous column for the sun and then
him having to do a kind of sackcloth and ashes contrition thing and then
he'll go, he'll go fully Greta?
Andy: I don't know.
Adam: I don't know.
I don't, I don't, I, I'm
Andy: not really worried about.
Especially, I also think
Helen: I, you know, my analysis, the green movement, I think it's a really big shame
that the Green Party has become, now, particularly, it's now become a recipient
for all the people who've left lay because it's not left wing enough for them.
And I think the problem with that is, in a way I want to, I, I'm
fine for that green party to exist.
I would also like a right wing green party to exist.
You know, the way that, um.
The king talks about conservation, right?
As sort of lovely woodlands and England and nostalgia and sustainability
and all that kind of stuff.
There is a very conservative, traditional form of environmental politics that
I wish we heard a bit more, right?
'cause it would reach a whole constituents of people.
Who don't get reached by the current Green Party?
Andy: Well, I think, I think that's why, um, Labour have been so
clear on the eMPhasis of renewable energy means energy security.
It means not having to iMPort oil and gas.
You, you can very much lead on it.
This is good British sunshine hitting British land.
Let us use it to Power Britain.
You know, that's Soler nationalism and it's,
it's like, I love it.
I'm a solo nationalist.
100%.
Why wouldn't we do that?
if you iMPort oil or gas from Russia, they can turn off the taps.
If you iMPort a Soler panel from China, it cannot be deactivated.
That panel will work for 15, 20 years.
You give you all the power you need and then you can recycle the, the,
uh, ingredients in it, you know, that is Soler nationalism baby.
And my new party will be launching.
Next week
Helen: solo will be a great name for political party.
Yeah.
It's got that sort vibe, like it sounds like an an apprentice team.
Andy: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It does feel the farming thing quite public servicey, you know,
it feels like a sort of show.
It's, I mean it's, it is very much top gear, crop gear.
That's what he should have called it.
But I presume EMM were offering more money than the B bbc, so Fair enough.
But I would also, he got fired from the BBC after, uh, the
unpleasantness with that producer.
Yes.
It would have to be called
Helen: Land Tour, like Grand Tour if he was gonna do a spinoff.
Andy: We've come up with two better names already
Adam: than Clarkson's Farm, which is I think your SEO specialist would probably
say they want the name Clarkson in there.
And sure
Helen: enough that POM has done incredibly well and they are, I think,
currently filming the fourth series after they're kind of like, oh, maybe
we'll sack him over being mean to Meghan.
Maybe what we'll do is we'll be quiet for a year.
And hope that everyone has forgotten.
Adam: Right, right, right, right.
It's luckily they have, 'cause we haven't brought it up at all.
Helen: Well, also I haven't watched yet, episode six, but I saw the
preview of it and it was Caleb and Charlie, the farm manager, going
to meet Rishi Sinek and I was just going, no, don't make me hate Caleb.
Come on Caleb.
I've never seen two people who look like they would've less in common
than Caleb who until I think, filming the series hadn't been more than
like 25 miles away from his home.
And she just, I see.
And what's a sheep, I think
Andy: Caleb said, didn't he?
He'd been to London once, but he hadn't liked it.
He hadn't got off the couch.
Helen: Yeah, he didn't like it.
Didn't like it at all.
It
Andy: seems fair.
Yeah.
I have to come to London every week to do this and I don't like it.
Helen: and that of course, uh, for people want to hear more about Clarksons sw.
We did, of course, review it in the magazine last week, so that, I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm I and I, I will go to my grave defending Clarkson's farm from you people.
Andy: this question of what you're funding on a farm and, and how you
are, how you're paying farmers and what you're incentivizing them to do is
something that bio waste spreader, who's the eyes agricultural correspondent,
has been writing about, in fact.
Their column last week, was about exactly this, it was about incentives
to farmers for, um, regenerating your soil basically, rather than
growing food is it a good idea?
To what extent is it a good idea?
You know,
Helen: that column is often a window into lots of, um, kango and
NGOs and environmental regulation bodies that I had no idea existed.
Yeah.
Um, I think that's one of the things that's interesting about
farming is, as you say, one of the things, the fact that the.
The Labour force has dropped out of it so much.
It means that it is kind of less talked about, but obviously
still equally iMPortant.
Right?
Absolutely.
And we are looking at a situation I think where there is real worries that the
rest of this year there are gonna be, um, another set of food price inflation.
I mean, food price inflation the last couple years has been a really
appalling and particularly so because that affects the poorest people
most because if, you know, if the price of luxury goods goes up 200%.
Well, okay, by slightly fewer Rolexes, but if the price of bread goes up by
200%, it's a huge, huge catastrophe.
Yeah.
The
Andy: price rises are the stage before food shortages to, uh, to add a
cheery note to proceedings, you know,
Helen: but the magazine, I should say, does also have some jokes in it.
Andy: The cartoons are very, very, very good.
And if you would like to see those cartoons and if you'd like to read
the accoMPanying stories, uh, then all you need to do is go to private
hyphenate.co uk and click subscribe.
It's incredibly reasonably priced.
It's very, very fractionally more expensive than listening
to this podcast, which is free.
So go and do that.
Uh, until then, thank you very much to Helen and Adam, and thank you to Matt
Hill who as always produced this episode.
And thank you to you for listening, and we'll be back next time with another one.
Goodbye.