Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye office with

Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop.

We have gathered here to discuss the big stories of the week and quite a lot of

big stories actually going on this week.

, we're gonna be covering various bits of the BBC, various bits of what remains

of the Conservative Party later on.

But firstly, we thought we'd talk about the riots, which have been

spreading across the UK in the last week or so, for people who, either

live internationally or might need reminding what this is actually about.

This all started, , about a week ago with the murder of three girls in

Southport, the attempted murder of eight others and two adults the alleged

murderer was not named at the time.

due to being under the age of 18, he has since been named, and the judge who named

him at Liverpool Crown Court said that "continuing to prevent the full reporting

has the disadvantage of allowing others to spread misinformation in a vacuum".

And how it has spread...

there were rumours that the alleged murderer was, a Muslim or was a

recent immigrant, and this has in part led to enormous amounts of

disorder and unrest in various places around the uk, places very far from,

Southport, Aldershot, Hartlepool...

just all over the place.

And huge amounts of stress and, unpleasantness in policing.

How did this misinformation spread, is one thing that we're interested in?

It's

Ian: interesting.

The judge said misinformation.

I would say it was disinformation.

A lot of it's deliberate.

Helen: there's also a very interesting thing where you in two

the different things that happened.

So one of the accounts, that was the first one to give a false name, this

false name of Ali Al Karti for the, the alleged murderer, which is not the

correct name, was someone who said, if this is true, then all is the thing is

about all hell is about to break loose.

So that was the first kind of thing that you do online, which is you

just go, I'm just passing this on.

I'm just saying it.

Who can say that it's true or not.

I'm just putting this in the, injecting this into the bloodstream.

And then Nigel Farage on July the 30th said, I just wonder whether

the truth is being withheld from us.

I don't know the answer to that.

Ian: why not

find out?

Adam: Yes, this is the thing.

We've talked about this before.

This is a new style, isn't it, of going, just asking questions.

the point of just asking questions is that you ask them to people who might

be able to give you the information and Nigel Farage is now after eight

goes in quite a good position to do that, given that he could have turned

up at the commons and asked some questions of say, the home office.

Andy: how did this start in the first place?

How did this disinformation start being spread?

Helen: There's a disinformation researcher called Mark Owen Jones who

looked into it and timestamped all of where the, false name came out.

And the first person to put out that false name was a woman called Bernie

Spofforth, who runs a swimwear business.

in every other respect you'd say.

She was like a delightful Daily Mail feature subject.

Her husband's a sculptor.

They live in a very nice house in the middle of the countryside.

One of her kids is an actor.

But somehow during the Covid pandemic became a lockdown skeptic.

She fell into that crowd.

So you can see appearances from her on both GB news and

Talk Tv, talking about that.

And then she's billed as a social commentator.

What that means is, has got a popular Twitter account.

And so she was made into a person who we should listen to be interested because

those channels had a kind of Covid skeptic shaped hole that they needed

to fill, and she, put herself into it.

She afterwards said, she completely regretted how terrible it was.

She made the most biggest mistake in her of her life about

naming the...

about this false name.

She said she wasn't the person who did it first.

Someone else had told her.

Then her story changed.

She got it from somewhere else.

But what's interesting to me about that is so often the people

peddling this misinformation aren't, dispossessed and marginalized people.

They're actually very comfortable on people, often top end of Gen X, lower

end of baby boomers, who've lived through periods of peace and prosperity

and stability in their own lives.

And actually in their own day-today lives, you wouldn't say

we're economically struggling.

But I remember the guy who paid money to have Gina Miller, the anti Brexit

campaigner killed, was a, vi count.

we have to have, talk about the fact that lots of middle class,

middle aged people spend a bit too much time online during Covid.

And these days you don't just end up falling for one of these kind of tropes.

You become a lockdown skeptic, which bleeds into a vaccine skeptic, right?

Which bleeds into, you're worried about the World Economic Forum

making us all eat insects.

Or you're worried about 15 minute cities in control.

And then you're worried about MK Ultra and thought experiments, and then

you're worried about com trails and then you're worried about whether or

not they're controlling the weather.

And then you're worried about whether or not, all of these kind of, racist

memes that still perpetuate around you.

And was there a girl who was turned into a donna kebab by an immigrants?

That's a very big one, right?

In the annals of far right conspiracy theorists.

Andy: Ironic.

Ironically,

5G Internet is responsible for a lot of this stuff, but not in the way we think.

But what's

Helen: interesting is that people end up drifting from one bit to another.

Yeah.

All of these kind of different islands of conspiracies are connected to each other.

How interesting.

And yet

Ian: the people who appear on the streets, many of them without their shirts on are

not those agreeable middle class people spending too much time on the internet.

No.

No.

Helen: You don't actually hear from a lot of those people on those TV channels.

Actually, that's the kind of interesting thing about it.

So I can see why they feel like they are being locked out.

Adam: Do hear lots of people on those TV channels saying, this is just

the concerns of the white working class, which I just find the most

patronizing nonsense in the world ever.

there has never been anyone better assimilation than the white working class.

If you go back to the Bristol bus process in the 1950s or Cable Street

in the 1930s or Stockport last Monday, it's just this drivel, some idea that

all working class people are racist.

No, sorry.

It's

Andy: not true.

I think some of those people might be, lockdown, skeptics, the people who

are doing the rioting, although they have got a very nasty surprise coming,

Helen: But you are right.

the, kind of the nexus of accounts that really pushed all of these narratives,

particularly about being a legal immigrant, were often people who were

banned under the previous iteration of Twitter, which had its own problems.

But for example, the Manosphere influence, Andrew Tate.

Who said, I think this is an illegal immigrant.

The really odd thing about that is that he has converted to Islam after saying

Christianity was quote "cucked", and he's saying the same but set of things that

led to people trying to attack mosques.

So there's him, he's back.

Bernie Spofforth was, banned over Covid misinformation.

She's back, Tommy Robinson banned and is now back.

So what's happened is we are now seeing what it, what it's like when all of those

people are allowed back into the open.

In a way it might be quite useful because clearly there was some

coordination also going on in private telegram and signal groups.

These encrypted apps and what is now made very obvious is that there is a network of

people who all talk to each other and they all have the same set of talking points.

And we can now see that.

Out in the open, which if it was all happening on Telegram, we couldn't.

Ian: So that's useful for the

Helen: police, for example.

Yes.

They might take an interest in some of that because I think there

comes a point when, certainly

Ian: having been attacked on the streets and then beaten up and vilified by the

people who claim that law and order is there, their abiding principle,

maybe the police will suddenly find they've got more time and interest,

in policing anti-police sentiment.

Helen: Yeah, I think there is a really interesting question about whether

or not, , some of the people who have been posting openly, some of the stuff

they've been posting is tantamount to incitement to violence and that's a

very, obviously a difficult line to draw, but if you look at the images of people

writing, they do just seem to, a lot of 'em be having a really great time.

one doesn't like to slur.

Anybody, but this is supposedly a protest against the murder of children,

and that has somehow turned into people looting branches of Lush bath bombs.

It's not hard to suggest that there, maybe it may have drifted

somewhat from its original aims.

Andy: it's

Ian: not coherent as

Andy: a protest really, is it?

No, this is reminiscent of the riots in 2011.

Ian: And previous ones.

And, the idea that the people involved actually quite violent confrontations

with the police is not new.

Adam: But I don't think we can blame all of this just entirely on, on social media,

because the other dangerous thing that I've wanged on about for ages at Private

Eye is the way that 'mainstream media' to use that horrible phrase is more and more

being dictated by what's going on online.

we do a lot of this just silly click bait stuff, which has now taken over every

single newspaper website Priti much...

but also that kind of agenda of what is being talked about on Twitter and

Twitter being quite a different beast of what it was 10 years ago, is now

feeding right back into a very right wing nexus of, mainstream media outlets

who, know that they've got a market there they can target with that.

one of the things that struck me was Darren Grimes, who

is a presenter on GB News.

And as such ought to, be a journalist and know some basic journalism.

And we did a podcast, I won't go over it all again now, but we did, one a few

months ago, which people can go back and listen to about, reporting restrictions.

And, the simple fact of it, it's just that if, a suspect is under

18, they have automatic anonymity until the point where a judge says.

That their name can be released, and usually that's at the full

end of a trial after a conviction.

The comparison that Darren Grimes made was with the Brianna Ghey killers,

and that was certainly the case

it went right through to sentencing before the names were released.

And I can't think, I may be wrong about this, but I can't think of a precedent

for a name being released at this, stage of someone who is still under 18.

Andy: I think part of it was that the suspect , was only a

few days away from being 18.

I think he was six days short of it.

So I presume there was a, a.

consideration that given the amount of civil unrest, this

appears to be prompting, shall we just get this cleared up now?

Was that not it?

I'm not objecting to it.

I think in

Adam: this case, it was the sensible thing for, the judge to do, to

get out there and to say this name that's going round is, a false one.

But I had a look at the GB News website today, and very interestingly, it seems

to got this new strap line, which has appeared at the top, which says, "don't

let them silence you: support GB News."

who are the them here?

is it the hedge fund owner, Paul Marshall, multi-billionaire and owner of GB News?

Is it Eamonn Holmes, Ex of ITV and Sky, and now applying his trade on GB News?

this sort of narrative of us and them and something is being hidden

for you, which has been propagated just as much by Nigel Farage and

Lawrence Fox and Tommy Robinson...

an awful lot of dodgy people online is feeding right into a

much, much more mainstream media.

And I thought as well, interestingly on Monday's Telegraph, the fact that

they chose to go, this is on the, I think the sixth day of unrest.

Yeah, the day after the, sixth day of riots.

And they chose to go with the head headline, "Far Right

Clash with Muslims In Rioting."

Strictly speaking is accurate, specifically to Bolton protest yesterday

where there was a counter protest by people who were chanting Alahu abar,

but also there were things were kicking off in an awful lot of different cities.

That's, that is an interesting framing of what has been going

on over the last few days.

not going right out there, but it's a little bit dog obviously,

Ian: isn't it?

It is.

And the immediate response, certainly of the Mail, I was intrigued by the

Mail on Sunday's response that, it was, this is appalling, this rioting.

the far right are there...

who on Earth can be to blame for this?

I think it's the woke members of the cabinet, and I'm

reading the second para....

I'm saying what?

Yeah.

A, they've been in power for about five seconds.

And, b, how did you get from the first half of that sentence to the second half?

And it's because of the failure to deal with immigration by...

the Labour government?

Okay.

It hasn't had long, to deal with it.

and I suppose they're objecting to, not voting for Rwanda, but

it's an, immediate response is to say, this is appalling, but.

And that's the same sort of heading for the whistle.

Helen: What is quite interesting here is that a lot of the things

that you are now getting from commentators on the right, IE.

People have got legitimate concerns.

They haven't been heard for too long.

So long was exactly the things that people in the left said about the 2011

riots, which was sparked by the police shooting of a guy called Mark Duggan.

and so there was a kind of the riots of the language of the

unheard element to that too.,

Andy: Is there something to do here as well about crime reporting?

Because there are a lot of crime, influences on TikTok who have the

potential to spread a lot of miss and disinformation, and there is obviously,

there's always been an obsession with crime reporting, but now there

is such an enormous appetite for it.

Is that reflected in the mainstream press as well?

Helen: I think that's a particular problem, which is the way

that our laws are structured, which we talked about before.

I, the idea that, now everything is kind of subjudice to say in the

sense of there can't be lots of more speculation about the suspect because

he's entitled to a fair trial...

and into that vacuum, there's a lot more of 'why aren't we being told this?

This has all gone very quiet, isn't it?

Very, it's all very suspicious.'

and I think the same thing happens.

the way that the rule here is, you shouldn't publish things

that could prejudice the jury is very different to America.

And I think because the Internet is so American and so many of these

right-wing influences are really.

Either funded by or plugged into American internet.

They think it's oj you could just write everything you want about

a trial while it's going on.

And therefore there's something innately sinister about the fact that our press

conducts itself in a very different way.

And it also fundamentally, by doing that, our press also leaves a

vacuum of people who want to consume this content and are not being

offered it by the mainstream media.

Ian: It was interesting seeing a former police chief saying, is there

now a case of balancing the right to a fair trial with the right for

your cities not to end up on fire?

is there something that the police and the judiciary can do between

them that allows a fair trial still to, to, be conducted but also.

To get in and stop the lie, putting its boots on before

it's halfway around the world.

And I think that's a really interesting development.

And again, we have been writing about this before in the magazine, but there

does come a point where you think this is, we do things differently here to

the way they're done in the States.

Is there a way of getting an official source in earlier saying this isn't true?

Helen: Yeah, I do wonder if our, rules around reporting are, actually sustainable

in the long term for exactly that reason.

one of the ways that this can happen, for example, is, like the fake name thing.

If enough accounts tweak that, and it really doesn't have to be very many,

it can really be a couple of hundred it will then vary in a short space of time.

It will then show up in the trending bar on Twitter, at which point

people see it and assume there's something they're not being told.

They go and look for it.

Yeah.

And the way the engine of this works is that then, hang on a minute.

It's not appearing in the mainstream news, which is just more proof that

they aren't reporting it, right?

It's this incredibly self-reinforcing narrative.

Andy: This happened recently with a story about Jay Slater, who's a

teenager who went missing on tenor reef.

He wasn't found for weeks and weeks.

There were searches all over the island into which there stepped this

massive disinformation about was he involved in the Moroccan Mafia?

Was there, was he dealing drugs?

Was there all of this, his, his poor family were trying to

just cope with their, son being searched for and not being found.

Eventually he was found, he'd fallen into a ravine, he'd been

lost and he'd been out and he'd gone walking and not found his way back.

And he, that was the simple truth of it.

But the number of people who've tried to talk to me about, oh, this is

interesting as Jay Slater thing, isn't it?

What do you think's going on there?

It's just another vacuum.

Helen: That's the interesting thing about it.

Ultimately it, whatever, it turns out the circumstances of his death

were, it's not something that is being covered up for any reason.

It was just a purely people not knowing as the search was going on.

Yeah.

And there is this kind of think what you're describing is that innate

suspicion that if you're not being told something, there must be.

A kind of, dirty reason for it rather than, it's this is when we talked about

this before, the simple inability to deal with the fact that some things

are currently unknown at any point.

That's the kind of tension that we're picking up here.

We talked about

Ian: great repeating private eye print jokes is an enormous headline

that says Why did something happen?

And then in tiny letters underneath says, we don't know.

Yeah.

And that's the truth of the story.

Yeah.

Andy: we had this with Kay Middleton at the start of the year, which

feels like ancient history.

Now we know.

Why aren't we being told what's happened?

Has, has she been bumped off and it's been covered up and there's a mistress thing?

No, it's, she's ill and they just didn't wanna say so far and they've got young

children how many times Pause a vacuum.

Yeah.

How many times is, this going to happen before either rules or protocols change

about what is being put out there?

We dunno.

Yeah,

so now let's turn from something incredibly depressing to something...

else that's incredibly depressing.

Huw Edwards.

So this is a story that we covered a year ago on the podcast when Huw Edwards was,

removed from his job at the BBC supposedly for sending, explicit messages to someone

who might have been under the age of 18.

But the story was not reported terribly well in The Sun.

And Adam, you wrote a lot about this at the time.

Adam: Yes, but readers may be confused as exactly how what's

happened now, the grimness of it relates to, the, Sun Story last year.

And the simple answer to that is it doesn't, the supposed 17-year-old who

may have been an 18-year-old, who, was being talked about in The Sun last year,

who Huw Edwards had solicited 35,000 pounds worth of explicit images from,

is nothing to do with this latest case, which is much, grimer and it's to do

with category A, B, and C photographs of very young children indeed.

Okay.

Which he's now pleaded guilty to.

Andy: And so the just completely separate cases...

Adam: The Sun clearly knew that he was a wrong one, and there's an awful

lot of other stuff come out about Huw Edwards since which, bears that out.

So this prosecution appears to have risen out of the

conviction of another pedophile.

a man in his twenties in Cardiff, I think last May, , who once he was

convicted of distributing, images of child sex abuse, the police then

followed up all of his contacts, one of whom appears to have been Huw Edwards.

And that's where these charges, over 41 photos.

Came from.

So it's an entirely separate thing.

But interestingly, that Sun story is still growing and metastasizing in a

way because, now The Sun famously did not have the young man in question who

he can now refer to as a young man.

He was referred to as a young person.

Okay.

And The Sun suddenly got very keen on gender neutral pronouns, which are not

one of their usual areas of interest.

They, which we talked about before on this podcast was because they were so worried

about outing Huw Edwards, that they got themselves into a bit of a tangle over

that and had to refer to him as "the child of the two people" who they did have on

the record, and we're talking to them who were this person's mother and stepfather.

Now, this last weekend, the young person who's not particularly young

anymore, he's now 21, did give an exclusive interview, but not to The Sun

Andy: okay?

Adam: he's gone to The Mirror.

This is some proper old school tabloid rivalry here, that they have bought

up the son of the family, but the stepfather and the mum are still

with The Sun who attempted to do a bit of a spoiler over the weekend.

It's very confusing.

Very.

See this footage that the son is not with the son is in The Mirror.

S U N

So thank you.

Okay.

Andy: Sorry.

Adam: The Sun attempted to do a spoiler where they said, we've

got this video of the stepfather confronting Huw Edwards at a station.

And actually it turned out when you watched the video, they didn't at all.

They had a video of Huw Edwards standing at a station, which

didn't seem particularly...

looked like the sort of thing that anyone who spotted that man off

the news standing at a station might have videoed themselves.

So they slightly fell down on that one.

I,

Helen: I wonder if it's time to say a word in.

praise of The Sun, really, which is that at the time that story

came out, people maybe including us were really critical of it.

But is there a case for saying that they actually had got a huge amount

of information on him and they were fairly sure that there was, he was

acting in various inappropriate ways.

This was the only one they could get over the, line.

Adam: I think they may be certainly Victoria Newton, the editor of the

Sun, did give an interview this week where she said they'd been

investigating Huw Edwards since 2018.

And other stories, if you remember News Night, at the time came out

with a load of allegations about inappropriate behavior towards,

younger, , members of staff at the BBC.

There's some more stuff has come about that, including him inviting a young

producer over to stay in his hotel room the night after he'd been covering

the funeral of Prince Philip, . So it was a tip of the iceberg thing.

but yes, so there is something, as I say, The Sun worked clearly onto him

being a wrong one, but not onto the specifics, which turned out to be,

much, grimmer than I think even they probably at that point were expecting.

Ian: And a huge amount of the coverage at the time was spent, in the media

criticizing the BBC's, either failure to investigate or its reaction to this,

, piece of information about The Sun and the, 32,000 pounds worth of photographs.

Adam: Yes.

the police were very quick to clear up that particular thing and say that there

was no criminality involved in the, story that the sun were writing about.

And the young person in question was very clear that he, at that point didn't want

any prosecution to take place and thought that nothing illegal had gone wrong.

He has since then changed his tune in the latest, interview with

The Mirror and does say that he now feels that he was groomed.

And there are other cases as well of people who come forward, and said that

Huw Edwards, sent messages and were in a very, controlling and grooming a way.

One of whom we, learned over the weekend is having therapy paid for by the BBC.

the, BBC have been on catch up with all of this, and they have

to be fair to them, put, been put in a very, difficult situation.

, Huw Edwards was suspended.

Priti much the moment that he announced, through his wife and a PR company run by

Andy Coulson, ex News of the World fame.

And, John Stifel, who used to be deputy editor, I think of the,

daily Mail came in and did it.

And what we said at the time was an extraordinary good PR job,

which was to, put it in a cynical way, play the mental health card.

And so that he was having treatment for his mental health, which at that

point killed the story completely.

Yep.

The BBC and no one else could comment at that point.

And when it emerged much, later on, they heard from the police in

November that he had been arrested on suspicion of, possession, of,

images of, of child sex abuse.

They were stuck in a position because they still, he was unavailable

for any sort of questioning.

the BBC very famously screwed this up with Cliff Richard a long time ago when

there was a police investigation into him.

Ended up paying out an enormous amount of money, and there has now, because

of various legal, findings, which we've talked about on this podcast before,

there is now a precedent that you don't name people, at, well a, while

a police investigation is ongoing.

But it did mean because Huw Edwards is always top of that, awful chart

of the enormous amounts of money paid out by people at the BBC and even more

unfortunately for them, got a 40,000 pound pay rise in the last year and

continued to be paid his salary...

there's an awful lot of money, licensed fee payers money, which has gone over

to him, not only during the period of suspension, but post-arrest as well.

Helen: Getting your pay rise while you are suspended seems very ambitious.

Adam: Tim Davies be very clear that the pay rise was agreed before.

before the suspension even, but it's not good.

The optics are absolutely bloody on.

The b CBC has to pay rise.

So you can see there's gonna be some internal anger as well as

there is an awful lot of internal anger at the B BBC over this,

Ian: but this is the counter narrative, isn't it?

we are reading Huw Edwards was a God, he was untouchable.

why on earth did everyone defer to him?

And my memory was that nearly everyone from the BBC didn't think he was a God.

They thought he was really tiresome and pompous and was given all the best jobs

for reasons they couldn't understand.

And the person who really thought he was brilliant was Huw Edwards.

So I, again, there's a bit of backstory here, surely.

Andy: what should the BBC have done?

Adam: It seems, I, can't quite work out how legally, I don't think they could have

done anything differently, but, morally is a different thing to legally, isn't it?

Which is why it looks so bad now, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary,

has suggested that they should try in some way to claw back at least

the 200,000 pounds that they paid him since his arrest in November.

Whether there's any sort of legal precedent or, way to be able to do that.

it's a bit like, do you remember rule that fuss over, Fred, the

shreds pension and whether there was any way of clawing that back?

legally and contractually these things are quite sealed up.

may maybe we find a way maybe he will voluntarily return some of that money.

He surely got enough of it by now.

Ian: it's almost exactly the same point we were making about procedure, in the

previous discussion on the podcast, at the point in which the police told the BBC.

he's been, investigated.

He may be charged.

Is there an argument for saying this might be the point at which you stop paying him?

Is there some, halfway mechanism, which again balances these two sets of

rights between the police, don't want you, naming him so that it messes up

the investigation, but it's going to look terrible in three months time?

I feel there must be something that's possible.

It would

Adam: be surprising if there wasn't a clause somewhere in that

contract about not bringing the BBC into disrepute, wasn't there?

yes.

Yeah, possibly.

There will.

She

Ian: definitely has done, definitely very much has done.

Yes.

Yeah.

Andy: I'm gonna have one last crack at covering something

that's not totally depressing.

I think we can do it.

I have great faith in us.

Helen: Go on.

What's your cozy moment for this, this episode,

Andy: the Conservative Leadership Contest.

Oh, thank goodness.

Ian: Great.

One of those Olympic sports.

That

Andy: doesn't,

matter too much

Helen: if you don't cheer up at the hit, just the sound of the words.

Mel Stride.

Then are you even alive?

Andy: You're right.

The starting gun has been fired and there are just three short

months to go, of waking up every morning seeing how everyone's doing,

putting more bets on all of that.

I would imagine everyone in the conservative party had their

bets on weeks ago, haven't they?

yeah, I'm Priti confident about my tenner on Penny Mordant, actually.

5% of the parties, MPs are standing.

Just a few stats for you.

Helen: You only needed 10 MP's nominations to stand.

And Suella Braverman said she, totally could have got that many.

But that, yeah, it was clear that the party disagreed with her.

Was it like "my diagnosis of my prescription", I think

was the phrase she used?

So she will not be.

Andy: Okay.

The doctor will not be delighting us.

All right.

so we've got, six for August.

Then in September it'll be whittled down to four.

And then there will be hustings, which will remove two more.

And finally, there'll be a full vote of Tory members, and the new leader will

be announced on the 2nd of November.

Ian: Squid game!

Andy: it's long.

It's long.

So the, we should, just quickly talk.

The candidates are Pritti Patel.

James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugenhat, Robert Jenrick.

And let's not forget Mel Stride.

I have found every single one of these described at some point or another

over the last couple of months as the front runner in the race, with the

exception of Mel Stride, who no one has yet described as the front runner.

But there is always time.

Do

Helen: it now.

Andy: I think he's the front runner.

Hey.

Hey.

You know what?

At least Mel's tried.

Oh

Adam: gosh.

Sorry.

Awful.

I was trying to do something with Tom tugging hat into the

ring, but it doesn't know.

It just doesn't know.

Oh no.

who would you like to know about first?

Mel Stride.

I'm fascinated.

I think there's a bizarre thought Experiment with fraud.

try this.

Listeners.

Try and picture Mel Stride.

In your head right now.

I bet you can't.

I've got, he's ubiquitous during the election campaign,

but he's just there, isn't he?

Ian: I've got Mel Smith, and Meryl Streep.

I've got

Adam: Scho Mel from The

Andy: Simpsons.

As far as I, honestly, I like the look of Mel Stride, oh, so you'll have heard

if you're a sort of nerd who's listening to this podcast, you will have probably

listened to him on the radio doing all the media rounds, the run up the election.

'cause everyone else was trying to save their own skins and Mel generously,

and nobody stepped up to the plate.

He, here's a fun fact about him.

He has the fifth smallest what in the House of Commons.

Helen: Majority.

It's 61 and very good.

I know this because I, think it is genuinely one of the big

things that counts against him.

If, and he'd actually did the same thing.

That poor old what Ed Balls did it.

In which election was it?

That he went and campaigned in everyone else's constituencies very generously.

And then that's when he lost his seat.

So it can hubris, can be swiftly followed by Unanim.

Adam: Did you say majority of 61?

61.

Helen: 61

Andy: ...is the fifth smallest.

The fifth smallest.

There are four smaller than that.

Adam: Is this why he's going for it?

'cause you get a bump for being Prime Minister.

Oh, prime...

the leader of the opposition.

God, old habits do die hard.

We do.

Andy: yeah, the smallest majority at the moment is 15.

15 votes.

Adam: Who's that?

Helen: Rich Holdens is quite small.

That's

Andy: Hendon.

Rich Holdens is between 15 and 61.

There we go.

Oh yeah.

Anyway, I'm interested in Stride because I think it's nice we're talking.

It's probably the longest anyone so far in the campaign has talked

about Mel Stride and I like that.

Helen: Has he got a heat pump?

That why?

I dunno.

Andy: I dunno.

Adam: He's got the six smallest heat pump in the Commons!

Andy: He talked about changing the shape of the party.

'cause I think no matter what happens in over the next three-

Ian: What from very, very small...

to non-existent!

Andy: Whatever happens over the next three months, they've got the

same method for picking the leader, which has produced such golden hits

as Liz Truss, Ian Duncan Smith,

you cut it down to the last two.

Among the MPs and then the membership choose whoever is the matter of those two.

That's a tried and tested formula.

And there was a speculation that one of the last things Rishi Sunak might do

in his much more comfortable position as Leader of the Opposition might

be to change that system possibly so that just the MPs get to pick.

That hasn't been changed.

So we are going to get the matter of the two of whoever's remaining in October

Helen: And there is precedent.

Michael Howard, when he was leader of the opposition did exactly that

he changed the rules precisely 'cause he wanted a much longer, process.

'cause he thought that would be more likely to lead to David

Cameron rather than David Davis.

And no, he was correct.

Andy: Yeah.

And so there's been some tinkering around the edges with the length of the context,

but the shape of it basically is the same.

Strider said, we've got to turn this into a mass movement organization."

exactly, what you're saying and where people are involved because

there's something in it for them.

Okay.

that doesn't sound very different to the traditional thing, but is that, is he

talking about increasing the membership?

Because so far it is been a, one way...

trajectory for the membership in the last 20 years or so.

And that does produce odder results, as we've discussed on this podcast before.

But he has said he's not gonna take strong positions on issues,

which I find fascinating.

That's the approach because he was interviewed by Politics Home and he said

that he thinks "candidates should not try to appeal to sections of the membership."

His words.

I dunno, what contest he thinks he's in.

Ian: he's, been watching Keir Starmer over the last three months; do not

have strong positions on anything in the run up to an election.

It works!

Adam: Prime Minister's Questions would be amazing if they both just stood there.

The, leader of opposition of the promise is just going, ah, I, I don't know.

I know, I don't know.

What do you think could be, but that's

really, he might be right

Andy: And he's the only one who said on the ECHR, I'm not gonna

give a strong opinion about whether we leave the ECHR or not, because

that's not what my job should be.

It's not about whether the leader believes in that, which is a very

strange and different position.

Helen: Does he think he's in the Green Party?

That's what's happened here.

Andy: I dunno.

Also,

Helen: don't you think all of that is a coded rebuke to Kemi Badenoch, who

is probably the actual front runner who has got a strong opinion on Priti

much everything that has ever happened?

Andy: Kemi Badenoch former minister for, was it women and equalities?

Secretary of State for business?

And minister for asking you out for a fight

Helen: That was the Minister of Have It Outside?

Andy: yeah.

Helen: No, it's, I'm in the middle of reading her, the biography of

her by Lord Ashcroft at the moment.

And it, she, from her earliest days, she was quite tasty.

She turned up at university and dobbed in one of her flatmates for

taking drugs and they got expelled.

she, woman who knows her own mind, shall we put it that way.

Andy: She, has been described as the front runner, hasn't she?

in lots of places.

The odds

Helen: are on her.

Does Michael

Adam: Gove

Andy: know that?

'cause he's her strong

Adam: backer, isn't he?

Helen: Yeah.

She's very opposed to that sort of thing.

James Cleverly in other situations, you would think would be a very

strong candidate having been home and foreign secretary.

but I, my sense is a bit like Jeremy Hunt might just be a bit too normal.

Andy: Sensible,

Helen: yeah.

For the Tory membership, who like the, exciting taste of Liz Truss.

Ian: Again, I mean portrayed as Batshit Man in, in the pages of Private Eye weekly

in the great comic strip, due to the fact that having said, Rawanda was batshit, as

an idea, which it obviously was, he then pretended it was a terrific idea, for the

rest of his time as Foreign Secretary.

Helen: he's not a great

Ian: candidate,

Helen: is he?

Don't you think Sue Braverman does think that Rwanda is good?

Wouldn't you rather have someone who's lying about that

than somebody who genuinely is uninterested enough to believe it?

Ian: I'm not gonna answer that.

It's one of those,

"I don't know..."

Andy: Cleverly pitch is, as you say, as a centrist, and he's also said the

party shouldn't be quote, "sacrificing pragmatic government in the national

interest on the altar of ideological purity", which again, does raise the

question of where he spent the last few years, because that his a stock in trade.

Helen: I know, I'm just, I, for a while he was the kind of

designated broadcast minister in the way that Mel Stride is now.

So I did lots of things alongside him and he had to defend during the

Brexit years some Priti wacky shit.

And I remember thinking, this is why I couldn't be a politician.

'cause you're sitting there going, when we might get this legislation

passed, hope springs eternal.

but he was always quite pleasant and non weird in a way that I could not

say the same of everyone on that list.

Ian: But what about when he sat the Commons and quite clearly said

shithole and then said he didn't.

Helen: yeah, I mean he does seem to mostly get in trouble by saying things

that accurately represent his beliefs.

Indeed, they're true,

Adam: but they do all contain the word shit.

They're gonna go weird.

They are going to go weird.

they were seriously considering a while back, coming Ian Duncan Smith

back as interim leader, weren't they?

You with the Rishi standing down.

all this went on, which is just, if you, if Ian Duncan Smith is the answer, you

are definitely asking the wrong questions.

Andy: Priti Patel is also standing and she would be the third MP with

an Essex constituency to be standing.

So this might well be an Essex stitch up.

Three outta six from Essex.

Helen: The really interesting thing about Priti Patel's constituency is

she's also going for the Unite the Party that 'can't we all get a long'

approach, which is somewhat inconsistent with her previous approach to politics.

But she wrote a Telegraph op-ed that was 'put aside her ideological differences...

shouldn't we be more good at building people homes?

But not in the greenbelt,' she was, she's definitely, and she came out and

condemned Nigel Farage's statement on the riots and there has been this big

question about whether or not it's her

Andy: former dance partner from the Conservative conference.

It's so sad she

Helen: can danced with 'em, but

Andy: she will not

Helen: support

Ian: him, isn't it, in terms of sheer disillusionment.

Helen: But it is interesting that line has now been drawn.

'cause I think Suella Braverman is in, has been in lots of those very fringey

Conservative conferences that, or the kinds, the nationalist conferences

that also invite Nigel Farage.

So Priti Patel has clearly decided that.

you never go full bonkers.

Adam: Priti Patel's gone very, quiet since she left the cabinet.

I've hardly heard anything out of her at all.

Helen: Yeah.

She hasn't been turning up at those weird kind of national conservatism

conferences and things like that in the way that Suella Braverman did.

So there is an interesting, I always wondered at what point the Conservative

Party would claw its way back to towards wanting to appeal to the centre.

I thought it might take them one more go round.

I think in a way my presumption would be that it'd be Kemi Badenoch.

'cause they really need to get it out their systems...

We really stand up for what we believe in, even when most

people don't agree with us on it.

And then they might go, oh, what about if we compromise with the electorate?

And like in another cycle's time?

But we'll see.

Ian: They did do Liz Truss, didn't they?

Yeah.

So they have tried it out once.

Helen: And then, but then Rishi Sunak was then crowned by the MPs.

So have they only had 49 brief days of Liz Truss?

Was it enough?

Was it

Ian: Not nearly enough.

Andy: No.

No.

Tom Tugenhat?

Is there any appetite for-

Adam: Tommy Tugs!

Andy: Tommy,

Helen: Stop it.

I wish you didn't say that.

Ian: Don't like that.

Adam: The nickname I'm not supposed to use in the office

Helen: It upsets me.

But he's got the same problem as, as well.

Ian pointed out as James Clever's problem, which is that he was very,

sopping, wet centrist candidate.

And he's now saying, 'I think maybe we should leave the European

conventional on human rights.

That's the kind of thing you people like, isn't it?'

Adam: Isn't this about his third time around as well?

I feel like Tom Tugenhat has been running for the leadership,

Andy: second or third, definitely

Adam: since about 2000.

Helen: Yeah.

He

came

fifth in 2022 and, Kemi Badenoch came forth, which was not a bad

result for her, given that she was in that point very little known, but

Ian: yes,

We literally have been doing the, Tom's put his Togan hat in the ring

every single year that I can remember.

so yes, He's been around a long time.

Adam: That's literally all I know.

he has, he had, he was, he in the cabinet at some point?

Literally all I know about him is he was being mooted as a leadership.

He may have, they always thought

Ian: he should do defense.

He shared C committee because he'd been in the Army, but he didn't

chair that select committee.

He said lots of things about China that turned out to be quite true.

he did have a sort of sense base and as he says, unfortunately he's

decided that's not the way to win.

Andy: But this is a really interesting.

switcheroo dynamic in this race.

All the centrist, boring liberal ones are saying, no, we need to

leave everything and we need to,

Helen: bring back the birch, tow the island

Andy: into the middle of the Atlantic.

All of this stuff.

Yeah.

And all the ex nutters are, making some very emollient noises.

Weird.

Helen: I'm genuinely really interested in what will happen.

In a way it's, as you say, apart from the kind of Essex dominance, it's also, it's

a very wide open race in terms of, gender, ethnicity and class like that is genuinely

quite interesting that is not a factor in, the Conservative leadership and suggests

Britain is in a slightly better place than you might otherwise have thought.

Andy: Five front runners and mouse stride.

Adam: it is, that is something actually we should pay tribute to.

'cause that's true of the last couple of, of Conservative

leadership elections as well.

They don't mind, having ethnic minorities on team and they don't mind women

either, which is something Labour always had a problem with elect as leaders.

Yeah.

Andy: Fun fact about Tom Togan hurt.

One of his donors so far is a man named Michael Tory.

That's nice, isn't it?

Which I mean, if you've lost Michael Tory, you've really, yeah.

Anyway, that is his

Helen: hang minute.

Have you not mentioned the most generic of all the candidates?

Robert.

Robert.

Generic.

Andy: Generic.

There we go.

This is one of his ex nicknames.

Helen: Yeah.

Robert Jenrick.

What happened to him?

Because he got, he was in cabinet and then he was, he,

Andy: so he's, he was a immigration minister under Rishi Sunna.

He resigned over a point of principle in Rwanda.

Before that, he was seen as a, slightly centrist, very, un

sort of controversial figure.

He was briefly a health minister, Liz Trusts made him a health minister.

And so But I did read in a profile of the spectator that this has given

him 'an insight into the bureaucracy of the healthcare system.' Alright.

Ian: What, was his role when he, decided that in the children's asylum

you should paint over the welcoming, friendly cartoon and it should be white.

'cause we don't want immigrant children in particular to feel that this is a

nice, smiley country they've come for.

I think that was his immigration

Adam: minister.

that was, was, he was Suella's sort of deputy, wasn't he?

And didn't he make the same mistake of resigning on a point of principle

about the same time that she was sacked and it slightly went unnoticed?

I think.

Andy: He has definitely pitched as the, I'm the candidate of the right and he's,

he wants to bring back the Rwanda scheme.

He wants to stop the boats.

He wants to build more houses, more prisons, and definitely

wants to leave the ECHR.

I think that's not an unfair characterization of his.

Can I just point out that

Adam: he's known for one other thing?

Which involves our greatly lamented departed, one of our favorite press

proprietors on Street of Shame.

Richard Desmond, friend of podcast.

Yeah.

Moved into, property development, in fact, with the old, west Ferry

printers, site that used to print the Daily Express in the Daily Star.

And Robert Jenrick made what would turned out to be an unlawful decision

over the, the fact that, Richard Desmond didn't want to spend 40

million pounds on, on supplying, social houses and, stuff for the community,

which is one of the conditions.

Of the development being passed by the local council,

Robert Jenrick overruled them.

And then a judge overruled him and said it was an unlawful decision,

so let's not forget that one.

Ian: And he was complicated by, Richard Desmond, who's actually formerly known

as Dirty Des, gave quite a large sum of money at a fundraising due when he

was sitting next to, Robert Jenrick and showing him videos of how wonderful the

West Ferry development was gonna look.

Adam: Yeah, it was fairly, straight up uhhuh.

He

Ian: It was, yes, it was straight up.

What word are we looking for here?

Are we looking for 'dirty'?

'Dirty Would do.

Dirty Certainly do.

Andy: He wants more prisons built.

And maybe that's because he knows he'll get the contract.

So that's it for this episode of Page 94.

We do hope you've enjoyed listening.

If you'd like to get a bit more Page 94, in print form, then you can buy

the associated magazine: Private Eye.

Just go to private-eye.co.Uk.

Click the button mark, subscribe, and you'll be sent a copy...

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It's really a bargain.

Cannot recommend it enough.

We'll be back again in two weeks with another of these.

We're going to be doing a summer culture special.

How excited that's gonna be for your holidays.

It's gonna be great.

So tune in then.

We've never trailed the next episode before.

I think we should start doing it all the time.

Helen: And in the interim, if you want to read my review of, Kemi Badenoch,

biography by Lord Ashcroft, that will be appearing in the magazine

Andy: Yet another good reason to buy the next edition and all the

subsequent ones of Private Eye Magazine.

Thanks to Ian, Helen and Adam and thanks to Matt Hill of Rethink

Audio who produced this episode...

as he produces all the episodes.

And thank you for listening.

Goodbye.