Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andrew: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm here in the Eye Office with Helen
Lewis, Adam MacQueen, and Ian Hislop.
We are here to discuss the last week's news, the next week's
news, and everything in between.
And I should start with a quick little announcement to the three of you actually.
I just want to let you all know that I want to thank James Dyson for the
jeans I'm wearing today, Hinduja Brothers pay for my shirt, Lembo Vatnik
for the Casio, and the underpants...
model's own.
So just so you know.
And what lovely underpants they are.
Thank you very much.
Thanks
Adam: for dropping the jeans to reveal them to us.
I'm so glad.
Andrew: Someone noticed.
I'm looking my best for the country, as I think we all have a duty to do.
Particularly on a
Ian: podcast.
Helen: An inherently visual medium.
And it's nice to
Andrew: know that Mrs.
Murray is looking so dapper as well.
Not here, with us.
no.
But, she wants to thank Richard Branson for all her stuff.
yeah, this is the news that's been, that was in the eye a long time ago.
this is a little reward for subscribers that you were well aware that Keir Starmer
was getting lots and lots of freebies of glasses, and clothes, and holidays in
Welsh beach huts and things like that.
And this has been one of the dominant stories of the last week.
Helen: It's quite annoying, isn't it, that the opportunity was for him to take
the advice before the election, right?
The Private Eye has been running stories about this, particularly him
going to concerts or soccer matches.
Soccer matches, I've gone so American, I've finally turned.
Football matches, and so it's not like this was a new scandal in a sense, right?
he just walked straight into this one with people having noticed it previously.
Ian: the traditional cry is always, doesn't he have any advisors?
And then the response is always, you don't need advisors to tell you not to
take free glasses, or wear suits when you've made a, very, big point about how
corrupt the previous administration is.
It's extraordinarily short sighted.
Andrew: Yeah, I know.
Has anyone Has the line, Should have gone to Specsavers, been trotted out
lots and lots in the last week or so?
It should have been.
Ian: Yes, someone said it was a Specs scandal, as opposed to a Tory sex scandal.
Okay, it was me.
ha And it's not just the smallness of the amounts, it's the fact
Adam: that he's doing it at all.
Yeah.
There are two arguments on there, because you're right that the amounts are small
in comparison with Boris Johnson's freebie holidays all over the place, and
freebie houses, and Dalesford organic packages being delivered to his door,
and basically inability to put his hand in his pocket for absolutely anything.
But then it seems, it makes it worse in a way, but the obvious thing
is just to not take any freebies.
Don't take even cheaper ones.
It's just
Andrew: this is the interesting thing because Starmer actually was,
I think, between 2019 when he became the Labour leader and the summer of
this year, he got more gifts than any other member of Parliament.
They're all declared, but they were, as you've said, things like concerts,
football tickets, hotel stays, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Adele, Wimbledon.
To go and see, I like this one, the play Nigh, at the National Theatre, which
is all about the founding of the NHS.
Which didn't give out free glasses, unlike Lord Ali.
but the current rules, now the rules that PMs, and in fact all ministers
have to obey, the Ministerial Code, say that if you are given something,
I presume this applies to Starmer since he became Prime Minister.
You have to pay the, the street value for it, as it were.
If it's worth more than 140 quid, you pay.
you can buy it with 140 quid taken off the top.
or you can give it back.
Why 140 quid?
That was just the standard set many years ago by a sort of low ish value for a gift.
for example, Theresa May did this with clothes that she was given.
Designers were always sending her clothes when she was PM.
She bought a few of them.
She would send the rest back.
Sarah Brown, the last Labour First Lady, as it were, wrote the
same thing in her book in 2011.
That this is what she did, so that is the kind of standard protocol.
And the fact that Boris was getting all these freebies, I can't
quite work out how that squares.
I don't
Ian: want to suggest he didn't care what the rules were.
No, true.
Andrew: Which would be shocking.
Yeah, but I wonder if this was something Starmer was doing before the election.
I don't know.
When the rules were, did not apply to him because he wasn't a minister.
Helen: The thing that annoys me most about it is it does reveal how bloody
expensive women's clothing has got.
so I'd note, even just some of the very low key dresses were 300 to 700, which
is not unusual now for high end brands.
But if you're a kind of normal everyday person, you're not allowed to write that
off against tax, even though, perhaps, were someone, somebody who only buys
posh clothes, for example, to wear on TV.
I'm just saying.
It's just personally aggrieved me, because there is No, we're now
into Helen's tax
Helen: groins.
you know this was famously why ABBA wore such ridiculous costumes
on stage in the 70s, don't you?
It's because they had to prove that they were tax deductible
because they were stage costumes.
And the only way they could do that was have something so utterly ridiculous
that even Benny and Bjorn would not have walked down the street with
Helen: it.
But it does make me think there is an unfair expectation that, particularly
for women in public life, you will, keep up to a specific standard of dress.
However, the counterpoint to that is the fact that they do earn a decent
wage and everyone else on that wage would expect to buy their own clothes.
It
does come down to the Daily Mail headline on Monday which just said, Why can't
the Stalmers play for their own clothes?
Which is a very, good question, isn't it?
Ian: Yeah, this is rare on this podcast, the Daily Mail being quoted.
Approvingly, yeah.
As a voice of sense.
Is not the argument Lady Starmer has, said I do not want a role in
politics and I'm not First Lady.
Okay, then why do you need clothes bought for you by Lord Ali?
Andrew: the other defense that David Lammy was trotting out, yesterday,
I think, when he was doing a few media appearances, is that well, U.
S.
Presidents and their First Ladies get a fixed budget, which is not strictly true.
No, I was going to say, I thought
Helen: the only one problem with that is it's not, correct.
No,
Andrew: the President does get a, he gets, the President gets a 38, 000 a year.
Budget for clothing.
Does that include bulletproof vests?
Helen: notoriously the same thing happens with the royal family in that all the
way along Kate Middleton's clothes were bought by the Dutchy of Cornwall.
So Charles app, his income gave her an allowance, acknowledging
that, She needed a lot of frocks, lovely frocks for appearances.
And someone had to pay for that.
Andrew: Yeah.
Yeah.
But the first lady who does have an official role in the USA, doesn't
have an allowance for clothing.
And you, the fact is everyone who becomes president is a
millionaire, many times over, but,
Ian: Presumably, there would be very little appetite in this country for
a clothes budget for the First Lady.
to be announced just after the winter fuel budget cuts.
I can't, see that happening.
Helen: Not unless she's going to wear a three bar fire or something.
Ian: But part of the Labour appeal harking back to, Michael Foot, did
anyone pay for the, donkey jacket?
I think his wife bought it for him, didn't she?
Jill Craigie both of them would be at pains to point
out, it wasn't a donkey jacket.
It was a rather nice pea coat, in a beautiful shade of green,
which he always insisted.
He was complimented on by the Queen Mother at the Cenotaph, and therefore this, has
negated any criticism of, it thereafter.
Ian: there's a lesson learnt from history.
Andrew: Yeah, thing that you said Adam about it being a blind spot is so
striking because one of the dominant observations made about Starmer
is that he's a bit of a roundhead.
That he's A Puritan.
He's a Puritan, Oliver Cromwell was not taking free lace collars from, I don't
know, you have no evidence for that.
Norwich's biggest, flax producers or whoever it was.
Helen: I think that's probably why though, I remember someone saying this
to me about, Jeremy Corbyn, somebody who'd worked with him about his blind
spot on antisemitism, who said, look, his whole shtick, through his entire
life, his whole self conception of him, his place in politics is that he's
someone who's always really cared about racism, really cared about the underdog.
He cannot conceive of himself as somebody who might have missed something like that.
And I wonder if there's something similar true with, Starmer's idea is
that he is really a horny handed son of toil and it can't possibly be that
he actually likes quite flash suits and nice glasses and so he's just struggled
to reconcile that with the fact that, as you say, he's been to a lot of
Adele concerts, Taylor Swift concerts and so on, paid for by someone else.
But the answer
Adam: to that is to be a bit more of a horny handed son of toil, toil a bit more
and then you can afford the nice suits.
he can!
It's not even a question of sums and 140 allowances or anything.
if someone's offering you a gift as a politician, why are they doing so?
It's not out of the goodness of their heart.
Ian: having appeared in front of various parliamentary committees trying to point
out that, exactly that point, Adam, which was entirely lost on many of the members
who couldn't, see the problem here.
we literally, we went into the business of, tickets for football matches.
And, I was trying to say that if, say, Taylor Swift sends
you some free tickets, lovely.
If the, Premier League sends you some tickets for the Taylor Swift,
concert, then you should be suspicious because someone else is paying.
And in all other walks of life, we know that people who provide
things often want something back.
again, I, my colleagues, Richard, Brooks and, Solomon Hughes and I, having been
to this committee once, we are, in fact, being asked to offer our advice
again, which is, the same as last time.
This is all blindingly obvious, and now, Even the Prime
Minister can't seem to see it.
And in the new Labour Party, the, first scandal.
Is from a Blairite source, it's as though we're right back to 97.
As in Lord
Andrew: Ali, you mean?
Lord Ali.
Ian: and again, why take clothes and glasses all sorts of different
kinds of grey suit, which are obviously incredibly, exciting.
looking at how this will look, even to your own party, why is there no
one saying at any point, including.
This isn't a very good look.
Andrew: An MP for several years and a former Director of Public Prosecutions.
He couldn't be expected to own any suits.
Those are very much mufti jobs.
Adam: Mind you, he's packed on the pounds a bit.
He's got a bit more timber than he did when he was DPP now, so
maybe Lord Ali could have just paid to have the old ones let out.
This is not going to devolve into an exemplic conversation.
I won't let it happen.
It's Bodyshaming Corner with Adam MacQueen!
No, but I do think you're right, Ian, there is this bizarre blind spot
in something with politicians, with something that ought to be so obvious,
and it reminds me of the scandal, I think, in my time here that has
caused the most public outrage, which was the MPs expenses stuff in 2009.
And one of the most extraordinary things about that was that it emerged that MPs,
as part of their second home allowance, got basically a grocery allowance
every week to go and do their shopping.
And you just thought, What on earth do they think that all the
rest of us spend our wages on?
Yeah, what is that extra?
Andrew: If I have to travel for work and I have to have a meal out I can write
that off against tax because it's a Meal I wouldn't have had I wouldn't have gone
to somewhere, if I wasn't 400 miles away from home or whatever But I don't get
to do that when I have my lunch here, despite the fact I have had to come to my
place of work, which I'm very resentful about, Ian, and, and buy a sandwich,
which is probably overpriced, actually.
Yeah.
Adam: But also, as you just wanna work from home, like all millennials.
You're writing it off against tax.
You're not getting Some money in your account to pay for that dinner.
No, I still have to pay for it.
Yeah, you're still paying for it!
Ian: apart from these specifics of Andy's life.
Adam's talking about the expenses scandals.
The extraordinary thing about that era was just how small, The items
were that the public got annoyed by.
You remember the man who, with the duck house, Zahawi, the heating bill
for his stables, an MP who wouldn't even buy a poppy for Remembrance Day.
it's part of my public duty.
I've got to wear it with a suit.
he didn't actually claim the suit as well, so did it match the poppy, but there is
a sort of, there's a patheticness about this scandal that I think is undignified.
Andrew: have mentioned Boris Johnson briefly, but, Boris was given all
sorts of donations for all sorts of things all the way through,
and they did try and get around.
the redecoration of the Downing Street flat over the annual budget, which I
think was about 30, 000 at the time, but,
Again, 30, 000!
Who spends 30, 000 on DIY?
Not, renovating a house from a wreckage, not re wearing it
entirely, just, upkeep stuff.
30, 000!
These sums are just astronomical!
Yeah, but the previous decor was terribly common.
It was all John Lewis Nightmare, wasn't it?
Yes, it
Ian: Positively unsustainable for Boris.
I
Andrew: do what this is giving away about all of us.
Helen has agreed about the unreasonable cost of women's clothes.
It's, for me, it's sandwiches.
For Adam, it's, you could, do P& Q much sugar.
For me it's poppies.
what a surprise.
but for example, Boris, he, his wedding was funded by the Bamfords.
The JCB back then.
The JCB scullia there, yeah, Yes, they
Helen: had a traditional South African barbecue, did they not?
Andrew: They had a South African barbecue, an ice cream van, they had some port a
loos, all of which totted up to 23, 000.
They should have, actually had a big banner for Boris wedding saying,
If you're in a hole, stop digging.
That would have been a good
Ian: That would have been good.
Surely there was a visit to a JCB back then.
Factory that, caused some problems afterwards with people, I don't know,
probably working for a satirical magazine saying, is this entirely justified?
Andrew: Yeah, I think so.
But the, whole timbre of conservative politics for, years has been if you pay
a lot of money you get access to the party leadership and you get to join
the advisory board if you give a lot of money and that gives you access.
I don't know what Labour's mechanism Is, but I won't be surprised
if I hear there is one.
That, I think, is what plays into the side of the story that
we haven't really seen yet.
All we know that Waheed Ali got in return for his generosity was a pass
to Downing Street, supposedly to help with the transition process.
Oh God, maybe he's doing redecorating as well, who knows?
which apparently has since been revoked.
But there do seem to be a lot of these figures, and they're
all figures from the 1990s.
It's a weird retro feeling we've got at the moment.
But Alan Milburn as well is still knocking about with no sort of
defined role, but appears to be turning up at meetings and things.
And I would suggest that kind of, yeah, looking slightly beyond the
headlines of the suits and things, you're getting into some Potential.
Were I a Labour spin doctor, of which they don't seem to have any at the
moment, I would be saying, Guys, do you want to maybe have a look at this one?
This is looking a bit iffy.
Andrew: I've got one last little, international fact to show how other
countries do this much better than us.
Yes?
recently Emmanuel Macron got in trouble for, booking a business
class seat on a flight from Paris to Brazil for two of his kids.
Suits.
Helen: I was so poised to defend him because I think the one thing we aren't
necessarily Puritan about is politicians travelling like first class on a train.
They should absolutely be allowed to do that.
They should work on the train.
They should not be harangued by weird people with camera phones.
I'm totally fine with that.
However, I will not defend the suits.
Andrew: No.
they had to be able to lie flat.
That's apparently I'm making that up
we come back to the thing which is probably going to be the title of
this episode, despite the fact I won't write that for another two days.
The end of the Piers show.
Helen.
Helen: Are you proud of yourself, Andy?
Really
Andrew: proud.
Has Piers Morgan resigned?
I'm afraid not.
From
what,
Andrew: Ian?
From that little show on YouTube?
It's
Ian: got billions of hits, Adam.
Thank you for your cynicism.
Andrew: And you've just never met anyone who's watched it.
No, we're in the House of Lords.
Helen: Yes, so Labour have introduced a plan to get rid of the
last remaining hereditary peers.
There's 92 of them.
And it's sponsored by the Cabinet Office, so this is a bill with government backing,
which means it might actually happen.
Andrew: Okay.
Helen: if you remember, the last Labour government did half the job.
When they were elected in 97 of the House of Lords were still hereditary peers.
And they said, let's get rid of them all.
And then there was an amendment that was put in that said, look, let's have
a bit of a transitional arrangement.
Some of them haven't got homes to go to.
but we'll we'll then get rid of them in the next bit of Lords reform.
And so over the years since then, people have kept on proposing amendments to
it, and the conservatives largely have said, we can't just get rid of the
rest of the peers because we're waiting for the larger bit of Lords reform.
And let me shock you, that's never come.
And it's been a quarter of a century.
Helen: It has been a quarter of a century.
I've prepared a little quiz though, which I know you like, which is, Are these
people real hereditary peers or not?
Adam: Great.
Helen: And all but one of them is sitting in the room.
Lords, all, and one of them has tried to be.
okay, is Valerian Freyberg a real peer?
Ian: It's a herbal remedy.
It is, and it's a carriage from House of Thrones.
Helen: I'm gonna need an answer from you.
Andrew: Yes.
I'll say hereditary.
Hereditary.
Helen: Correct, he's a crossbencher.
Andrew: Hey!
Helen: Peregrine pickle.
Andrew: No, Woodhouse, minor character, Hobbit, Dickens.
Helen: You're all wrong, it's Tobias Smollett.
I want you to think very carefully, it was The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is one
of Tobias Smollett's Actually, he's not as good as Humphrey Clinker, but it's good.
Anyway, Rualyn Howell, Thurlow, Cumming Bruce.
Ian: Yes,
Andrew: definitely.
Ian: Yeah,
Andrew: he's real.
Helen: Yeah, okay, yes, he's a crossbencher.
Merlin Hay.
Andrew: Merlin Hay?
Oh, he's real.
Helen: I don't know why you would say that with a kind of real, Oh, I'm Merlin.
Because I
feel like I've read all those 70s political biographies
that we banged on about.
You're thinking of Merlin Rees.
I am thinking of Merlin Rees, aren't I?
Yes, sorry.
I'm going to say fake.
Ian: No, it's Merlin and he's Welsh and he lives in Hay.
Very nice.
He's real.
I'll go with real.
Helen: He is real, he's the 24th Earl of Errol on a crossbench pier.
Arthur St.
John Copper.
Russ
Andrew: No.
minor player in EastEnders, I believe.
Helen: I have made that up because that's the first two, two of the four
names of Evelyn Moore and Lord Copper.
Lovely.
That would be one that would be nice for you.
Up to a point.
Exactly.
Charles Rodney Muff.
Big Charlie Muff, yeah.
He's real.
He's real and he sits on the bench next to Lady Garden.
Helen: yeah.
He tried to be a Lib Dems here.
He was also real.
He is the, Lady Garden is real, as is Lord Panic.
Third, Baron Calverley.
There you How many of them are actually
Ian: active?
Helen: there was a big report into the fact that, lots of people have
been turning up and claiming expenses.
I don't think the hereditaries are any worse.
In fact, I think they might be better because the system has always
been, so when they went down to just 92, they fixed the percentages
of them at the composition, a rational composition at the time.
So there's 49 Conservatives, 4 Labour, 4 Lib Dem and 35 Crossbenchers.
And basically what happens is when one of them dies or now
retires, there's a by election.
And they have to say, you have to say, look, you're going to have
to be a Lib Dem hereditary peer.
So the people who are motivated to put themselves up for those
elections do actually tend to stay.
It's just weird because there are only three Lib Dem peers when they
had the last election in 2016, so only three people voted in that election.
They all voted for the same person, it was fine.
But you can
Andrew: end up with more voters.
Yeah, that can quite easily happen.
Because if you're a Toff and you want to be a Lib Dem peer, It's
like the Tory leadership election.
There's only so many of them left.
so the odd thing is that these are the only people in the House
of Lords who are elected in that sense, although they are elected by
other lords, so other hereditaries.
Yes, but that's a little bit of election.
Yeah, and to be fair, they don't just sail through, you have to
write a statement of application which has to be up to 75 words long.
It doesn't have to be 75 words, though.
You don't have to hit it, so
Helen: I love them.
They are like UCAS personal statements.
They're like, I have spent a lot of time in Africa and Asia exploring
mineral wealth, and now I'm very interested in environmentalism.
I would be a good member of the House of
Andrew: Lords.
My favorite one that I found of these was in 2021.
Lord Milverton, Lord Milverton's statement was eight words long.
He said he would try to be as objective and reasonable as possible.
Although he wasn't 90 years old when he was making his application, so
he may have simply been quite tired.
but I had no idea how many were here, until I started researching this, that
there were nearly 700 hereditaries in the House of Lords before 1997.
And so it's obviously an enormous number.
Helen: It's also a big, diversity and equality and inclusion challenge, in
that there are only 90 peerages, that can even be inherited by women, let
alone ones that go to a male heir first.
So currently all 92 hereditary peers are men, and as you'd expect, unless
I'd know there's an exception, I don't know, they're all white, or would
identify themselves as white, right?
So you just have this block of votes that do not represent the diversity
of what Britain actually looks like.
the Countess of Mar was the last female hereditary peer, and, but she died,
and they, and was replaced by a bloke.
I
Ian: mean, we had a, an account, and if you want to see the standard
of the quality of debate in the Lords were debating, themselves.
in a recent debate, and that was in, in the last issue, and you, get a flavour.
extraordinarily, quite a lot of the hereditaries are in favour
of, the hereditaries staying.
Andrew: Again,
Ian: there's
Andrew: surprising stuff you read in the eye.
Is there a party weighting to it because there are more Conservative
hereditaries than Labour?
did you say it's 40 odd Conservatives?
45
Helen: Conservatives, yeah, plus anyone from the crossbenchers who might
want to vote with the Conservatives.
And
has it remained at those levels which are representative of what
the state of the party is in 1999?
Helen: Yeah, it was fixed at the time.
It's changed
enormously, hasn't it?
there was an awful lot of Labour, peers were put in to address
that imbalance, but, that bit stayed the same, that's for sure.
Yeah, and it's
Helen: wild to read, so the Lib Dems, one of their constitutional reform
things they wanted to do when they were in coalition was reform the Lords, and
they wanted to take it down to three.
360 elected and 90 appointed.
that's like half the number of peers we've ended up being.
Because exactly that problem, right?
Which is that everybody wants to stack the lords in order that
their stuff will go through.
So there's just been a real huge influx of peers over that conservative time.
And they're wanting to maintain their numerical superiority.
How
Ian: many are there now?
Helen: Of peers.
Andrew: There are about
800.
Helen: Yeah.
Adam: So it's 1 in 8 that's hereditary.
And they have enacted various reforms, so you can't now retire as
a peer, or you can get kicked out.
Lord Prescott was recently kicked out, but the rule now is that if you haven't
made a contribution or attended in the last parliamentary term, that's
it, you are automatically retired.
Lord Prescott's very ill healthy, he had a couple of strokes a few
years ago, and so he didn't turn up.
favourite peer, Lord Archer of Weston super Mare, also stepped
down, just before the last election, so various people, Michael Ashcroft
as well, Lord Ashcroft has retired officially from the House of Lords.
Ian: Really?
Now that is a shame.
Yeah, that might have had something to do with them actually
enforcing some tax rules, but I
Helen: have another quiz question, which is, what is unusual
about Lord Simon of Withenshaw?
Andrew: not actually from Withenshaw.
Helen: Probably not.
Is he a hereditary?
She is now legally a woman.
Ah.
So this is Matilda Simon who is a transgender woman.
Not sitting in the Lords.
Did briefly, was briefly on the list but is now withdrawn.
But has inherited the title ahead of her elder sister because the Gender
Recognition Act says that you can change your legal gender under British law.
But it doesn't affect the inheritance of peerages, which is just the most
British thing that I've ever heard.
It's obviously
Ian: Helen is now primogeniture critical.
Helen: I just think it's so funny that we're going like, let's move
with the times, but not, that much.
The, actually, the listing, bless them, on the House of Lords
websites about the gender breakdown says male, female, non binary.
But we haven't got any non binary Lords yet.
Still hanging on in there, but it hasn't happened yet, but maybe it will do.
one of the problems with Lord's reform and part of the reason that nothing's
been done further has been done on it really for the last 25 years is
the logically, you just get into terrible problems, because obviously
it's unjust to have hereditary peers, 92 of them, in the House of Lords.
But it's also completely unjust to have political appointees in the
House of Lords, if you give it more than two seconds thought, isn't it?
So you really do have to come up with a solution that encompasses the whole
thing, and then force that through to a point that's going to disadvantage,
probably, the party in government at any given time, and the chances
of anything actually getting done.
Helen: Yeah, the Gabelbasher piece was very good on this, because it basically
said, You're never going to get the Lord Turkey to vote for Christmas.
And that is always the problem with laws reform.
Andrew: If you're getting rid of the hereditaries, which, is that
likely to actually go through?
It's a cabinet
Helen: office bill, and so it's sponsored by, Pat McFadden.
So the previous problems has been, they were 10 minute reform bills, or
they were Lib Dem bills that therefore the Tories didn't really care about.
But this is a,
Andrew: this is a policy.
This is a proper,
Helen: they will whip it, yeah.
Andrew: So if you're getting rid of the hereditaries, and you're getting
rid of the ghastly spiffs that Boris was seeing wandering through the
office and putting in, Who's left?
Ian: the left is what we call the arbitrary peers, which appears that
no one knows why they were appointed.
it's quite a large group, but it's led by, Lady Owen.
Okay.
Helen: I think the best thing that they could do, really,
is introduce term limits.
it wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing in the world anyway, because the average
age in the House of Lords is about 70.
So realistically people are probably not going to be there for,
unless they are Baroness Owen, not going to be there for 50 years.
but that would also allow a kind of, natural wastage means it sounds
like they're being taken outside and shot, but It would allow not to
vastly outlive the complexion of the government that appointed them, right?
So even if you get somebody who comes in, stacks it, those people will,
cycle back out again when perhaps the political wind has changed.
Adam: Can I offer my solution?
Because I genuinely think this is one of my only good ideas
of actually solving something.
Elected second chamber, but done according to share of the vote.
if all of these peers have a good reason to be in there, parties can put them up
as a list, like they do, in the Scottish Parliament, you have the constituency,
and then you have the list of other candidates who are used to top it up.
You have your candidates for various parties in an order of how you want them
in, and the seats in the second chamber are just accorded every parliament
according to the actual share of the vote.
Then you solve Yes, you're going to have a few reformy type people in there, you're
going to have lots more Lib Dems, you're going to have more Greens and things,
but it addresses two problems at the same time of getting rid of unelected
peers and sorting out an element of proportional representation in Parliament.
Ian: Can I just say that as a journalist, your job is to be incredibly
critical and offer no solutions at
all.
That's my only one, that's literally.
I still feel you are letting
Ian: the side down.
I'm sorry, forget
Andrew: it.
but Doesn't proportional mean that you'll be able to get through
anything you like as the government?
Doesn't it mean that you'll have a limited amount of scrutiny?
Helen: you already can in the sense of it's a manifested commitment
or a financial measure that, the kind of standing rule is that the
Lords shouldn't vote that down.
They can send things back and ping pong, but the idea is that Lords should provide
scrutiny, but they can't go against the government of the day on things like that.
It's
Andrew: 1911, isn't it?
we have done this once.
I think there's a committee that's allowed to I don't recommend expert
peers, but it's only a couple per time, it's only sort of two per year.
And there were proposals to raise the number of expert peers
to, ten a year, for example.
But there's an absolute argument
for that.
And there is actually an argument for some retired people from the
House of Commons to go in there.
If they've got particular, particularly useful skill sets, a few of them, maybe.
there is, having a second chamber to scrutinise and potentially oppose
is a very, good idea, isn't it?
It's just not the one we've got.
Helen: Yeah, there are some really good peers, but there are also some people
who don't turn up very much, or don't really have a great deal of expertise,
or, political appointees who just regard it as a sort of private members club, I
think is the way that some people do it.
I think working peers, we should encourage people to be working peers,
and this is their, first and probably only job, which is why retirees, I
think, do tend to work quite well.
Andrew: Do you want to hear one of my fave peers?
Yeah.
Lord Christopher.
Familiar with that name?
Helen: No.
Familiar
Andrew: Christopher is the oldest member of the Lords, and will
soon be turning 100 years old.
Wow.
Yep.
Last living British Parliamentarian to have served in the Second World War.
Is he still turning up?
I don't know, I haven't checked his attendance record.
He's not a hereditary, no.
No, he's just one of the the appointeds.
But, he was, briefly, he was in the RAF in 1944.
Still counts.
I'm picturing a Galapagos
tortoise at this point.
Aww.
Inermen.
Yeah.
Andrew: now, speaking of creaking institutions with extremely elderly heads,
And battles over primogeniture we come to the Murdoch family empire.
And Adam, rumble
happening in Nevada this week.
There is, in Reno, Nevada, home of my favourite casino
in the world, the Peppermill.
Just a little travel tip for you there, if you're popping
over to cover the Murdoch trial.
Which you won't be able to, because it's all happening behind closed doors.
All of this is taking place in secret.
And this is the battle between Rupert And, most of his children, he's got
one on side, Lachlan Murdoch, who is the, the boss of News Corp these days.
and this is all about the trust that was set up for the family after Rupert's
second divorce out of four so far, five wives, four divorces so far.
, and we all know that, we all know the rhyme, we all know the rhyme.
I've completely
Helen: lost track of the wives.
Okay,
this is a fun quiz for you if you like, because I realised the other week
that I can't name all seven dwarves, but I can do all five Murdoch wives.
Can you?
yeah, Sporcy, Ginger.
It's
Helen: Prudence is his eldest daughter with his first wife, Anna?
Nope.
First
wife is Patricia.
okay.
The second
Helen: wife is Anna, and that's the main, I would say the
main wife in terms of heirs.
you, she's three, so she is Lachlan, James and Elizabeth, not
necessarily in that order, third wife,
Helen: friend of Tony Blair, Wendy Deng, great friend
of Tony Blair, an admirer of Tony Blair, Wendy Deng, who produced
Grace and Chloe, Two more wives.
Helen: Geri Hall.
Very good.
Of course.
And
Helen: then he had the near miss with the one who turned out to be an
evangelical Christian who believed everything that Tucker Carlson said.
She thought Tucker
Carlson was the second coming of Jesus.
Backed away quite fast.
She was too right wing for Rupert Murdoch, which again is quite a feat.
Helen: And I'm afraid I don't know the lucky number five.
He is now in a state of connubial bliss with Elena Zhukova.
Yeah.
Former mother in law of Roman Abramovich.
Mother in law of Roman Abramovich.
It was all in air of
Ian: Sorrows.
Oh, no, it wasn't.
But she is a, she's a scientist and she's a microbiologist.
She is.
yes, She is looking for the secret of eternal life.
Yes.
I've made that bit up.
She is of an age, that means she's considerably younger than Rupert,
but then everyone in the world is considerably younger than Rupert.
she is of an age where she's unlikely to produce any more children.
so we probably do have the full complement of children now, which is what this
current legal battle is about because Rupert is currently trying to change the
terms of the arrangement by which the four kids, four older kids get a vote
in what happens to the company after he dies and make it Lachlan, the sole
person who gets to decide anything.
So this isn't in terms exactly of money, it's in terms of control.
Is that fair to say?
No, everyone gets money.
So Grace and Chloe, the younger kids, also get money.
What they don't have is a say in the running of the company and voting shares.
Andrew: And now the proposal is that not only do those two younger children with
Wendy Deng Not have the right control.
The three others, apart from Lachlan, lose that control.
They lose that.
They keep the money, but Lachlan is in sole charge.
And the reason for this is that Lachlan is the most right wing and most aligned
with Rupert's own political views.
Ian: So Roman and Shiv get nothing.
Nothing at
Adam: all.
Not a thing.
And not even the Tom Wamsgans of this set up, who is a chap called Alastair
MacLeod, who is married to Prudence, now, Prudence is always a weird one,
because whenever you see any reference to Prudence they say, Prudence who's a lot
less involved in her father's businesses.
Guess what Prudence did until last year as one of her jobs?
She'd run Sky, I don't know.
Director of Times Newspapers.
Oh, okay.
Guess what Alistair McLeod, Mr, Mr, Prudence Murdoch, did for 21 years?
Helen: He was a page three girl?
Close.
He was Managing Director of News Corp Australia.
So the idea of being slightly more detached from the company.
admittedly, he was a bit more He didn't actually run the whole thing and screw
it up completely like James Murdoch did, which was then he suddenly had his
political awakening and decided that his views didn't align with his dad's.
And he didn't have his own TV company purchased for 450 million,
like Elizabeth Murdoch did by her, when her dad paid that much.
And it was one of the rare events where the other shareholders in Murdoch's
companies have got so cross about it, they actually tried to challenge
that one, and it went all the way to court and ended up in a large payout.
So Sorry, I'm just playing catch up
Andrew: here.
we've got Lachlan over here, Our furthest on the right is
Lachlan, and then the other three, Prudence, James, and Elizabeth.
Prudence being the much older of the three, James being the one who did all
the appearances with Rupert Murdoch after Leveson and things like that.
And then Elizabeth, who ran this Shine TV and film company.
And then sold it to her dad.
They're all, I presume, very angry about this.
Adam: And this is why it's happening in secret?
Is that right?
They are extremely angry about it.
it's happening in secret because it's being done in Nevada, which is a place
which offers complete and utter secrecy on any court case involving family trusts.
Okay.
Helen: Otherwise that would be a very rogue decision, because it's
not like anything's in court.
It's a completely bizarre one.
usually these things happen in Delaware, don't they?
That's the kind of
organisations who've tried to challenge this, but there's very,
little chance of anyone getting inside that courtroom at all.
they are very angry.
We can grade how angry they are about it by the fact that none of them turned up.
None of those three, Prudence, Elizabeth, All James turned up to the last
wedding to Elena Zukova back in June.
They all suddenly found they had very important other appointments.
once you've been to a certain number of weddings,
Andrew: you know what the cake will taste like.
Ian: Does anyone know of any just cause or impediment?
Yeah, we do, actually.
Am I
Helen: right in thinking my other bit of weird murder trivia that's
coming out of my brain is that James has got a tattoo of a lightbulb.
He may well do, I feel like he is interesting.
He is an interesting place in that he, as he not exactly huffed off, but he
left off, he left America, didn't he?
As, the sort of Fox Empire was going very hard.
James had a weird degree to Australia.
James.
James did initially when he was young, try and branch off in a different
direction entirely, and went and found, I think, hit pop labels in Manhattan
and they weren't desperately successful.
And suddenly at one point he decided that maybe he did wanna be a part
of the, family business as well.
Came over to head up, news UK News International as it was known then.
right into the heart of the phone hacking scandal, which
he handled fairly appallingly.
If
Andrew: so what actual decisions at the Mulder Corporation will, this
change, or would it change, depending
on the results of this case?
What will happen to the entire Murdoch empire?
there is no sign that any of them are very interested in newspapers, for instance.
, and Rupert is the man who has kept the interest in newspapers
going within that company.
Certainly none of the other shareholders.
This is the weird thing about News Corp, is there are a lot of other shareholders.
They actually have a minority interest in it, the Murdochs.
But because of the way it's set up, they have the full control over the company.
It's all about the voting shares as opposed to the ordinary shares.
Lachlan I don't think has got any interest.
I would be very surprised if the Times and the Sun survive for very long
under Murdoch family control after Rupert departs this particular plane.
but actually Rupert was in town with LAN last week.
inking another deal, which was to buy something else entirely, which was right
move, the estate agents listing side.
What?
Yep.
Ian: You sure
Adam: he didn't think it was a political website?
It might have just been a real snub to Elizabeth and James, mightn't it?
We're moving right.
No, I think that's one of the most revealing things that's come out
in the last few days is that the future of Newscall is unlikely to
be in any media properties other than Fox, which is still violently,
virulently successful in America.
but, they've just had the massive failure of TalkTV over here.
They can't replicate that on a British site.
I don't think Latylin is very interesting in Britain at all.
It's very much the fiefdom of Rebecca Brooks.
She's pretty much, the woman in charge over here.
and the fact that they're moving into Rightmove.
it would be a great purchase.
it is a site that completely revolutionized house buying
and is enormously successful.
hopefully going to be a more successful purchase than MySpace.
Remember when Rupert said, I've heard of this thing called the internet.
I want to get into it and purchase MySpace for some ridiculous price.
Ridiculous eye watering amount of money in 2005, just to watch
that go down the pan entirely.
but I think that is a sign of the way that the business is likely
to be going, under, Lachlan.
The
Helen: Mail Group has got a number of websites like that, hasn't it?
It owns various things that are news adjacent.
There's a kind of group of like financial websites and stuff like that.
They do, a
lot of financial websites, they do a lot of event organisations and
conferences and things like that, yeah.
If you look actually at the DMGT website, Daily Mail in general Trust the name
of the newspaper is there and the title of it, but it's not desperately
prominent in the description of the business, as far as Roth Mirror and his,
it comes back to that thing that we've
Helen: talked about a lot of on this podcast, which is that now the bottom
has fallen out the market in terms of making media, print, media make money.
And internet media makes far less money than.
than the 90s when you used to be able to sell hugely, profitable print ads.
So really, who wants to own media properties anymore?
It's either people like Rupert Murdoch who have a sort of legacy
attachment to them, or it's people who want an influence operation.
And don't negate that last part of it, because the other thing that Rupert
did when he was in town last week with Lachlan was to meet up with Kemi
Badnok and Robert Jenrick, the two frontrunners, and I think, Probably
fair to say the two most right wing candidates in the Tory leadership contest.
So he's still keeping a beady eye on that.
Someone tried to convince me recently, a Sun person, that he's got Rupert,
really has genuinely retired now and handed over the reins and doesn't take
any interest in what's going on at all and is just in canubial bliss in
his vineyard in California with Elena.
But I think there's still a very much a beady eye on what's going on.
Andrew: And on the second reason, Hannah, that you mentioned, the kind of political
And that's the machination side of why you'd want to own a media business.
We come to, Paul Marshall.
Yes.
Who has just bought The Spectator.
For a hundred million.
Which is, I think last time it was on sale, Adam, correct me if
I'm wrong, it was twenty million.
So even accounting for inflation, it's, he's, paid a,
he's paid a premium whack for
That's a huge amount.
Helen: Yeah, I don't know how much they've got to recoup on the Telegraph, but the
whole thing is like 800 million, isn't it?
So this has done a huge amount for recouping the Barclays losses.
And makes the case, really, that the Spectator is a more powerful asset,
maybe, perhaps, than the Telegraph, Not least because It makes money.
Adam: the Telegraph makes money as well, that's the one
thing that can be said of it.
But only as a result of the sort of weird asset stripping, like
it's been cut to the bone, I'm not sure, do you know what I think?
I don't know.
A lot of it is down to that.
They have been fairly successful in their subscriptions drive and stuff.
I think the attraction of the Spectator is it's also got an international
angle, it's got an American edition, it does a lot of kind of internationally
conferences with Viktor Orban and various dodgy people in Hungary and Andrew Neal
Helen: That's it, all gone.
Adam: And Douglas Murray and people popping up, popping
up in, Budapest and things.
so it's got, it fits that Paul Marshall, GB News, unheard kind of,
what we've talked about before on here.
This weird, form of international nationalism that is, it seems to be a
big, thing in conservatism these days.
Andrew: And Where does Andrew Neill go?
I think that's the main concern we've all
got.
Helen: he's out as publisher.
He had always said in advance, if you remember, he had that sort of weird
spat with Jeff Zucker, ex of CNN, about who was going to buy it, and he said,
whenever it gets taken over, I'm leaving.
And so he did, I want to say it's a Facebook post, but I'm not sure, my
mind maybe just transmuted this, saying, I'm going, I think it's terrible that
the workers won't get compensated in this takeover, says Chairman Neil.
Which
Adam: was never a traditional line he had when he was at the Sunday Times
with The Economist, I have to say.
Helen: And also that I hope that they'll Respect the editorial freedoms, and you're
like, what it, what about unheard just makes you think that they're not prepared
to publish spicy right wing content?
I like, I read a lot of unheard, but it will push, pretty brisk stuff,
of the type that The Spectator also does, it, it was, not a, Not a
gracious farewell post, I think not,
Adam: but I just love the fact that, Paul Marshall got him into GB News where
he lasted a week and in an enormously embarrassing episode resigned after
doing, I think it was slightly more than a week, I think he did eight shows
at the end, didn't he, Andrew Neil?
And he retired to lick his wounds from that one, and then, but still
had the job as chair of The Spectator.
And Paul Marshall's come back to take that away from him too!
I want Paul Marshall to move in next autumn now in Just put up Rude's topiary
looking over his wall and things, just did everything, take it all, Paul!
Andrew: moving swiftly on from that, we should come to the last question
of media ownership, which has been in the news in the last week.
we've talked about the Murdochs and their sort of vexed ownership, and we've talked
about the Spectator changing hands.
The other story that has been in the news, but a bit lower on the radar, I'd
say, has been about the Jewish Chronicle.
there's been a mass walkout of staff from the Jewish Chronicle
over, over a particular columnist.
But there's been trouble at Mill for a while.
Helen: Hadley Friedman, David Aronovich, Johnny Friedland, and David Baddiel
have all said they're not going to work.
for the paper anymore.
And the inciting incident for this, although I think some of them have
troubles going back a bit further, is that the Jewish Chronicle published a
series of stories by a freelancer whose biography appears to be somewhat inflated.
One of the clues that maybe it wasn't all straight down the line
is the fact that he claims to have been a member of an elite Israeli
special forces unit at the age of 53.
Which is a bit, Dad's Army.
I like the idea of a sort of Mossad Dad's Army.
Andrew: Was he a hereditary member of the Special Forces Unit?
So was
Helen: And also, the other thing that was very coincidental about these stories
is that they all peddled a very specific line that was very helpful to Benjamin
Netanyahu, which was the idea that the leader of Hamas was going to take some of
the hostages and into Iran, and therefore there was no point doing a hostage deal.
Now the backdrop to that is the fact that there's huge pressure both
from the Americans and from within Israel itself to do a ceasefire deal,
and the belief that will lead to more of those hostages coming home.
Benjamin Netanyahu's been really resistant to that.
So what had happened really was that a slightly fishy, Freelancer had been
putting stories in the JC that were very pro Netanyahu and I think that
really coalesced people's concerns already that the paper has become
very pro Likud, specifically, rather than representing the British Jewish
community or even representing a sort of broad pro Israel self defense position.
but as you say, the issue of the ownership has been dribbling on for
a while, so we're Robbie Gibb, if you remember, was actually Andrew Neill's
producer on the Sunday Politics, that's where I remember him from.
He then became Theresa May's spin doctor, he then now sits on the BBC board.
He, was until recently listed as the person with sole control
of the Jewish Chronicle.
Okay.
But we don't know where he got the money from.
Suspiciously found something like three million down the back of the
sofa in order to, to pay for it.
And Alan Rusbridger in Prospect a couple of months ago raised the question,
maybe it was a US multi millionaire that was funding this, but no one has
been able to get to the bottom of it.
Lots and lots of people have looked.
Andrew: Has Gibb been asked about this?
Just won't say.
Flatly refuses to answer.
Won't
Helen: say.
And there is now a plan to turn the JC into a charitable trust, which I think
would be very tricky given its kind of very overtly political, stances.
there are now, including, talking people from the Blair era coming back, Lord
Austin, the Labour, was he a Labour peer?
Ian Austin, anyway, has now been named as a director along
with a couple of other, people.
the ownership Technically, people whose name is above the door has changed.
We still don't really know where that initial money came from.
And that bothers people in the same way that it bothered people that the UAE was
going to take over The Telegraph, right?
You should know and be able to hold accountable the owners of
big media properties in Britain.
Andrew: Yeah, if you own a pub, you have to say who's the owner on the outside.
Helen: but I think it's all got sucked into, as soon as you mention anything
to do with Jewishness and money, people react very strongly, right?
Yeah, of course.
And I mentioned how bad I felt for all the people who had resigned on
principle, and someone came back at me, a Telegraph writer, saying, Oh,
I see, you're just saying it's all murky because it's Jews and money.
And I said, no.
No, I think I've taken a fairly principled stand all along about
media ownership and plurality.
But, but it's this odd situation in which Robbie Gibb just won't
say and no one can make him.
Andrew: But he won't say either, yes, I do own this or where the money came from.
Helen: And it's, I think the one of the reasons it's particularly concerning to
people is that he sits on the editorial board that adjudicates on complaints
about Israel Palestine coverage.
At the same time, as he has been owning a very pro Netanyahu, very hawkish
paper, and I think that people feel that's a conflict of interest, that
he's not a neutral observer, at a time when the BBC's coverage, as you
might expect, has been enormously controversial, with activists from both
sides complaining about it an awful lot.
Ian: The idea that people are leaving the Jewish Chronicle because they've
noticed that it peddles stories that are sympathetic to Netanyahu, I'm not shocked,
and I'm wondering where they've been.
I did feel rather sorry for Josh Glancy, who took a principled stand and left the
Jewish Chronicle, I think last October, for exactly these reasons, that he
didn't like the increasingly right wing and pro Netanyahu line it was taking.
Went off to work at Jewish News instead.
And, it pops up saying, Hi guys, yeah, some of us did this months ago.
Helen: Yeah, and Gabriel Progrand, who is the kind of ace reporter at
the Sunday Times, who does, who did the Starmer glasses story and stuff,
he popped up on Twitter quite bravely a couple of months ago and said, It
is really weird that we don't know the ownership structure of this.
But, all of those people have been either ignored or shouted down, I think.
And, and I think the community has really dealt with that.
Divided over it.
There was a statement by the chief Rabbi that was also pretty
much we need more weapons.
It was a very political statement for a religious leader to put out.
And I think there is an increasingly interesting schism in the British Jewish
community between people who feel, don't question what Israel's doing when there's
a war on, and people who don't subscribe to that view, who are probably slightly to
the left, slightly more predisposed to be
Ian: Yeah, shouldn't you suggest that in a satirical magazine?
you would find yourself in a great deal of trouble, so a cartoon that says they've
moved from saying support Israel's right to defend itself to support Israel's
right, that is, is not acceptable.
How did that go down?
Very, badly.
and again, it does, make me feel that the, those people working
on the Jewish Chronicle could perhaps have looked differently.
around a bit more widely at other media to see how they were handling this
particular story before they suddenly all noticed that the paper they were
working for was not entirely reliable in presenting the facts of this situation.
Helen: I think I'm probably more sympathetic to you because I know and
like several of the people involved.
And I think it's, I think Johnny Friedland's resignation letter was a
really interesting example of this.
He said, Friedland's been writing this paper since the 1970s,
my birth was announced in it.
I think lots of people have a kind of deep loyalty to the paper and what it was, and
have therefore been hoping that at some point it would come back round again.
But I do, you are right that there have been rumblings of discontent about
it for really quite some time now.
Andrew: What happens next?
Helen: I think it's a really savage, to lose four of your really
objectively biggest named columnists in one weekend is a pretty, big blow.
But then it comes back to this question that, we were talking about before about,
is it being run as a media business?
it's losing quite a lot of money.
Or is it being run as, will it be run as a charitable trust?
Or is whoever owns it, whoever that might be, happy to keep supporting it
because they want to have Britain's biggest Jewish newspaper be in
tune with their political opinions?
So the brutal answer might be that it might just carry on without really caring.
Andrew: Watch this space.
And if you would like a magazine that is fortnightly, funny and
interesting, just go to private-eye.
co.
uk and subscribe.
For the low, price of 2.
99, roughly 100, 000, 000 less than the Spectator cost, you
can get a subscription today.
And in fact, if you subscribe, it's even cheaper than that.
That's it from us this week.
Thanks to Ian, Helen and Adam, and to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.