Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.
Andy: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in an undisclosed location, with Adam
MacQueen, Helen Lewis, and Ian Hislop.
We are here to discuss the news of the last two weeks, give or take,
maybe even the next two weeks.
And, we start off with the fact that we've got a completely new government.
We've had a reshuffle, new....?
Adam: Well largely new.
Yeah.
Andy: Yes, sorry, new.
Ian: I thought it was largely the same... with different desks.
Adam: Funny thing was... last press day, so we're going back to, Monday,
the 1st of September at about, 10 30.
Once we thought everything was pretty much done and we knew what copy was
coming in, nothing else was happening.
There's suddenly a big BBC breaking news thing saying, Reshuffle Kicks Off.
And I thought, oh my God, we're gonna have to pull apart the entire
magazine and redo it completely.
And that turned out to be the Minister for Paperclips was swapped with the
Minister for nice biscuits with tea and coffee after cabinet meetings.
And that was pretty much it, as far as I could see.
So I thought we were safe at that point.
At which point I, I disappeared off on holiday for a couple of days.
And a message from Helen, to say, have you seen the news?
And it, Angela Rainham resigned.
And as you say, we'd had a lot, we had a largely new cabinet suddenly.
So...
Andy: yeah, quite a lot of changes.
New, what is it?
New Home secretary, new foreign
Helen: new Deputy prime Minister, and then loads of changes.
The two ones that have been gone a bit under the radar is Pat McFadden, who is
the kind of last surviving Blairite and Keir Starmer's big fixer and straight back
player on political shows has ended up at the Department of Work and Pensions.
And Johnny Reynolds who was a business has gone to be Chief Whip.
And the really interesting thing about that is that suggests that
they're going to try and put welfare.
Cuts through again, because essentially they tried to put through changes
to personal independence payments completely failed to do so because
of a huge back bench rebellion.
I think that they still know that is a big target, a lot of money.
They eventually end up making changes that look like they'll be net costing them
money now on the welfare bill and it's money that they don't feel that they have.
So there's.... that's part of it.
And then the other part of it, I think is a, feeling that they wanted Shabana
Mahmood in at Home because she's the most hard line on immigration and boats
Every day they wake up and thinking about how they're going
to lose to Reform basically.
And so they know that's the one issue that they've absolutely gotta
get a grip on is asylum, hotels
Ian: I couldn't see what new weapons, as Chief Whip, Reynolds has that
the previous Chief Whip didn't have.
Is it personality alone?
what, why should the back benchers put through any reforms this time
that they didn't want last time?
Helen: Johnny Reynolds is famously very nice.
For many years he used to send me a Christmas card with all of his
adorable children in matching sweaters.
I think the labrador may even also have been in a matching sweater.
Adam: you think they've basically gone from bad cop to good
Helen: I think they may try in good cop, but I agree with you.
the way I see it is that lots of these people think, I was elected in
a Northern English seat or, street.
I don't think I'm gonna win it next time.
Do I want the one thing to come out of my five years in parliament to have been
taken money away from disabled people?
So I think they will still struggle to make that case with back benchers,
but they obviously are trying to.
Put people in that they absolutely feel they can trust.
There's been a lot of stuff happening in the back room as well,
actually as well, just to try and make that Number 10 operation.
And yeah, they brought back, Tim Allen, I'm sure friend of the magazine.
Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.
you're a dictator, then there was only, for a time, there was
only really one person to call.
which is interesting to me because I think one of the problems that this
government has is they don't really understand what the media is now.
They're still wedded to the idea of the six o'clock news bulletin or
getting something on page one of the Telegraph or whatever it might be.
I think they're beginning to realize that they really need to
be on places like TikTok, where Nigel Farage is absolutely massive.
And James Lyons, who, has left as recently as government communications
advisor, said this in a LinkedIn post.
He said, it's changed massively even in the time I was there.
And I still don't think we've really got to grips with what it's like
to try and make our case in this,
Adam: That was something that struck me with Shabana Mahmood as well, who
as, as well as being the, most, hard line and, socially conservative person.
It was also, in terms of effectiveness, I was thinking the last really big success
they had in selling a story to the public was the very awkward situation they were
left with the massive prison population that was, that was gonna explode.
And she very successfully, as justice secretary, managed to
sell that back as this is a mess.
We were left by the Tories and this is what we're gonna
have to do to get over it.
It is not ideal for anyone.
That was the last time I can remember these government feeling
quite surefooted on something and, communicating it quite well
Ian: And using an amazing technique known as honesty.
Adam: Mm.
Ian: Which, is worth a try, occasionally.
We have to let these people out 'cause there isn't room for them.
We don't want to, we hate them as much as you do.
We don't wanna see them coming out and being picked up in Jags by their
old mates and having a glass of champagne, but we haven't got any cells.
That sort of worked.
Adam: Yeah.
I mean it was a potentially government ending moment, wasn't it?
The, that sort of imagery.
And, somehow did pass and paved away for new disasters thereafter.
Helen: The other interesting one is that Steve Reed has ended up going to housing.
Now he is, music to my ears, a little bit on the build baby build side.
And I think they realize that target 1.5 million homes is something
that they're going to be judged on.
there is a housing theory of everything about what's wrong with British politics.
And if you look at something like asylum hotels, that's a
very good example of it, right?
Actually, where are we gonna put people while they wait for
their claims to be processed?
There's two problems there: no places to put them, and it's huge
backlogs in Home Office processing.
So anything that can address housing is, going to be, is gonna
make everything else across all their other policy areas easier.
The massive fall from the Boris wave of immigration to this year's immigration
because it's something close to hared.
I mean it's, they have actually gone oh no.
And I'm trying to work out why Boris Johnson let that happen.
Was that an ideological thing or did he just.... be ready to be shocked
here, simply just do something He didn't really understand the
Ian: What you mean carelessness and inattention to detail?
Helen: It seems unlikely.
I know.
Ian: I don't think so.
Andy: But it was always gonna be a lump in it, as it were.
'cause of Ukraine and Hong Kong.
Yeah.
Which both added substantially to the stat.
And I believe I'm right in saying that the backlog, people waiting for their claims
to be processed is substantially down.
Helen: Yeah.
And NHS waiting list have fallen a bit and they have seen off a
reasonable number of strike threats, not the tube strike threats that are
happening as we're recording this.
But it isn't actually quite as bleak a picture as you might initially think.
Although I'm currently feeling quite pessimistic about it all.
Andy: if that backlog has come down... and I think it's by a decent chunk in
what have they had now 14 months, the question then becomes, does that matter?
Or is the debate about immigration boats, housing flags, all of that
now so dominant and so toxic that even results don't make a difference.
Helen: Also they just lack the ability to punch Nigel Farage.
Stephen Bush, my former colleague, The New Statesman said this, they're
planning to run the next election against Nigel Farage as a fear message.
Do you really want this guy to be Prime Minister?
'cause lots of people, for everyone that does are someone
that doesn't, but they won't tell you what you should be afraid of.
And so there's this mad situation when he said, look, I'm gonna
return people 'cause we'll get out the EHCR and I'll return them to
Afghanistan and I'll, I'll pay them.
And people went, you're going to pay the Taliban.
You're going to give money to the Taliban.
and they couldn't really land that point.
That this guy is so irresponsible.
He'll give money to people we've said are jihadists and terrorists and misogynists
Ian: And it's worse than that.
You'll, pay money to the Taliban to murder people who were on our side briefly.
Yeah.
During the war.
Helen: And this is the kind of thing I think that a kind of Government
comms operation ought to be able to
make a little bit of hay out of.
Helen: But they can't, they just, they, they just can't quite get there on
Ian: But the problem with blaming the government comms office, just a way of...
as is always true in British polls... of saying, the advisors aren't much, the
comms aren't, could the leaders do it?
The members of the cabinet?
I dunno...
I suppose we should say what's brought this
Andy: whole reshuffle on in the first place, and, say a sound
farewell to Angela Rayner.
Probably on au reviour.
I imagine.
Adam: Can she stand again for Deputy Leader?
That's something I haven't seen anyway.
Could she just, I know I was talking about the threat from the left and
who might stand for deputy leader.
Could she just put herself up for it again, having resigned?
Helen: I think technically she could, you have to get a certain number of,
either CLPs or trade unions and MPs. There's this kind of two step process
to show you've got a reasonable amount of support to winow people out.
There may be some bit in the rule book that says you can't do it immediately.
In the same way that Kemi Badenoch's most favored line in the conservative
rule book is that you can't have a leadership challenge within a year
of the new Tory leader getting in.
There are a lot of people who are showing a suspiciously high level of interest
in the Gaza situation in a way that suggests that they are about to imminently
announce deputy two leadership bids.
I'm looking at you, Emily Thornbury and Stella Creasy
Adam: Remember Suella Braverman resigning from Liz Truss's Government, and then
coming back immediately to the same job as Home Secretary in Rishi Sunak's,
just like a couple of weeks later.
Ian: But are we saying A, that people's memories are short or
B, that they just don't care?
So if, you are judged to have behaved very badly and badly enough
to have to resign from the second highest job in the country, that
doesn't mean you can't come back.
it suggests you've done something wrong in the first
place, the record, which you haven't obviously, because
no
one
has ever done anything wrong at any point in any
Adam: The
record on people being brought back is not a brilliant one, is it?
you might remember both Peter Mandelson and David Bunker had resigned from
Blair's government, and were both brought back fairly rapidly to other jobs.
Do you remember what happened next?
Oh, yes.
Both of them then had to resign again, didn't they?
Ian: But Lord Mandelson is now with us,
Adam: like
the poor.
He is always with us, isn't he?
Yeah, no, he's, he does just keep bobbing bad up back up to the, the
surfers of the pan, doesn't he?
It's extraordinary.
Helen: I'm gonna say that I'm quite sympathetic to Angela Rayna on the basis
of someone who has to do a, a tax return.
I don't understand any of it.
I don't think anyone can
Adam: that.
I'm not sure anyone does.
I was thinking about this is it the most boring reason for
a political resignation ever?
I absolutely She had to go, she'd gone against the ministerial code of ethics.
I'm, not disputing that
at
Andy: all.
So what
was it?
Adam: It was
so
technical, As I understand it, she went because she'd failed to seek further tax
advice as recommended by lawyers on her stamp duty obligation on buying a second
home.
Ian: Yeah.
And then lied about it and then tried to throw the local
convincing firm under a bus.
she was the minister responsible for housing.
So when for the second time, in six months, you are involved in a housing
purchase scandal, you might think, you just might think, I better ask someone
who knows about this, or I'd better take the safe route and pay the maximum
amount of tax rather than the minimum.
just
Helen: No, but also this is the government of the ironic resignation, isn't it?
And you get your anti-corruption person, having to resign for
corruption and ones going through.
and
Adam: in terms of absolute slam dunks, they do stay on topic with all
of their resignations, don't they?
So we lost, R Han Alley just a couple of weeks earlier.
the homelessness Minister, she had to resign after evicting tenants and
putting the rent up while specifically trying to push through the renter's
rights bill, through Parliament, which banned exactly that sort of behavior.
We had Tulip Sadik, who was the treasury minister, who was responsible for,
fighting financial corruption accused, and now in fact on trial incent in
Bangladesh for financial corruption connected to her aunt over there.
Ian: Yeah.
Aren't she Corruption was her, brief.
Adam: We had Louis Hague, that was an undisclosed conviction for fraud.
when her mobile phone turned out not to have been stolen, and she'd just
gone an upgrade to an iPhone instead.
Now, that wasn't connected.
She was Minister for Transport, so that wasn't entirely connected to her
brief, but slight iron in the fact that she was working for an insurance
company at
the
time.
So
Ian: but wouldn't
say you were Deputy Prime Minister and there'd been all these series of scandals
and enforced resignations going on.
Wouldn't that make you slightly more careful?
Adam: You would think so, wouldn't you?
Ian: Yeah.
and
the charge of recklessness does that not hold?
Adam: Oh, I think it absolutely does.
Hold.
I'm just saying it's the technicalities.
It gets slightly lost in the weed.
the fact that it took, kind of two weeks, it was more than two weeks.
'cause we had the scandal last year, didn't we?
Weren't we had the o over the home in Stockport or Stockton
Ian: was
it?
Yeah, the original.
Adam: yeah.
And the, I remember the mail on Sunday going into two pages of forensic
dissection of Instagram photos of her sofa cushions, which was supposed
to prove whether or not it was the, that's the thing with s it's quite hard
when, they're very, straightforward, like the ones we've just mentioned.
It's really nice and easy to make them stick.
But some of them, it's just a lot more complicated, isn't it?
Ian: But again, the overall optics, which I believe comms departments call
this, is
someone who shouts Tory scum and spent a huge amount of time having a
go at the other side for corruption.
and tax avoidance just should be a bit more careful.
Helen: That's the what da.
Yeah.
Damned it.
You're right.
She, he was straight out the traps on someone like Madam Za Howie, for example.
And there was a lethal moment, a prime minister's question when, Kerry Barock
said there was some dimension of her being the minister and responsible for housing.
And everyone groaned.
And as soon as you become that sort of punchline, the government would never
be able to say anything about housing as on, if, the second thing is everyone
groans that I, and I thought, that's, that's, that, just that exemplifies
why she just had, she did have
Andy: now all this is leading up to a very exciting thing, which
I know you've prepared Adam.
Which is a brief quiz about some of the most technical and obstru reasons
ministers have ever had to resign.
Is that right?
Adam: Yes.
We are not doing the big sex scandals here.
We are doing the really slightly
tedious workmanlike
Helen: ones.
Can I say that Ian is looking very confident about
Adam: These
Ian: These are the ones I
Helen: like.
Yeah.
Adam: We have mentioned Peter Mandelson already.
So not the first resignation.
That was an absolute slam dunker, if you remember.
He, he failed to disclose it was housing again, wasn't he?
He failed to disclose something that might seem relevant to certain people.
He, he owed 373,000 to another cabinet minister who he was working with across
the table, which he'd used to buy a very, expensive house in Notting Hill.
that's why he went that time.
But as I say, he was then brought back to the cabinet.
Can you remember why he had to resign the second
time?
Helen: he's rather passports, right?
He got, he was involved in helping to get passports for a couple of people who were
Labour donors and industrial tycoons.
Adam: And at this point, ahead of the private eye lawyer, I jump in to
say that at the inquiry into it, he was cleared of improper involvement
in trying to, source that passport.
But yes, it was, and it was all turned up.
Do you remember why it was felt that he owed a favor to the Hinduja family?
Andy: There
Ian: Had they set up a, a Mushy P factory in Hartley Pool?
Adam: No, I'm a friend.
He's even more time than that.
He was the Millennium Dome.
They were sponsors
of the Millennium Dome or a zone in the Millennium Dome.
Yeah, indeed.
Boris Johnson, promised to lie down in front of bulldozers to
stop Heathrow's third runway.
Yes.
Helen: Mm-hmm.
Adam: so ahead of a parliamentary vote on exactly that subject, which
minister resigned from Teresa de MA's government on principle so
that they could vote against the
third runway.
Helen: Was it Zack Goldsmith?
Adam: it was not.
Helen: Oh.
I've now got views in my brain with the time that Michael gave either
locked himself or got himself locked in the toilet on his first day as
chief whip, which I just is a way to get out of a vote that you don't
wanna
Adam: vote.
But
Ian: Boris Johnson flew to Afghanistan.
Adam: He did indeed.
Ian: in order to have a meeting, in order to not
Adam: be in the country so he wouldn't have to vote.
Yeah.
Ian: Who resigned?
Adam: I'll give you a clue.
Helen: for audio listeners.
Adam is doing
Adam: jazz hands.
His brother, poor old Greg Han, no one remembers him at all.
Do they
Helen: Nope.
Still
Adam: be for Chelsea And Fullham
Ian: full.
I would never have got Greg Hans
from
Helen: Jazz
hands.
I was thinking like, was there someone who was in a cabaret at one point?
Yeah,
Andy: I was thinking he's the Jazziest member of Theresa Mae's
Helen: in the Dean.
Doris.
She seems like she might have done
Adam: would be Penny
Ian: jazz.
if this section does actually make it onto a visual one.
Can I say this?
That's the worst charades
I've ever seen.
Helen: Now do Greg, do the concept of
Adam: Sounds
Helen: like
egg.
Oh, that's
Ian: very good.
Yeah.
no, we'd go
Helen: Oh, we, could have done that.
Yeah.
Ian: okay.
So he resigned on
Adam: Yeah, he went ahead of the vote.
And Boris.
Boris Johnson just scuttled off to Afghanistan giving rise to
a memorable private eye cover.
Can you remember?
Ian: It was with a translator.
And
I think the joke was that it wasn't the third runway, it was a turd runaway.
Adam: That's the one,
Andy: brilliant,
Helen: It's in the finest tradition of cat.
Ian: can someone explain to me why, this dramatic reshuffle in which,
Yvette Cooper, becomes foreign secretary and David Lamie becomes,
vice president or no, that's his
friend.
but
is this going to help?
Helen: it changes as good as a
rest.
Oh,
I know the answer to this, which is because if you, listen to the Key
Star interview with Matt, Charlie, this, we are now in phase two.
This is it, phase two of the Star of government.
You may have not noticed the passage of phase one, but that the idea is that
basically they're now gonna try and put people into, do things that people like.
I, yeah, I know.
I don't think it's gonna
Adam: work
If that was the plan for this to be phase two though, I come back
to again, that reshuffle that they had a few days before it.
Why didn't they do it then if this was the grand plan all along to, to move everyone
Helen: round
My hunch is that they had all this ready and they planted it after party conference
because everyone will be preparing their speeches to party conference.
And now you've got a load of people just, who are going to have to give the biggest
speech of their life as a minister.
and something they only swatted up on 10 minutes ago.
So I think this was all like in the offering.
And then in a way they decided to take the advantage of the crisis
Ian: In terms of resignations though, A lot of the speculation before,
he had to do another reshuffle was, yes, the minister for paperclips had
changed, but he'd put in all these sort of very good, economically minded
people to undermine Rachel Reeves.
So there appeared to be some point to that procedure and then suddenly we're told no.
Yvette Cooper, who's being just in the hope she's going
to foreign affairs, is she.
Helen: but I think that was a kind of face saving thing because actually
she was being moved out because they never really got along with her.
I think they followed the, you can't say anything nice.
Don't say anything
at
Adam: but it does seem an
odd move then to put her in charge of the foreign affairs of the
entire country, doesn't
it?
that's, traditionally one of the big jobs,
isn't it?
Helen: It's not anymore though.
'cause the Prime Minister just does it.
Who flew over to the White House to sort out the Ukraine situation
and it was K Stama last week.
That's the thing.
And that's why David Lammy Hass got DPM is so, that he, as you reference
here, and he can continue his fishing based bromance with, JD Vance.
But basically she's got a kind of a job that involves her going and shaking
hands at boring summits and, not really driving a department in the same
Andy: It's not like it was on the good old days when Liz Trus was foreign secretary
, Helen: Think of those trade deals.
Think of all those great trade deals we
made.
Andy: so
Reform had their conference, they're annual conference they had at the
huge, Birmingham, NEC, massive great conference center, very big.
It all happened over the weekend.
I'd just like to know from the three of you where we are on the ancient timeline
of first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
'cause I think we've had the ignoring and the laughing at
Helen: I
think the laughing act can coexist with the winning.
Unfortunately, that's what my mainly took away from that conference is that, f has
been spending a lot of time with Donald Trump, and he's obviously learned a lot
about the American right wing style, which is campers absolute knickers, but also
incredibly successful in electoral terms and, enacting a lot of its policy agenda.
So you get a situation in which, yes, it is objectively very funny that Andrea
Jenkins comes out in a catsuit and sings a song that she has composed herself,
which you'd normally think was the attitude of a fringes to fringe parties.
But it was a heavenly professionalized conference.
It really was, as you say, a big audience.
Big attendance, loads of bodyguards sweeping around the place, stalls,
all the exhibitors things, all the things you'd associate with a
main party conference were there.
Adam: And the fireworks, I saw a quote from a reform member this
morning saying, we had fireworks.
You only see Labour or conservatives having fireworks on stage, will
you?
And I thought, Oh good.
Clearly you're ready
for
Andy: government.
Adam: then.
Helen: But that's what Trump has learned.
Like those rallies are slightly like WE cage matches, right?
There's a whole, and there's all people like dressed up in stuff and there's
a whole kind of pageanty aspect to it.
And I have to say, as someone who's attended many party conferences, it's
not unwelcome that someone might try and make them slightly entertaining
do you remember that Thereon May speech where everything went wrong and
the thing fell off the back and she got the throat suite and the person
got the P 45 reforms conference.
Although it was objectively ulu in some ways was a lot more professional.
Than that Tory camp party conference when they were in government.
So I think you can over egg the laughing at them.
We might have to one day laugh at them as they do stuff and they win.
Adam: and
they unveiled Nadine, Doris as their secret weapon.
Their new recruit architect of the online safety bill, which they are now
hugely against,
Ian: but no one's interested in consistency, Adam.
RAs literally said, we're gonna deport everybody.
And someone said, you did say a few months ago that wasn't possible.
He said, no, I
didn't.
Helen: Mm
Ian: and he did.
he's literally there in black and white in the last
issue,
Adam: as we said.
The Trump playbook, isn't it?
Yeah.
You just go, fake
Helen: But fess up Adam, because you secretly love Nadine
Doris and her column in the
mail.
Adam: she's a magnificent daily male columnist.
I'm not gonna knock her abilities at that at all.
what I was interested, the justification for, bringing in, 'cause a few people
are, there's some rumblings going on in reform aren't there, about bringing
in lots and lots of ex Tories when supposedly they're saying they're
useless and they're gonna replace them.
the justification was that they actually need people who've got experience
in government and know how to do it.
Which is an odd justification getting Nadine Doris in 'cause she wasn't exactly
the, sort of greatest performer in,
Ian: in, and
she wasn't home secretary as I remember.
No.
Or Chancellor.
She was minister of culture.
No.
Was she
Adam: No, not
in, during which her big quest was to privatize Channel four, something
that was abandoned and hasn't
happened.
Ian: Yeah.
And she
didn't know the details of who owned Channel
four,
Adam: which
she may exactly all over her
Andy: brain.
Was she Okay.
I thought she had already gone to reform, so I
dunno what they've, what's
Ian: of the
news,
Adam: she definitely left the Torries.
I mean she's written two entire books, which poor old Helen has,
read, about how awful the Tories are and how they're being run by an
unelected cabal of rabbit murderers.
Helen: don't you think that Boris Johnson at some point might go reform
or try and go reform, which will be
Adam: fascinating.
Ian: but Ferras denied it today.
Helen: but they's 'cause this town ain't big enough for the both of us.
that's the thing that's fascinating to me.
If you're Boris Johnson knew still harbor some hoax for comeback.
You've just gotta think where, could I just pop up back again?
Where's what I just felt about that reform conference is that the,
political momentum is all with them.
So they've now got a, Daily Mail columnist on their side.
They've got GB news on their side.
They've got the telegraph on their side for their voting base.
Those are the places that you would want.
Who still likes the Tory party brand?
Absolutely
Adam: terrifying.
Terrify Vine.
Paige in the mail on Sunday saying, although I deeply respect Nadine in
that way, that all daily male economists actually absolutely, definitely do.
'cause they're all best friends.
she said she thinks she's wrong about this and the conservative
party still has some life in it.
And Canmy beg knock is, is a marvelous she will be sticking
with the party of the man.
She
Helen: Someone wants a peer ridge from the Tory party, is what I'm hearing there.
Ian: well, like Nadine.
Andy: But the aim, is, as far as I understand it, of the
conference this weekend was to show firstly that it's inevitable.
This is just going to
happen.
Yeah.
To
get
used
to it.
but fight
it.
Maybe
in two years.
Maybe in two years.
If there's an election for no reason, that I can fathom there will be.
Okay.
And the other was to show that this is no longer the Nigel show and we've got
lots of talent waiting in the wings.
And this is a party you can see putting in a cabinet of 20, mps.
Helen: 20 human beings.
Real
human
beings.
Yeah.
The second one is a lie though.
It is still the Nigel show.
It's always this is, I mean it's not, no.
Basically that party does well when it's got Nigel Farage, it's front man
and doesn't when it, when it hasn't.
And I don't really see that's changed just 'cause Anne Whitaker is now sitting
in a big hall rather than a small hall.
Ian: Adam's earlier point is right.
when confronted by some anomaly between spending and tax that someone had
turned up in the list of, wishes on the back of a fag packet, which Nigel have
presented as some
sort of agenda.
he was questioned about and he said, I can't answer that now.
We haven't got the senior people with experience in, but we will have.
And then the first person with senior experience is Nadine.
Doris.
I mean that, that's not a big
hitter.
Adam: don't forget they've got your mate Jake Berry in there as well, haven't they?
Yeah.
You famously had a bit of a run in with, didn't you?
I
Ian: I did,
I had a bit of a shout up.
Adam: okay.
in,
this is the creme de la creme, isn't it?
This is the real top Tories of the
last,
Ian: listeners.
I, confess, I had an argument with him about, the re remuneration for the post
office scandal victims, which I wasn't terribly, temperate
Helen: about.
you can continue that when he is in government.
That'll be another select committee appearance to look forward to
As for the inevitability, I think it's one that's worth taking seriously,
because they are high in the polls.
The thing about is some first pass the post who we always say this
notoriously hostile to new entrants.
The mountain they have to climb is absolutely incredible.
Can they do that in one electoral cycle when, Nigel Farage's,
it's so dependent on him.
Or can you see Nigel Farage sticking with this as a 10 year project and building
that momentum through the next parliament?
That to me is the kind of, don't get ahead of yourself.
Bit of, a bit of this piece.
Adam: That to me seems the biggest hurdle they've got.
It's not just that they've gotta get 20 people in who could sit in a
cabinet and know what they're doing.
They've also gotta get at least 320 electable people in
different constituencies around the country to get that majority.
And given, as we've been noting in both rotten boroughs and HP pages of private,
I recent weeks, the record of the people who did get elected on that wave in the
local elections and what's happened since.
And the number of them that have had to resign or have been caught
up in really quite extreme kind of cases of racism recorded in
the last issue and, other things.
That seems to be a big insurmountable hill that no amount of fireworks and opera
singing, ex Tories is gonna, surmount
Ian: some
of the people in the local councils.
It's just boils down to they can't be bothered to do the job,
didn't think they were going to elect and don't want to very much.
And that is the other problem about government is it's quite boring.
and reform will have to learn how to do the boring
bits.
Andy: that was one of the other pieces on the roundup page in HP
last issue was they've, I believe, loosened their vetting criteria.
Which for a party that's had as many problems with vetting,
you would think might be quite, Why am I being so diplomatic?
Adam: that's
Ian: no, you've gone
Andy: No, you've done all
but they've gone bananas.
if they're genuinely loosening the criteria, they said, they wrote it
to their members saying, look, if you got rejected last time, have another,
Adam: pop.
But
I think that's genuine fear that they need 650 warm bodies and you're gonna
have to take in the fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists and not so closet
racists just to have bums on seats.
Helen: Why?
I just think that the obvious play for the is to try and eat alive
the remnants of the Tory party with all its institutional machinery.
'cause the Torry party has got, lots of people with huge amounts of
experience of running associations.
But a dwindling membership reform has got a growing membership, but almost
no institutional campaigning memory.
And, fair enough, like Nigel Friday is very good at things like TikTok, but you
do still need stuff like boring stuff like contact sheets, to find out who you've
been around, who you like to go knocking up doors, all of that kind of stuff still
does actually matter in closely for seats.
Ian: as soon as you get in, you have that moment, which they're finding
in the council is saying, , what is your, policy on special needs potholes?
yeah.
Libraries.
we're gonna stop the boats.
Yep.
And after that,
Helen: yeah.
And
that matters more in a national election.
'cause local elections are often like, do you hate the government?
Yes.
No.
Whereas, it's going to be, do you think this reform MP is gonna
be good for your constituency?
Is are they actually gonna turn up to
Ian: Westminster?
can I ask a question then?
Is it a mistake for the lead party to be so furiously obsessed by Farage in
the same, is it a mistake for private
eye to vote
any further coverage to fraud?
Is this helping him out?
Helen: It's a very good question is why are we playing all of British politics
on the terrain that he has decided?
I don't, immigration is obviously come, something that comes up again and
again, but people also really worried about the economy, really worried
about the NHS and public services.
I think the reason that Labour are being lured onto this is that they don't have
a great story themselves to tell about the things they'd like to talk about.
And their devout hope is that in three years time, they will
be able to say, stick with us.
We're halfway through this plan.
And you'll begin to see signs of it happening, but they don't really
think there's anything they can point to at the moment to make.
That case.
And they, therefore they just keep being dragged.
And again, I say as a media environment that follows the right wing papers
and the BBC follows that bulletin.
And you always end up with that.
we had a new, green leader.
No one gives a toss even though they've got a similar number of mps.
And actually there's lots of people who are disillusioned with
Labour from the left and be easily peeled away to a different party.
Ian: And, the backstory of both the new green leader and the
deputy are wow, are pretty fruity.
at least as good as the stories about reform.
But no one cares.
Andy: but I think we are slightly disregarding the extent of the talent,
which reform does have at its disposal.
So I, for example, vi count, Christopher Moncton, I'm sure
you're all familiar with him.
Adam: once wrote to private eye to deny that he had a pointy
head, and that was
Helen: wore
all
Adam: hat.
Andy: interesting.
a few years ago he, he made a speech where he, warned that homosexuality is
one of the four sins crying out to heaven for vengeance in traditional theology.
He had
it, he's doing it wrong.
Helen: I'm
so
wanna know what the
other three are, but we'll have to come back to that.
Okay.
Andy: he also called for cigarette style warnings about the dangers of being gay.
Helen: what
gay
people,
Adam: people.
He
Andy: say what you put the warnings on.
No, you're right.
I Where would you put the warnings?
the
front.
Adam: You wouldn't be able to,
Yeah.
Just Plain
packaging and a big,
Helen: I know that instead of Yeah.
No, in photo disease, like some people doing YMCA or just
having like a fabulous talk.
Andy: Okay.
there.
What about Asim Malhotra advisor to the US Health Secretary?
No less?
Yes.
Who made the very sensible point that maybe the royal family got cancer because
they'd taken their COVID jabs and that, it's all Bill Gates' fault and that the
COVID vaccine is more harmful than COVID?
Ian: Dr. Hammond who is also a doctor, but I would
suggest one that it might be worth listening to slightly more of seriously.
He will be addressing the subject of reform's, new brilliant
medical experts.
Adam: And that was a great moment
of, for Artism as well, wasn't it?
Because afterwards he said, he was just a guest at the conference
that was a, and actually he'd been introduced as the man who was helping
to draft reforms health policies.
Slightly awkward.
Andy: Yes.
Reform said they don't endorse what he said, but they do believe in free
Adam: speech.
And to be fair, he's not the only one working on the health policies.
'cause there's also Dr. David Boulogne, who is the guy
that was strangled by Ghost.
So you know, that said he'll be bringing
the
Andy: censor and he
Ian: And he followed Lucy Connolly, is that
right?
Adam: Yes.
Yeah.
The convicted criminal who had, who pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred,
Ian: and she's helping them with their justice policies.
Adam: Oh
Andy: yes,
Her policy is, released prisoners, particularly women prisoners.
which,
and you can
make quite a
Helen: of
Adam: that's a very sensible policy.
Ian: you
Andy: Can make,
a good case for lots of that.
But it does, slightly clash with
Adam: I think you'd probably find some other people to make
that point though, couldn't
you?
Andy: Now we swivel inevitably towards Free Speech Corner, which is a section
of the podcast that we've been running on and off, not under that name, but,
we covered Palestine action recently.
Yeah.
and, John Farley, I reader, who was arrested after after foolishly
taking a private eye joke to a
protest.
Ian: Your joke.
Andy: Yeah.
so now we come to Graham Linehan.
Yes.
Now, and I, and we should say there is a trial on at the moment.
Helen: no, we have to be circumscribed in what we can say,
but there are two different cases that are being discussed here.
Andy: can you just say who Graham Linehan
Helen: Gremlin is a comedy writer best named for things
like Father Ted and Black Books.
And in recent years, a very prolific tweeter and gender critical campaigner.
Now, he arrived in Britain from Arizona where he's been living, working on a
new sitcom and was arrested by five armed police, with the explanation being
that all police at Heathrow were armed.
And there were lots of them.
They didn't really have a lot to do, so they, a couple of them
just wing maned it and turned up.
Anyway, this wasn't a totalitarian show of force according to police,
but these were for, they didn't tell him exactly what it was for, but they
said it's from some of your tweets on this particular date in April.
And he went back and looked at those.
And essentially it seems to have been, if you see a trans identified man, that's
what he would call a trans woman in a women's bathroom, punch em in the balls.
And this is being apparently treated by the police as incitement to
violence against a protected group.
Now he was in town anyway in order to, as you say, attend.
he's a defendant in a different trial of a harassment trial that is related
to a charge of, he grabbed someone's phone up their hand and threw on the
road and had called them a scumbag and various other things that's ongoing.
And we won't hear back
Andy: until
he's a shouting match for the trans woman on the road.
And
that
Helen: yeah, there was a teenage transgender activist with
whom he had an altercation.
let's put that one, aside from it 'cause that is ongoing, but no
until at least October about that.
But I do think that arrest for those tweets is symptomatic of
something that the police have gotten themselves dragged into, which is.
Basically trying to adjudicate on extremely fine lines of things that
are now, quote unquote hate speech or harassment or whatever it might be.
and, just work that they are ill-equipped for, and they are overwhelmed by.
So I went and looked up the figures, hate speech reports, England and
Wales, 20 13, 40 1000 of them by 2023 that had gone up to 145,000.
So it's tripled.
the guy who's the head of the police officer association
said, we just can't cope.
We're just swamp.
Perhaps swamped in the first.
There was a report in the first couple of months that came in that neo-Nazis
were making vexatious complaints, right?
It's just a system that is set up for people who are either
motivated by whatever reason or not, or having an online barney to
try and get the police involved.
And it's, puts 'em in exactly the same difficult situation as their
policing a protest, which is they're trying to pass what words mean in
very contextual, febrile situations.
Ian: Like
I,
I did feel that having complained about, someone holding up a private eye joke
and get arrested, the fact that Graham Linehan had made a joke is a joke.
and was arrested, by armed police officers when he touched, and that is
outrageous and that is police overreach.
And Gremlin doesn't like me at all and feels I've failed
him in any number of ways.
But, on this occasion, it did seem a Voltaire moment.
, I find the whole, grotesquely rude and toxic, shouting matches between,
the various extremes on this hideous, but these are not arrestable offenses.
and when, the senior police officer says, we are obliged to do this.
We all know this isn't true.
we all know that this can't be true because when we report
other offenses, they don't feel obliged to do anything at all.
And this involves nearly all crimes that I can think of.
Yeah.
Helen: this West Treatings line.
Ian: it is a reasonable point to make.
A is, the police shouldn't be there, to adjudicate in what
seems to be a, an online spat.
and B, they should be doing something else.
I don't think either of those points are terribly contentious.
Andy: if you're saying.
If you see a member of a protected group in a, in this environment,
punch them in the balls, isn't that incitement to violence?
Helen: The thing is, it's a deeply hypothetical situation.
There's not a named person.
It's not go around ex's house at whatever wire dress and punched him in the face.
And we know that there's case law precedent on this because there was a
hearing for a trans activist called Sarai, Jane Baker, who was out on license for
attempted murder at the time, who gave a speech, at a protest who said, if you
see a turf, a trans exclusionary, radical feminist, punch 'em in the fucking face.
And this went to magistrate's court.
And the magistrate court said, no, you didn't seriously mean this.
You were just seeking publicity.
Which I think comes back to Ian's point.
Everybody involved in this is seeking publicity.
It's not a serious threat, not guilty.
And I think with that precedent in hand, you would say, what are the
realistic chances of prosecuting someone, airing a general belief that
people who in their sense are doing a bad thing should be punched for it.
It just doesn't seem very likely to lead to a to prosecution.
And the problem is that it leads to these accusations of two tier
justice, that different favored groups are treated differently.
And also the thing that we're treating said, which is the police should be out
policing the streets, not policing tweets
Andy: and.
which rhymes.
So it must
be
Helen: true,
very
corny, but I think it speaks to, as you say, what everybody thinks is,
I saw that arrest and I thought, have you solved every murder?
Have you solved every bike theft?
At this
Adam: But there is also this very simplistic kind of argument
that's being put, that anything that's said online doesn't count.
And actually, there are people, in naming no names, who are running very,
vicious campaigns online against specific people and targeting them and, making
what, could well be considered to be things beyond the criminal threshold.
So this idea that somehow.
Putting
something on Twitter is different to shouting it in someone's face.
I is not always the case.
these are, there are nuances in all these
things,
Andy: We have
to, we've already mentioned Lucy Connolly, this, we've mentioned Lucy Connolly, this
episode who's, who got sent to 31 months for saying, set fire to asylum hotels.
Was that general,
Ian: not a specific person.
Andy: a specific person.
Helen: In her case, the VECA sentence is because she pleaded
guilty and also because it happened at the time of the riot.
So that's the thing.
If you're saying it in this general context of things being set on
fire, saying Please set something on fire that said, I think the
sentence was disproportionate.
It's higher than the sentence you'd get for an actual assault.
Adam: yeah.
The sentencing I thought was crazy, but it was, I want you pleaded
guilty to it as well, didn't it?
So the court courts stuck in that position.
Helen: Yeah.
But you are right Adam, behind all this is a lot of the fact that
the police are struggling to catch up with the volume of commentary.
Things that people would've once said to their mate in a pub now being said online
or people who have got mental health issues or don't have enough hobbies or
whatever it might be turning into sort of online obsessives and, so I think
when I was at the Daily Mail, we used to have a long strand of Leland eye feuds.
Do you remember this?
A great thing?
Which people would get obsessed with boundary wall disputes and it would start
off as a minor argument about a hedge.
And then 20 years later they were people putting dead cats
on each other's doorsteps.
All of that has moved online and that's the bit that the police, I
think are really struggling to cope
with.
Ian: There
is a problem here.
in the last, copy of Private Eye, we had an angle sea counselor saying
All Tories should be shot Now, he said that was a Welsh idiom.
was his
Adam: so bad as convincing as Elon Musk and the PTO guy being a safe
African
traditional insult.
That's,
yeah.
Ian: but I think it is historically the sort of thing that people could say,
and it wouldn't be taken seriously then.
But then various mps did get killed.
and suddenly the difference between using Oh, string them all up.
I hate 'em.
I wish they'd all die, suddenly became something that happened in the real world.
Yeah.
So I think there was a problem, for how do you police the new world where
these things merge into each other.
and that creates, as Helen says, a huge problem from police.
But as I'm trying to agree with both of you, but on the precedence we have,
there is no specific, resolute line.
But, individual police surely must be able to use their judgment
into saying, is this actually an incitement to violence
that we have to, worry about?
Or is it someone being hotheaded and ridiculous?
Andy: I
think it's between 16 and 70% of trans people have reported either violence or
harassment as a result of being trans.
So to them I imagine that judgment would feel
very differently to-and as a
Adam: characteristic,
Andy: Yeah.
So you know, to, so then that judgment would be substantially
different.
Helen: It's very tricky though, because the Scottish law and the same thing
has happened here, does not have sex as a protected characteristic is one
of the things they said they were gonna bring in a separate misogyny law.
I've always suspected it's because misogyny is just so widespread and
one person's, you get called a bitch.
Is that now actionable misogyny or not?
It's just something that happens all the time and I think that speaks to
the difficulty of working out what the general consensus in the population is.
So the, example of translators would be, is misgendering
somebody a hate crime or not?
Some people would say yes, but it was, came up as an issue at the
trial about whether or not referring someone using sex-based pronouns was
an acceptable thing to do or not.
People have wildly different views and the police are in the
situation of trying to find a median ground that everyone can agree on.
When very obviously people cannot agree on what is offensive and
what is hate speech and what isn't.
Andy: I think we've cleared that one
up.
That's all sorted man.
Yeah.
And thus concludes this week's tour of Free Speech Corner.
We'll be back next time with another look at some people you really don't
wanna have to support, but the free speech calls means you have to.
Anyway, that's it for this episode of page 94.
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