465. Andrew’s Disgrace, Newsnight, and a Centrist Win in the Netherlands (Question Time)

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

Speaker 1 And me, Alistair Campbell. And Rory, by popular demand, it is imperative that you give us your considered views on the former Prince Andrew and the implications for the monarchy.

Speaker 1 We had a lot of feedback on your Newsnight interview, both ways.

Speaker 1 But fair to say you struck a controversial note in seeming to defend the establishment very, very closely.

Speaker 1 So Leslie B, what does Alistair think about Rory saying on Newsnight that there are more important things to focus on than Prince Andrew's activities?

Speaker 1 Does Alistair agree that there should be more transparency in the financial arrangements of the Royal Family, given that they're taxpayer-funded? Well, of course, the Royal Family's finances are...

Speaker 1 very, very complicated. They're not quite straightforward.

Speaker 1 They do get money from the sovereign grant, and that's us taxpayers, the government, paying that, but they also have pretty vast personal wealth and they have lots of investments and the crown estates run all that.

Speaker 1 Your news night interview, Rory, I don't know, I got the feeling you were in a really bad mood.

Speaker 2 I was in a bad mood. Why are we in such a bad mood?

Speaker 2 Because they'd invited me on to talk about my book. So, I was gonna, I was supposed to be talking about Middleland and local democracy and citizens' assemblies.

Speaker 2 And I turn up, and it turns out that what they wanted to do was talk to me about Prince Andrew. And I developed a very, very strong frustration.
Now,

Speaker 2 on the record,

Speaker 2 it is horrifying what happened to Virginia Jeffrey

Speaker 2 and many, many others. And I think the more we learn about what Geoffrey Epstein was doing and people who associated with him, the more horrifying it is.

Speaker 2 And these are vulnerable women who are horribly abused, trafficked from very vulnerable backgrounds, and Virginia Jeffrey's just killed herself. So it's a horrible story.

Speaker 2 And it is unbelievable that Prince Prince Andrew would continue to associate himself. It's unbelievable that Peter Mandelson continued to stay with him after he'd been convicted.

Speaker 2 I agree with all of that.

Speaker 2 But I suppose I also sit there thinking, okay, I'm on Newsnight and firstly, I'm irritated about my book, but there's a bigger point, which is the world's blowing up.

Speaker 2 And I'm very conscious there is Trump, there is C, there is the British economy, there's the debt getting out of control.

Speaker 2 And I sort of felt that I'd been taken back 25 years, that we were back in a kind of world of British newspapers wanting for their entire headlines for two weeks to talk about what happened 25 years ago.

Speaker 2 And I wanted to say it was awful, it's terrible, I get it,

Speaker 2 but surely, and this is maybe where I'm getting too wound up and too kind of psychological about it,

Speaker 2 I genuinely worry it's avoidance, that we don't want to think about the really big difficult issues. We don't actually want to hold really powerful people accountable.

Speaker 2 We don't want to hold them accountable for really big things they do.

Speaker 2 It's more convenient to find somebody who is, I don't know what he is, eighth in line to the throne, hasn't had a public office for 15 years, isn't received of public money for something he did 25 years ago and which he hasn't been convicted of.

Speaker 2 And this whole thing takes all the oxygen that could be talked. And I think it's repeated.
I felt actually, it's a very different thing because she's not accused of doing anything remotely similar.

Speaker 2 But I also was frustrated by how much time was spent on Rachel Reeves and her licensing. I was frustrated by how much time was spent on Angela Raynor and stuff.

Speaker 2 I just think the British press love the idea. We're holding powerful people to account.
And this becomes the big story for weeks and weeks.

Speaker 2 And we're not really holding really powerful people to account for the really big things that matter to us today.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I can see where you're coming from.
I didn't watch it live, but I got so many messages from people saying, what's your mate, Rory, up to on Tuesday?

Speaker 1 That I had a look.

Speaker 1 And I could tell you were absolutely frustrated and pissed off to be there and i didn't actually want to talk about it i was sitting there and she she dragged me in i was trying to sit on my tongue as probably i should be there we've all been in those situations where we've we've got in a sort of thought what the am i doing here but anyway you actually told me not to go on the show i did your advice was don't talk about prince andrew now you're making me talk about prince andrew no my advice was don't go on to it because you'd been asked on one basis and they then we're going to spin you into another one which you were uncomfortable would your professional advice be that i should be talking about prince andrew look i've been reluctant to talk about because in general, I think one of our problems culturally is we focus far too much on things that don't matter and not enough on things that really do.

Speaker 1 That's why we want to talk about the climate and Zudan, yesterday, because I feel that very, very strongly.

Speaker 1 On this, however, I think that we're not just talking about something that happened a long time ago. We're talking about the conduct of people.
powerful people in public life ever since.

Speaker 1 So I think the reason this Prince Andrew story, former Prince Andrew's story, has just refused to go away is because at so many different stages he and others have completely mishandled it.

Speaker 1 And even though I thought King Charles got very fulsome praise for the statement where he finally stripped her of the titles and said that the thoughts should be with the victims and the palace brief that Camilla was appalled because of the work she does protecting young women and violence against women and girls and so forth, I think that right along the way, they've just not handled it well.

Speaker 1 And I think this feeds into this idea that there is a sort of for the for those who already have power, you can get away with a lot more than those who don't.

Speaker 1 So when the dam burst, well, you were there on the day that the dam around Andrew was bursting. And I think that therefore it is important.
I think it's about the establishment.

Speaker 1 It's about, and the transparency point is interesting. They never used to be, they're way more transparent than they were, but there still is a feeling that they are.

Speaker 1 very much above proper public scrutiny.

Speaker 2 I agree with you that there is a really strong sense in Britain that there is a powerful elite who gets away with things and ordinary people are abused.

Speaker 2 And I can see completely why Prince Andrew became a kind of big symbol for that idea.

Speaker 2 But I also think that it tells us something about our culture, that this is a very fundamental trope that we focus on. And we often don't focus enough on structural issues.
We like a villain.

Speaker 2 We like going after a particular individual rather than looking at the kind of big, knotty, deep issues that really have big structural issues.

Speaker 2 And we're also really hypocritical so you and I interviewed George Mitchell George Mitchell is accused by Virginia Jeffrey of doing exactly the same thing Senator George Mitchell

Speaker 2 Senator George Mitchell is right there with Prince Andrew accused of doing exactly the same thing by the same woman as part of the Epstein thing why didn't we discuss that why is the British media not talking about I didn't be honest I didn't know that but nobody talks about this he gets an honorary degree we all celebrate him on leading and for some reason in America they don't talk about this prince andrew is one of a category of people, along with a Harvard lawyer, former prime ministers, and others who have been accused by Virginia Jeffrey of exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

Speaker 1 But Rory, I say on that, that the Americans are wrong.

Speaker 2 We should emphasize that, of course,

Speaker 2 Prince Andrew and George Mitchell categorically deny these allegations, but that obviously isn't the general tenor of the public. I just want us to say, yes, absolutely, that whole thing is horrible.

Speaker 2 The abuse of vulnerable women women by men is horrible. But let me take it to another stage.

Speaker 2 I suspect that a very large number of not elite people, ordinary people, using or abusing women in the sex industry in Britain, are abusing women who are vulnerable, trafficked.

Speaker 2 And we never hear about them.

Speaker 2 This is not just something which we can project, and we all feel good about ourselves, and here's this evil prince, and it's only the elite that does it, and they're not accountable.

Speaker 2 How about the, presumably, hundreds of thousands of men in this country who pay for sex, who I'm sure are absolutely embroiled in vulnerable trafficked women who get to feel good about themselves getting cross with somebody else.

Speaker 1 I said the other week that there is something very interesting about the fact that the three people who it seems to me are most identified with the kind of the public ritual punishment in relation to Epstein are Ghelene Maxwell, Peter Mandelson and former Prince Andrew, all Brits.

Speaker 1 So is there there something about American culture that says we care less about this? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think the fact that Trump is going to such extraordinary lengths, it seems to me, to keep this thing under wraps, maybe there is more to come out.

Speaker 1 And I also don't think we yet know the full story about Epstein and how he got his money. I don't know whether I can bear to read Virginia Fiffrey's book.

Speaker 1 Because I read a review of it in a German newspaper when I was in Germany last week, which was truly horrific.

Speaker 1 And I think, to be honest, Rory, I think we did underplay it a a bit and I think that the monarchy has been hit damaged by it because it's just not been gripped from the word go.

Speaker 1 And I think too many of them, this is what happens when scandal hits is that too many people have been willing to believe somebody who I think we have to accept now has told a lot of lies over a long period of time.

Speaker 2 Which is true an exact description of Peter Mandelson. When scandal hit, too many people were prepared to believe a lot of lies from Peter Mandelson.

Speaker 1 Hold on, Peter got sacked twice.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Three times, actually.

Speaker 1 I sensed you were looking at me then. No, I was looking at you.

Speaker 2 No, I was looking at Kier Sammer. It's the same thing.
He assured them of stuff that turned out not to be true. And too many people are prepared to believe it.

Speaker 2 But I also think there's another interesting question which we could get onto on another occasion, which is a very, very difficult thing, which is when we judge public figures of any sort, which is why I actually don't like going after public figures in general.

Speaker 2 Do we look at ourselves enough? Do we ask ourselves, would I have been tempted to get around my Stamp Duty on my house? We're very, very quick to condemn.

Speaker 2 And we're a culture that is ferocious about condemnation.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, I don't like it. I mean, I'm more comfortable speaking about what's happening at a geopolitical level than I am about.

Speaker 1 I completely agree with you about the Rachel Reeves thing. I think that's just a classic example of, you know, trying to create a scandal where there isn't really one.
But I think on the

Speaker 1 Andrew Mountbatten Windsor situation,

Speaker 1 I think it's been a pretty rum-doo for a long time. Right, Rory, let's move off the British royal family to the Dutch elections.
John Mark Van Damme from Gloucestershire.

Speaker 1 Do Rory and Alistair take solace from the Dutch election results? Does it show a possible approach to counter the rise of right-wing populists?

Speaker 2 Well, go on. Tell us a little bit about what you felt about the Dutch Dutch election.
Should I give you the rough figure?

Speaker 1 I was happy. I was quite happy.

Speaker 2 Rough figures as I see it. So, D66, which is the equivalent of the Lib Dems, got 26 seats.
A PVV, which is Hert Wilders' far-right party, 26 seats.

Speaker 2 VVD, which is the sort of right-wing liberals, yeah, Tories, got 22.

Speaker 2 Green Labour, which is Frans Timmermans, who we interviewed on Leading, who I really liked, got 20 seats, and now Timmermans has resigned. Christian Democrats, 18.

Speaker 2 And then these two other far-right parties, one run by Just Edermans, nine, and this particularly sinister party run by Thierry Bodet, seven seats.

Speaker 2 So there's an interesting question, which is actually, if you combine

Speaker 2 to 2023, when we covered this last, the far-right got 41 seats. This time they've got 42.

Speaker 2 But what's happened is there's been a big drop in head builders, and there's been a rise in the other far-right parties.

Speaker 1 And look, what often happens with the, historically, what has often happened with the far-right is that when they get anywhere near power, they tend to fail with power.

Speaker 1 And we're seeing that actually with some of the reform councils here. You know, some of these councils, the reform are running, are just, you know, they're becoming a bit of a national joke.

Speaker 1 But I think what's really interesting about this, you know, when it says to give us solace, the guy guy who's won, he's kind of come out of nowhere. He's 38.
He's called Rob Yetton.

Speaker 1 He's been around for a while. He's been actually a deputy prime minister before.

Speaker 1 But he's sort of come from nowhere. I think they were fifth last time around.

Speaker 1 And it's going to be very, very hard, though, to build a coalition. So this is, and this is, we're back to this point about the

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he is on record as saying, I think it's the first time he thinks where you'll be expected to put together a government when you're the leader of a party with fewer than 30 seats.

Speaker 1 So you've got several parties now that are

Speaker 1 around the same space.

Speaker 2 Well, I just named seven parties.

Speaker 1 I mean, what a weird system that is. So he came straight out and said, you know, probably the most obvious party to start to build a coalition with was the Timmermans.

Speaker 1 Timmermans have stepped down, but the Labour-Green Alliance. But then he's going to have to go.

Speaker 1 maybe further left or maybe a bit further right. He might actually end up having to deal with the Conservatives, the Mark Rutter party, that has been absolutely hopeless.

Speaker 1 And has gone further to the right and has gone further to sort of play around with Wilders.

Speaker 2 And has refused to work with the Green Labour Party.

Speaker 1 And Wilders himself,

Speaker 1 it was a big blow to them because I think they felt if they could win, as they did last time, become part of the government, even though he wasn't in the government.

Speaker 1 and then the other parties be seen to try to make it not work, that that would benefit them politically.

Speaker 1 What seems to have happened is that people have thought, hold on a minute, this Wilder's guy, is he really the real deal? Is he actually ever going to be able to do anything?

Speaker 1 So I think he paid the biggest price and Rob Yetton has been the beneficiary.

Speaker 2 Just finally on this, Timmermans are quite interesting. So we both liked him very much.
And he was somebody who was, I think, quite popular and celebrated when he was at the European Union.

Speaker 2 And despite being a sort of seen in Dutch politics initially as a kind of very mature, grown-up, highly experienced politician, it didn't quite work.

Speaker 2 You get the impression the Dutch didn't really take to him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and maybe it is, we're back to this thing about, you know, needing new approach, new style, the sort of whole Mandani thing. Rob Yetten, very young, very charismatic, very handsome young guy.

Speaker 1 So people are looking for something different. I'll tell you one thing on the policy front that's really interesting.
I think I read this right. He's talking about building 10 new cities.

Speaker 1 Well, so I think Labour is talking about, what, four new towns? Well. And he's talking about 10 new cities, which would be...

Speaker 2 Well, and it's already, I think, the most densely populated country on earth.

Speaker 1 It's densely populated. And that's what they need to build out.
So if I'm wrong on that, if any sort of our Netherlands listeners who think I'm wrong on that, I'd love it if they could let me know.

Speaker 1 But I think this point about the fragmentation of political systems

Speaker 1 of what's happening in our politics, because, you know, we're seeing a little bit of that here. You know, the...

Speaker 1 Tories, I was actually an event the other day where there's a very strong view that the Tories might literally disappear as a party.

Speaker 1 No, I don't think they will, but that sense that the right is now fractured, the left is fractured, and yet we still have a voting system that is founded on the idea that one of the big two will always

Speaker 2 win.

Speaker 2 As I think you've pointed out in the past, we've gone from what was for a couple of hundred years a two-party system, even though there was a kind of the Tories remain and then there was a slip from Liberal to Labour as the second party to what is perfectly now a five-party system at least, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Well, if you're in Scotland and Wales, it's even more. yeah

Speaker 2 right should we take a break very good then back from the break we'll talk a little bit about trump and sea and there may be some more cheerful questions why not

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Respiratory Question Time with me, Alex Campbell.

Speaker 2 And with me Rory Stewart.

Speaker 1 Katie, what did you make of Trump calling his meeting with President Xi amazing and rating it at 12 out of 10?

Speaker 2 Well, this guy shows that he watches Spinal Tap. Do you remember they've got a volume 11 on

Speaker 2 their speakers when they're playing? I think that's where he got it from.

Speaker 1 What? But he said 12.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it's the same joke, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Well, I don't think one of them is a joke. I think it's funny.
I just think it's part of Trump's inability to say anything without it being untruthful, exaggerated, and hyperbolic. Completely mad.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
And also, it wasn't 12 out of 10.

Speaker 1 I think sometimes with Trump, the more he overstates,

Speaker 1 there's some little whirring thing inside him saying that didn't go very well. And my sense of watching the meeting between Trump and she that she went home happier.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean it's still staggering. I mean what what you in the headlines people are like

Speaker 2 Trump cut the the tariff from 20% to 10%

Speaker 2 and everyone's might think on the basis of that that China now faces tariffs like the UK which has got a 10% tariff for the US. What actually he did was just cut the fentanyl tariff from 20 to 10%

Speaker 2 which means the average tariff on China has gone down from 57% to 47%.

Speaker 2 So basically if you, you know, I don't know, you buy a $100 good from China, you're spending $50

Speaker 2 tariff on top of that. I mean, it's unbelievable, given that most of the clothing, toys, et cetera, and US supermarkets, Walmart, whatever, is coming in from China.

Speaker 2 And the effects on the cost of living, particularly on people in lower incomes who are buying Chinese goods, is

Speaker 2 staggering.

Speaker 1 And what do you make of the way that Xi used the whole rare earth debate? Because it seemed to me that he played that card very, very hard. I'm not really clear what Xi Jinping gave up.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he didn't.

Speaker 2 He, in a sense, won, but I think it's important,

Speaker 2 I think, that unlike Europe, who didn't really see

Speaker 2 Trump coming, China saw this from 2016 onwards.

Speaker 2 So they spent 10 years preparing a playbook to be ready for what happens when America puts up tariffs against them because there was all this talk even under Biden of de-risking, deleveraging, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So they had a whole playbook ready and right at the heart of it is that they took control of between 85 and 90% of all the critical minerals and rare earths required for technology and the Green Revolution.

Speaker 2 They control 85-90% of the world's processing of copper, nickel, lithium, cobalt and the rare earths.

Speaker 2 And the result is that by cutting them off, which is what he did, he essentially shuts the world down. Now, Scott Besant is saying that was very stupid of him.

Speaker 2 He played his ham, you know, and now we know. And so

Speaker 2 we're going to process our own critical minerals and rare earths, and they won't get us again next time in three, four years' time. And they're saying the same thing about semiconductorships.

Speaker 2 But actually,

Speaker 2 the reason why China processes all this stuff is even with the latest technology, it is unbelievably polluting, environment and landscape destroying.

Speaker 2 And nobody in the United States and Europe wants to process these songs, things from large scale.

Speaker 2 And we've lost the technological capacity to do this because we've had China doing it for us for the last 10, 20 years.

Speaker 1 I was really interested about that Scott Bessant thing because I don't know.

Speaker 1 I got the feeling he kind of phoned up the Financial Times.

Speaker 2 Did you read that in the FT? Yes, I did. I read in the FT.

Speaker 1 And I think if the FT had got a big interview with Scott Besant, they'd kind of project it in a quite a big way. It'd be kind of lunch with the FT or it'd be front of life and arts, whatever.

Speaker 1 It was quite a small story story that

Speaker 1 I just got the sense that

Speaker 1 Scott Besson, if anybody from the FT is listening, please let us know.

Speaker 1 But I got the feeling it was Scott Besson's people phoning up saying we'd like to drop a story about what we think about the Chinese rare earth strategy.

Speaker 2 You're completely right because what was weird about it is on that page, you were essentially reading that China had overplayed its hands and screwed up.

Speaker 2 And then the next page with two stories saying how brilliantly China had handled the negotiation and Sierra had emerged as victor. Xi Jinping still holding his cards quite close to his chest.

Speaker 2 You know, I was talking to a Dutch official recently, and they're right at the heart of the European Union now, trying to think about the threats posed particularly by Russia and China.

Speaker 2 So looking at Chinese intelligence, you know, that Chinese balloon that flew across the US, the Russian drones.

Speaker 2 And I, slightly cheekily, was saying, when are you going to acknowledge that the country that's done the most damage to the European Union?

Speaker 2 over the last nine months is not actually China or Russia, it's the United States. You actually look on the impact on European economies, sense of European security and defence.

Speaker 2 It's the US that's the major challenge, and it's the US that's much more likely to take Greenland off Denmark than anyone else.

Speaker 1 You know, I mentioned in the main episode that I'd been at this, speaking at this dinner in Dublin, and it was the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, about 1,200 people there.

Speaker 1 So it was a nice large sample for me to do my

Speaker 1 current survey obsession, which is America v. China power.
The numbers on which is the greater threat to global stability were quite extraordinary. 80%, said America.

Speaker 2 Well, it's absolutely unbelievable because this is the week where Ontario put up an ad

Speaker 2 with Reagan talking about how tariffs and protectionism were bad for the economy.

Speaker 2 And Trump was so angry about a single advertisement in Canada that he's just put the tariffs in Canada up by a further 10%. It's called a tantrum.
This is now existential for the Canadian economy.

Speaker 2 I mean, the Canadian economy, much more than the British, European or Chinese economy, is basically a North American economy.

Speaker 2 80%, I think, of Canadian exports go into the US. So that our friend Mark Carney is now dealing with tariff levels in Canada, which are almost identical to the tariff levels in China.

Speaker 2 So I think 37% at the moment. And he was, of course, elected to stand up to Trump, but also to get a deal.

Speaker 2 And this sense that Trump is punishing what should be his closest allies in the world.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's also why at the ASEAN,

Speaker 1 Mark Carney was being very, very warm and positive about some of the Southeast Asian leaders that he was meeting there. Let's bring it back home, Rory.
Door knocking. This is from Cat J.

Speaker 1 Are door knocking and leafleting still an effective campaign strategy? Is social media more effective?

Speaker 2 Well, look, I'd love to hear your take on this.

Speaker 2 I found even 2010, 2015, 2017 elections when I was running, that door knocking and leafleting was a very, very strange activity because in the Conservative Party, certainly where I was,

Speaker 2 the number of volunteers who actually knocked and leafleted with you would end up being 10 or 15 of your association members for the whole constituency.

Speaker 2 So you've got, let's say you're knocking on 40,000 doors and you've got a team of eight people.

Speaker 2 So even when you've got five weeks of campaigning, you're walking slowly down the street and of course 80% of the doors you knock on nobody's in

Speaker 2 the next door you knock on they say I'm never voting Tory in my life.

Speaker 2 There was a really depressing moment where I realized things had gone wrong in the 2015 election, where I realized that this in the Lake District, any window I looked through where there were lots of books in the library were definitely not going to be voting Conservatives.

Speaker 2 They were going to be voting Lib Dem.

Speaker 2 Then you had this amazing attempt to use data.

Speaker 2 So the Tory party had bought very complicated data, I think from supermarkets, which told you something like, if you bought Edamame beans, you were more likely to vote Lib Dem.

Speaker 2 I mean, I could have told them that.

Speaker 2 And on the basis of this, we were told this was going to be a Tory door, a Labour door. But half the Tory doors on my sheet would have a big Labour poster in their window.

Speaker 2 So anyway, so I began to think, how much difference does this really make? But equally,

Speaker 2 I saw Mike Lignatiev,

Speaker 2 who we interviewed on Lean, former leader of the Liberal Party in Canada, and he said that what's working in Hungary, for Magiar, who's the guy that may take down Orban the populace, is that he's out there leafleting and he's doing little village halls started with village halls of 20 30 people relentlessly talking to crowds of 10 and that that's what politics is about yeah but he's probably putting out some really sassy well-produced social media content alongside it I can't pretend I've I'm the greatest door knocker in the world but I'd say I've done my share of it it's always struck me as a

Speaker 1 it's not a very effective use of time the trouble is you sometimes end up spending well I do half an hour standing there arguing with something that you know is never going to vote Labour.

Speaker 1 Whereas what you've got to be good at is straight away working out, is it worth your time?

Speaker 2 It's a good sign for you, though, because actually somebody said this to me about Margaret Thatcher, that she would always spend half an hour arguing on the doorstep with a single Labour voter.

Speaker 2 And the canvassers kept saying, come on, move on, move on, move on.

Speaker 2 But I think both with you and Thatcher, that's quite a good sign because it shows you're actually up for the persuasion and the argument.

Speaker 2 It's really soul-destroying to just see yourself as a postman where you literally don't waste your time discussing at all.

Speaker 2 If you're literally just like someone putting through a pizza, one of those shiny pizza leaflets through a door, you really wonder, particularly when I was a cabinet minister, I was like, really?

Speaker 1 Theresa May loved

Speaker 1 the thing about Theresa May always struck me as somebody who wasn't really a people person on one level, but she loves going around knocking on doors at the weekend. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, she'd done it all her life, didn't she? But also how the world's changed. When my mother was a member of the Conservative Party,

Speaker 2 there were, I think, two million members of the Tory Party when she first joined, and she was a teenager. And there were so many that you were given a street.

Speaker 2 So she had a street in Wimbledon as I'd think a 15-year-old. But every other street in London was covered.

Speaker 2 So it was incredibly easy to get the leaflets out. All you had to do was make sure your central party office had the leaflets.

Speaker 1 I think you have to do all. I don't even have Tonruda.
I'll send you Peter Hyman's latest substar. He's brilliant.

Speaker 2 He's suddenly really come into his own, hasn't he?

Speaker 1 How to make Keir Starmer a social media star.

Speaker 2 And he had this lovely vision of him saying, doing a fireside check where he's like, you'll never believe what I just heard from Trump on the phone. But can you see Starmer doing that?

Speaker 1 Well, let's go through. He's got five ideas.
One, surrounded Keir Starmer against 25 Reform Legion voters. That's what we used to call the masochism strategy.
And I would definitely do that, okay?

Speaker 1 And he's got it. He shows a video of Pete Budicek doing it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I absolutely love it. And it's slightly what I did in a minor way, both with the leadership leadership and Lona Merrill.
Get out, do the town halls. Kemi Bednock should have been doing it too.

Speaker 2 They should all be taking the risk.

Speaker 1 His second idea was Kia Unfiltered, My Day. This is where he gets back.
You'll get back, kicks his shoes off and says in the camera, you'll never believe what Donald Trump told me today.

Speaker 1 Or, you know what, I've had to go to the home office myself, sit down with the team and demand better answers on boats.

Speaker 1 Number three, the Kia Starmer podcast.

Speaker 2 The second one doesn't sound completely convincing.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think you just go in at the end of the day, 30 seconds, two minutes on the phone, you just say something.
I think that could work. But could

Speaker 2 how would Starmer do it? I mean, I can agree someone could do it. I just can't quite see Starmer doing it.

Speaker 1 Depends what he says.

Speaker 2 He doesn't really kick back, does he? He wouldn't actually be like, you'll never guess what Donald Trump said to me on the stone. He'd be like, I had fish fingers for dinner tonight.

Speaker 2 No, he won't say that.

Speaker 1 You won't have. No, you'll be far too negative about the Prime Minister's communication skills.
Keir Starmer podcast. Well, I've been banging on about it for a while.

Speaker 1 Number four, behind the speaker's chair, show the preparation for PMQs.

Speaker 1 Would you you go for that

Speaker 2 come on it will reveal that pmqs is people like you spending six hours prepping them so all their great off-the-cuff one-liners you'll discover by watching this maybe have been written by their team maybe and then he's got this one kia bang banging on so you do the things where you're banging on about something i like i'm i'm a banging on

Speaker 1 about brexit what did kia bang on about what did he bang on about uh well i mean he bangs on about his dance job. Toolmaker.
Yeah. Yeah.
He bangs about. What does this say?

Speaker 1 No, I think he bangs on about...

Speaker 1 I think he could bang on about enemies, bang on about, you could bang on about Farage, you could bang on about the civil service, you could bang on about, I don't know, bang on about Arsenal.

Speaker 2 Bang on about Arsenal. I could do that, yeah.

Speaker 1 Bernie at the weekend, Rory. You probably saw that.
Anyway, I thought that was very, very interesting. Right, last question, Rory.
Nick Fennec. Yeah.
This is one.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I know the answer to this. What do you think the voter demographic of trip plus subscribers is? Can you run a sample poll to see how accurate your guesses are? We should do that.

Speaker 1 We should indeed do that.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 2 we do know one thing, which is that we're very, very heavily slanted in general trip listeners towards people under 30.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And actually, a surprising number.

Speaker 1 Is that why you've got so much blowback on that? 18, 19. Andrew Manbatten Windsor.

Speaker 2 Could be, could be, I don't know. That'd be interesting to see whether people under 30 feel differently to people over 60.

Speaker 1 I've had a lot of people this week come up and say,

Speaker 1 trip plus subscriber, trip plus member. What have they been mainly? I'd say, I don't know whether it's right.
I'd say probably more male than female. Right.
Quite a lot of youngish men, 30s. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We just interviewed Gareth Southgate. I was quite moved by the fact that he was listening so carefully to our analysis of the Czech election.
So that was

Speaker 1 the disagreeing, agreeably thing fits with his character.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we should do that, though.

Speaker 1 And maybe as we're going on tour, starting in Bournemouth on Sunday, we should maybe

Speaker 1 ask them.

Speaker 2 Here's a figure I thought was interesting.

Speaker 2 I believe

Speaker 2 only just over half of our listeners are British, but we have a very large number now in Ireland, Australia, quite a lot in the US.

Speaker 1 Germany, France,

Speaker 1 New Zealand, yeah. Netherlands, surprising.

Speaker 2 I'm always surprised when I get answered. I said when I did that event in the Netherlands, there were whatever it was, I can't remember, six, 700 people turning up, most of whom were listening.

Speaker 1 The best feedback I had from last week's episode was me reading your dad's Last Will and Testament.

Speaker 2 From Middleland. That was very kind of you.

Speaker 2 I also got some lovely feedback on how generous you were.

Speaker 1 Look, if we're going to plug, I plugged your book last week.

Speaker 1 I got gifted this book. Okay.
Right. It's called The Bagpipes of Cultural History.
Honestly. And it is absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I think any, you don't, you have, you probably have to be interested in music. Right.

Speaker 1 You might have to be interested in a little bit in Scotland, but actually, what you have to be interested in is the cultural significance of a musical instrument and how it develops over history.

Speaker 1 It's an absolutely brilliant book. And it's one of the best research books I've really liked.

Speaker 2 I absolutely promised to read it. Two small clubs from me.
Least you said finest hotel in Kabul.

Speaker 1 Oh yeah. Really cool.

Speaker 2 So she looks at the Intercontinental, which is this kind of 1970s legendary hotel on the hill above. Kabul and she just follows

Speaker 2 people connected with the hotel over time and tells the story of Afghanistan through, for example, a waiter.

Speaker 2 And another book that I really loved, which I'm not sure would appeal to you so much, but I'm going to sell for a certain demographic of our listener, Notebooks of a Wandering Monk by Matthio Ricard, who becomes a Tibetan monk.

Speaker 2 He's a Frenchman.

Speaker 1 I like it. Is he in French or is it in English?

Speaker 2 He wrote it in French and he's written it in English, so you might enjoy it in French.

Speaker 2 But it is the most incredible portrait of a man who spent 50 years as a Tibetan monk and his love of his teachers and his three-year retreats and his times in Bhutan.

Speaker 2 And I found it incredibly calming and short chapters. Yeah, so I lovely.

Speaker 1 Albrecht Dürer's engraving of a peasant piper in 1514, one of the earliest representations of the bagpipes in a secular context.

Speaker 2 Well, there we go. That is a bit of good news and optimism, and something you would never hear on any other podcast in the United Kingdom.

Speaker 2 So, thank you, Britain's most famous bagpiper, and see you next week.

Speaker 1 Bye-bye.

Speaker 7 Hi there, it's David O'Deshoga from Journey Through Time, and here's that extract from our gunpowder plot series that I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 7 The person who's not rejoicing is Guy Fawkes in the tower. King James himself came to the tower to question Fawkes.

Speaker 7 That's quite an astonishing fact that Fawkes and the king looked into each other's eyes at that moment.

Speaker 8 And of course interrogations at this time, I mean we say interrogations as if they're just being questioned, but interrogations are brutal, violent events.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and it's going to get much, much more violent. Fawkes stands up to the king in a way that actually even impresses the king.
He's open that they plan to blow up parliament.

Speaker 7 He said that the aim had been to blow King James and the other Scots back to their Scottish mountains. He says that to the king.

Speaker 8 It takes guts, but it's also not the most diplomatic thing to say to the person you've just tried to murder and your fate is in his hands.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, I think Fawkes knows what's going to happen.

Speaker 7 I mean, the king was impressed by his obstinacy, that he would not reveal the names of his co-conspirators, that he was willing to insult the king to his face.

Speaker 7 And you have to say about Guy Fawkes, a man who'd been a soldier for 10 years, my God, he had guts. I mean, he is a bad man.
He is a religious fanatic.

Speaker 7 He's not somebody I admire, but my God, he was brave. You know, you can be brave and wrong.

Speaker 7 You can be brave and involved in things that are evil at the same time. And he was all of those things.
But this willingness to stand up to the king,

Speaker 7 this is before the torture.

Speaker 8 If you want to hear more about gunpowder, treason, and plot, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.

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