20:00

take a break. Maybe we should take our nap. Oh,

20:02

it's sending somebody listening to the program. I

20:05

was making a joke about ice baths. Somebody's

20:07

actually offered to bring an ice bath into the

20:09

Channel 4 studio for you. Okay. Not a lie

20:12

though. No, it's not

20:14

a whole lie. I'm not. Only the Israeli, Rory.

20:16

Because I worry about every time I go on

20:18

the television program, I worry about how

20:20

down market are they going to try and take it,

20:22

right? We are not taking our clothes off. Okay. We're

20:24

not taking our clothes off. We're just not. I had

20:26

to take my clothes off. I went on

20:28

Saturday to go swimming in the Serpentine. Yeah. And

20:31

of course, when I went swimming in the Serpentine

20:33

swimming club in Hyde Park, literally

20:35

everybody came bubbling up to me and be like,

20:37

oh, you're taking after us. That's just wonderful. Now

20:39

listen, Nikki Robson, how

20:44

can we shift the focus in our

20:46

media so that we become better informed

20:48

about policies, data, and evidence rather

20:51

than the semi-sensationalist, gotcha gossip. Now that does

20:53

feel, Rory, like an invitation for me to

20:55

plug my books for children, doesn't it? It

20:57

does. Yeah. No, we were always looking for those opportunities.

20:59

We are looking for those. But also while you were

21:02

in the dentist chair, I

21:04

was talking to the new European who I'm

21:06

pleased to announce have bought

21:08

shed loads of both of my books and

21:11

they have got a new subscription offer. Both

21:13

books will be signed by me. They will

21:15

be given free of charge to new subscribers

21:18

and you sign up for as little as

21:20

a pound a week to the new European

21:22

at the new european.co.uk slash trip. And if

21:24

you use that as an opportunity to plug

21:26

your bloody books, one of which is still

21:29

at number one. Yeah. And here we come.

21:31

Okay. So it's, I've talked about this new

21:33

series of four. So this is politics on

21:35

the edge. Yeah. I read that one.

21:37

Now for the first time you can get all four

21:39

of them. Same cover. So that's

21:42

the marches. That's nice. Occupational hazards, which is my

21:44

right book. I like the uniform covers. I like

21:46

that. And the place

21:48

in between. So it's now become a four

21:50

volume series where if you

21:52

want, you can go walk across Afghanistan,

21:55

do a lot of Scotland, do Scotland and Cambria

21:57

and then do, and then do politics on it.

22:00

Excellent. Excellent. That's great. I wish somebody would

22:02

do all eight volumes of my diaries in that

22:04

way, but probably I've got two publishers. They're all

22:06

different. They all cite different covers. They're a bit

22:08

different. Yeah. But anyway, we've sort of, we've moved

22:11

on from that. Should we start plugging and

22:13

get back to? Yeah. Let's get back to that

22:15

question about, we had a good question

22:17

on facts and figures and

22:20

politics. So I was

22:22

really struck by the Green Party manifesto, which

22:24

was the only one that really tried to

22:26

concentrate on the media. So it's

22:28

committed to the second stage of the Leveson

22:30

report, which we've talked about a little bit.

22:32

Maybe we can touch on that for a

22:34

second. Those are reforms that came in after

22:36

the phone hacking scandal. Yeah. And they've also

22:38

brought in quite an interesting under their manifesto

22:40

of limiting the holdings of anyone to only

22:42

25% of a media

22:44

company. So you can't have a

22:47

controlling majority ownership. As individual isolated

22:49

policies, I'd be happy with both.

22:52

However, Rory, you cannot get

22:54

away from the fact that their economic policies

22:56

do not stand up. Okay. But let's just

22:58

take those in individualized policies. I think it

23:00

would be a great help. We talk a

23:02

lot about the media. Are there any other

23:04

things that we can do? I mean, obviously

23:06

we had a slightly, I had

23:08

a slightly long and boring bit at the beginning about

23:10

the tax burden and he's paid. But I think it's

23:12

quite interesting sometimes facts and figures like that. The

23:15

question is, how does one really make

23:17

them come alive? How do you sell

23:20

newspapers while also communicating some slightly newer

23:22

stuff? Any thoughts on that? You talked

23:24

about Paul Johnson of the IFS and

23:26

he did a speech the other day.

23:29

It shows how weird the

23:31

debate has become that a speech by Paul

23:33

Johnson of the IFS about how the parties

23:36

weren't telling the truth about the economy was

23:38

covered like big news on the television. And the

23:40

parties didn't even really bother the respondents. I don't

23:42

know what he's going to say that, but let's

23:44

just ignore it because, and so they all know

23:46

that there's a bit of a game going on.

23:48

But here's a great question I thought from James

23:50

Merkin. Why is there no requirement in electoral law

23:52

that requires all election material to be

23:55

factual and auditable? I send you a thing, Roy, I

23:57

don't know if you saw it, it was these adverts.

24:00

that the Tories are putting out on

24:02

social media and sending to people on what's happened so

24:04

far, a bit like your

24:06

books, there's a set of four and

24:08

they're four Labour will,

24:11

unless you vote Tory, Labour will. And

24:13

then there are four statements which are

24:16

factually untrue. Now,

24:18

if they were advertising, if that was

24:20

Coke advertising the product,

24:22

you know, the consequences of buying Pepsi, they

24:25

would be subject to all sorts of punishment.

24:28

If that was a car saying,

24:30

you know, BMW, buy BMW because

24:32

Volkswagen, you know, is unsafe. Why

24:35

is politics exempt from this? And it

24:37

only works, it only works if this

24:39

freedom of speech thing is matched

24:41

by people basically committing to tell the truth. You're

24:43

absolutely right. We're going to have to tighten this

24:45

up. I guess the thing that you've got to

24:47

guard against when you tighten it up, so I'm

24:49

not disagreeing with you, but the thing you've got

24:51

to guard against is that when

24:53

countries start putting more and more laws

24:56

around this, you then end up with

24:58

parties using the law against each other.

25:00

So that's why in Bangladesh, 1.2 million

25:03

members, the opposition, as we said, are

25:05

currently under judicial scrutiny. That's

25:07

why, you know, Modi in India will

25:09

go after his opponents judicial stuff. You

25:11

can see it in Latin America. So

25:15

in Britain, the disadvantage

25:17

of our system is that people can get away

25:19

with lies. The advantage of system is that you

25:21

don't end up in this world in which parties

25:24

very, very quickly start weaponizing these laws against

25:26

each other as a way of getting each

25:29

other locked up or taking each other's campaign

25:31

finances away or disqualifying each other much campaign.

25:33

But you're right. Many of the things in

25:35

Britain we don't have laws about because we

25:38

tended to depend on what Simon

25:40

Cooper in his latest book calls

25:42

the good chap theory of politics, which is

25:45

increasingly on a strain. Yeah. No, I think,

25:47

but I've been surprised that we all knew

25:50

Johnson was a liar. We all knew Truss

25:52

was useless. But I have been genuinely surprised

25:55

that Rishi Sunak, who gets these lines and he just

25:57

keeps going. So again, last night, the 2000 pound tap.

28:00

And of course you're given money to send

28:03

letters to your constituents, correspond with them,

28:05

ask them questions. Yeah. But

28:07

all these MPs, or not all of them, many,

28:09

many of them start using that public money to

28:12

do things which are pretty close to

28:14

campaigning. And this line between which

28:17

you would have come across again and again when you

28:19

were in government, what's the line between what

28:21

you can do in the government and what you can

28:23

do? And I remember, you

28:25

know, this sort of stuff that you and Richard Wilson would go

28:27

head to head on. And, you know, but

28:29

I was always very, very careful, but every now and

28:31

again I would probably cross the line. I remember once

28:34

he came in and after I'd done a briefing and

28:36

said, look, you said something there about Ken Livingston, which

28:38

you shouldn't have said, because that was a totally a

28:40

party matter. It had nothing to do with

28:42

the government. And I corrected that

28:44

and accepted I shouldn't have done that.

28:46

But now it's almost like, well, the

28:49

lines have become so blurred post Johnson.

28:51

Now, Rory, we talked on the main podcast about this

28:53

betting scandal. We've got a question literally

28:55

about 10 minutes after we finished recording. And

28:58

we'd been saying soon after heaven's sake, why

29:00

hasn't he suspended these candidates? They then became

29:02

suspended. So Mark has asked, can the Tories

29:05

take the suspended candidates back into the party

29:07

as MPs if they're elected? And this is

29:09

the mess that soon that's got himself into.

29:12

These people are on the ballot paper as

29:14

Conservative Party candidates. They've had

29:17

the whip withdrawn, whatever that means, because there's no

29:19

parliament sitting at the moment. If

29:21

they win and they are proven to

29:23

have done this betting stuff, which

29:26

soon actually is absolutely furious about, then no,

29:28

they'll have to sit as independents. This is

29:31

a really good question because in Rochdale by

29:33

election, the same thing happened. The

29:35

Labour candidate who was on the ballot paper and it

29:37

was too late to remove him made some very offensive

29:39

comments. Keir Starmer then said this person is no longer

29:41

in the Labour Party. And if he'd been elected, Keir

29:43

Starmer would have had to work out what to do

29:45

with him. But there's a sort of bigger

29:48

question, which is why

29:50

given that Rishi Sunak has now done

29:52

it, didn't he do

29:54

it sooner? And this is a mistake that

29:56

both he and Keir Starmer have made in

29:58

the past. is, Keir

30:00

Starmer's example was pretty

30:03

clear that he needed to let Diane Abbott run, but

30:05

he tried for many days to say, there's a process

30:07

here, there's a system here, I can't get involved. And

30:09

then eventually he's like, okay, Diane Abbott can run. And

30:11

again, Rishi Sunak tried to say, there's a process here,

30:14

there's a system here, I can't suspend them. And then

30:16

eventually he has to spend them. What is it that

30:18

stops them kind of grabbing the net all quickly enough,

30:20

rather than eventually doing what they should have done all

30:22

along? I think the Diane Abbott situation is slightly different.

30:25

I think what was going on there was

30:27

that Diane Abbott was in discussion with the Labour

30:29

Party, and that somebody briefed

30:31

something out that she took real offense

30:34

to, and that created the row which

30:36

they then tried to come. I

30:38

think this one is just about Sunak doesn't

30:41

have good political instincts. And

30:43

let's be honest, the other thing I'd say for

30:45

Labour, I thought, listen, they fought a pretty good

30:47

campaign, and they haven't really dropped a ball badly,

30:50

it's all gone pretty well. But

30:52

the thing that happens when you get in, if Keir

30:54

Star becomes Prime Minister, I once

30:56

remember saying that, sometimes

30:59

I would be sitting alongside Tony Blair, and

31:02

you feel like you're a batsman, and

31:04

you're facing like not one fast bowler, you're facing

31:06

about 20 fast bowlers at the

31:08

same time, because so many things are coming

31:10

at you. And so many of them, you

31:13

have to make a decision really, really quickly

31:15

to stop something which may not be that important,

31:18

becoming a real issue. By the way, Rory, literally, as

31:20

we're talking... Give us an example, sorry, just give us

31:22

an example before we get to literally while we're talking.

31:24

Well, I'll give you an example. During the middle of

31:27

a build up to a military conflict,

31:29

when the big decision was about whether

31:31

we were sending troops or not, we

31:35

had the whole, one of Peter Mandelson's

31:38

resignation situations. And,

31:40

you know, Peter, I think to this day thinks that

31:42

we were too brutal. But

31:45

in a way, I think part of the thing is, one

31:48

way or the other, this has got to get off Tony

31:50

Blair's desk so they can actually focus on the things that

31:52

you really have to do. And also presumably asked that you

31:54

would have had an instinct that he's going to have to

31:57

go anyway, so we might as well get rid of him

31:59

now rather than... letting it drag on for days

32:01

as the witch hunt builds and the newspapers go

32:04

after it. Well, it sort of went on a

32:06

fair time anyway. But I think other times, you

32:08

know, like, for example, I can remember at European

32:10

summits when suddenly stuff would break at home and

32:12

you have to make a very quick decision. By

32:15

the way, as we're speaking, Roy, the BBC, have

32:18

just done breaking news. The

32:20

gambling commission has told the Metropolitan

32:22

Police five further police officers are

32:25

alleged to have placed bets related to the time of

32:27

the election. The first Rishi Sunak's

32:29

in a circle. It's also the Metropolitan Police. I'm

32:31

not going to do the conservative party. And presumably

32:34

it's the diplomatic protection police who are

32:36

the elite who are meant to be

32:38

competent. But it's just such a sign.

32:40

I don't care who's doing it, of

32:43

just everything becoming kind of trivialized. Without

32:46

being really kind of pompous about it, you cannot imagine

32:48

this happening. I just got an email

32:50

from someone in Japan saying you literally cannot

32:52

imagine this happening in Japan. And if they

32:54

did, people would be resigning immediately. I mean,

32:57

people would feel it was so dishonorable. Let's

32:59

just get back to this betting theme, though,

33:01

because I was with you, Rory, on

33:04

the day that you were trying to place a bet

33:06

with an entire railway carriage. That's

33:08

a bloody good job that you didn't. Yeah,

33:11

because I was betting against this. I know I could,

33:13

I would have lost, I would have lost. You would

33:15

try to do some outside of trading. At least the

33:17

fact that I lost would have suggested I didn't have

33:19

inside training yet. Listen, I did just

33:21

finally on the on the Manilson thing, because I

33:23

think this may relate to what's happening with Rishi

33:25

Sunak and Craig Williams. Probably if you were really

33:27

brutal and an outsider, you would say, actually, you

33:30

and Tony Blair held on to Peter Manilson for

33:32

longer than you should have done and let it

33:34

play out, which has been impressive. And the reason

33:36

you did it is that he was a

33:38

close friend and you felt loyalty

33:40

towards him. And if he hadn't been

33:42

a close friend, you might have been

33:45

able to see clearly and more objective.

33:47

That's possibly true. And I'm sure the

33:49

same is true here that this man,

33:51

Craig Williams, has been Rishi Sunak's closest

33:53

parliamentary aide. And therefore,

33:55

I mean, it's a very human, isn't

33:57

it? Your loyalty, your friendships, class.

34:00

things and you can be more objective and more

34:02

brutal with people you know less well. I

34:04

think that's right. But this one, you're

34:07

in the middle of an election campaign. The

34:09

minute this happened, Rishi Sunakshala said, sorry, this

34:11

is under no circumstances going to happen. It's

34:13

not going to be tolerated. I'm sorry. Even

34:15

at the risk of losing that seat to

34:17

an independent, even at the risk of that

34:19

seat going to another candidate, you are not

34:21

representing the Conservative party. And even

34:24

at the risk that you might actually be

34:26

innocent, because this is one of the things

34:28

some of these people say, I didn't do

34:30

it. Oh, that's not actually the case with

34:32

Craig Williams. He actually admitted. But there's this

34:34

great line that Judith Caesar produces where he

34:36

distances himself from his wife and his wife

34:38

says, you know, I didn't actually cheat on

34:40

you. And he says, even the suspicion she'd

34:42

done it is enough for me to

34:44

distance myself. I still think he

34:46

was the author of the greatest ever sandbite. I've

34:49

gone what's that in? Feini Vidi

34:51

Vici. Did you say a lot? It's the best

34:53

ever. It's the best ever. It's

34:55

the best. It's

34:58

better than education, education, education. European Powell,

35:00

what are your takes or actually, what

35:02

is your take on the release of

35:05

Julian Assange? Well, I was on breakfast

35:07

television this morning and obviously this came

35:09

up and I was on Good Morning

35:11

Britain and Kevin McGuire from the Mirror,

35:13

Andrew Pierce of the Mail. And it

35:16

was very interesting to watch because you got the two views. Andrew

35:20

Pierce, basically this guy's awful. He's

35:22

a friend of terrorists. He's

35:24

a hater of the West. He's not

35:26

a real journalist, etc. And

35:29

Kevin McGuire, much more this guy exposed

35:32

things that were wrong and

35:34

that was that was an act of public

35:36

service and he's been very, very unfairly treated.

35:39

I am not a fan of Julian Assange. I

35:42

think that in dumping

35:44

all the stuff that he did, he

35:48

I think he did so without going through

35:50

what I would would call proper journalistic endeavor.

35:52

I think some of the newspapers he was

35:54

working with might well have done so, but

35:57

I don't think that he did. And I

35:59

also feel very uncomfortable. comfortable that

36:01

the sexual charges against him in relation

36:03

to Sweden, one of which I

36:05

believe was dropped because the time ran out, which

36:07

he's always denied, except he's always denied it. But

36:09

it wasn't just that he was avoiding justice in

36:11

America, the fact that he was avoiding

36:14

justice in Sweden as well. And I think

36:16

that a deal has been done, he's now

36:18

on his way to freedom, I guess, in

36:21

Australia. But I

36:23

feel very, very uncomfortable, both with the fact that

36:25

the, I accept Kevin McGuire made

36:27

this point that he did expose things

36:29

that were very, very wrong, which might

36:31

not otherwise have been exposed. That is

36:33

true. And there is a public

36:35

interest justification for that. There is not a public

36:38

interest justification for some of the stuff that I

36:40

think put people's lives at risk. Very good. Okay.

36:42

What's your view? What's your view? I'm

36:45

avoiding June Assange. I find the whole

36:47

thing really weird, but I think your

36:50

correct framing is good. I think there

36:53

is a public interest defense in revealing stuff.

36:55

I do believe in transparency in government, but

36:57

I think that Assange seems to have been

36:59

often reckless,

37:02

often not really motivated by trying to bring troops

37:04

to government and appears to have sort of had

37:06

an anarchic destructive tendency to him. But I don't

37:08

know enough about Assange and I feel a bit

37:11

out on a limb saying that. Political cartoons,

37:13

James Butler, satirical cartoons, have you or any

37:15

members of your family kept any of yourselves?

37:18

Have any particularly irked you?

37:20

I've got loads and

37:22

I wish I had more. You like them.

37:25

I've got a lot and have been given a

37:27

lot of me and I hate

37:29

them. I hide them. I don't really want people

37:31

to see them because I don't know what to do with them because I think it's

37:33

kind of either they're flattering, in which

37:35

case it looks like you've got a massive big head

37:38

putting up in your lube, pitches yourself in a flattering

37:40

cartoon. So there's one of me when

37:42

I was running for the leadership of me hopping over

37:45

the heads of all the other candidates. There are others

37:47

that are just sort of faintly humiliating. So there was

37:49

one of me, again, during the leadership where I'm one

37:51

of five tiny candidates on a

37:54

desert island with Boris Johnson as his

37:56

huge fat pink balloon ever

37:58

expanding, pushing us into the water. And

38:01

then the one that really annoyed me when I was running for Mayor of

38:03

London was me

38:05

on a camel

38:08

in ridiculous kind of Lawrence

38:10

for Arabia garb. And

38:13

Boris Johnson sitting there like a sort of enormous

38:16

sort of cliched pasha with a

38:18

hubble bubble pipe saying something like

38:21

I'm supposed to be the

38:23

only entitled ridiculous old etonian

38:25

flouncing off as I write

38:27

off on my camel. That's

38:29

quite good. Well, I actually

38:31

wish I had more. I've

38:33

got about, I've got

38:35

lots and lots stashed away. I've

38:37

got about 20 that are hung

38:39

in different parts of the house,

38:42

particularly bathrooms. People do like seeing them as they're sort

38:45

of, you know, in the bathroom, having a pee or

38:47

whatever. And they don't know me at all. I mean,

38:49

there was a guy or the guy in

38:51

the daily mirror always used to do me as

38:53

Frankenstein with two bolts through my neck. There

38:56

was there was there was another guy

38:58

who used to do used to

39:00

do me as this kind of, you know, really

39:03

evil manipulative looking rather haggard gaunt

39:05

character. I always found them quite

39:07

funny. And there's another

39:09

one, another one I've got downstairs where Tony,

39:13

who they always did this was Griffin

39:15

Charles Griffin, and he did Tony like

39:17

really ugly massive bags under his eyes.

39:19

His teeth were all kind of out

39:21

of position and out of place. And

39:24

he's standing at the top of the plane steps

39:26

and he goes here. And this was just after

39:28

the Kosovo liberation.

39:31

And he goes, here I am landing in

39:33

this benighted land, everything reduced

39:36

to rubble, greeted as a hero. And

39:39

I read the background as a

39:41

Dracula say, boss, this isn't Pristida.

39:43

This is Middlesbrough. Great

39:48

ones that against me was

39:51

Matt, who's the Daily Telegraph cartoonist

39:54

at a time when I was being portrayed

39:57

in the newspapers as a kind of sort of

39:59

mini messiah.