Risks of a new leadership mandate

I'm Ginny, I'm forty-five and have two young children, and I've been living with stage four cancer for almost five years now. One of the hardest things about an incurable cancer diagnosis is talking to your children about what lies ahead. The Ruth Strauss Foundation helps parents like me find the right words to have these conversations. Please support the Red for Ruth fundraising campaign. Together we can make sure no family faces incurable cancer alone. Some days it feels like your to-do list just won't quit. When life gets hectic, let Halfords take something off your plate. We're here when you need us, with trusted experts ready to help you take off MOTs, servicing, tire fitting and more. See our cars ready for whatever's ahead. So why put it off? Get in touch or drop in today. Book online at Halfers.com or give your local Halfers Garage a call and we'll sort it. So you can keep moving with confidence. Garage service is not available in Northern Ireland . Subway knows summer means big barbecue energy, so keep the barbecue vibes going even, when the clouds roll in, with the new barbecue pool pork sub, indulgent slow cooked pool pork on your choice of freshly baked bread, gooey shredded mozzarella and cheddar, crunchy coleslaw and tangy pickles, all smothered in a smoky barbecue sauce , now at your local subway, available for a limited time only. Hello, and welcome to not another one . We join you this week with a not the cheeriest of backdrops I have to say dear listeners. I'm Miranda Green and I'm here with Steve Richards T,im Montgomery and Ian Martin. And we thought today, because there's so much going on that we would do another one of our what we call our tap ass episodes so that we can offer you three three topics. But we think we probably should start with the polit ical furrore and reaction to the murder case in Southampton of a student, uh knife a knife attack, a fatal knife attack, and the police actions uh when they attended. Now obviously, you know, it's a horrific case, you know, knife crime, young lives cut short, is all too uh evident in news coverage quite a lot of the time. But this particular case has sparked a dramatic reaction from Nigel Farage , which the commentariat seemed to be as one interpreting as a kind of bid to kill off a threat from the right, from the restore party, which is doing a little bit too well for comfort in terms of uh reforms prospects in the maker field by election. Steve, I'm going to come to you first because I know also you've got to potentially leave us at some point. So what's your reaction to the political reaction? Because we're recording this on Tuesday afternoon and of course the Home Secretary is due to make a statement to the House uh on it as well. So it's clearly one of those awful cases that has sort of gripped the national imagin Yeah, well I share that reaction. I think uh you know Nigel Farage is a sharp reader of the political mood and he knows exactly what he's doing. And what he is doing is utterly irresponsible. It is fueling uh hatred and anger in ways that are really uh dangerous. And and you contextualized it with this threat from uh restore this Rupert Lowe outfit. Um that's part of it um but he has said similar things before. There's no evidence for it. And he's much uh he he's sort of at ease really with these sort of evidence-free dramatic interventions . But it's really dangerous. And he has the communication powers to be more nuanced than that and as effective. But he has chosen this and it says a lot about him, all of it alarming and disgraceful. So he but he he's called explicitly for rage, right? He said we should react with pure cold rage to the case and that the all the values and standards of living in a free country where everybody is judged equally before the law have been trashed and thrown away. So that is an extraordinary allegation about British society. And and he's not even I mean he he is a communicator, so he does have persuasive power. He's not trying to use it in this case. He is trying to uh articulate rage that is already out there and appear to be the spokesperson for it. Um now these are situations and Shabana Mahmood, who's regarded as a tough home secret ary, uh, will uh be like this, where you have to calmly state what has happened, what has gone wrong, and there are issues for the police, etc., which are uh needed to be uh urgently addressed. Um however, to fuel the rage that is already out there um is not the act of a potential uh Prime Minister, nor is it the act as I say of a self-confident communicator where you could, instead of just echoing anger , uh seek to use it in a subtler way. Mm. Ian, what do you make of this? Because it was also in terms of the sort of choreography of it was interesting. He d he di he, uh by which I mean Nigel Farage decided to do a sort of video addressed to the nation to comment on the case, which is something that he he sometimes does when he wants to intervene and make the live news channels switch to him and he's got quite good at it. But do you agree with Steve that this is sort of actually an unconfident move? 'Cause if it if he was feeling confident, he might strike a more nuanced, interesting uh you know, reac uh uh t tone rather than seeking to kind of out out restore restore. Do you think that's what's happening? Well I think there are so many dangers here. So I mean where where to start, but I do think that there is a there's a real danger in jumping ahead too fast to make this about Nigel Farage . Most people have it's less than twenty four hours since we saw that video. And there's so much to digest and process and I certainly wouldn't have phrased it like This is the police camera. Yeah. I certainly wouldn't have phrased it like uh Nigel Farage fr um framed it, and I do see I see all the dangers. But I think it is I mean it it is genuinely shocking. And I think you know that that clearly something has gone very badly wrong with the system. And maybe I'll set this worth at some point if we if we get a a a chance there's a section from the judge um and from his from the hearing that I think is worth worth quoting for for context . But as I say most of us have just seen that seen that video and something has entered the system and debate whether it is back to Macpherson, or as Kemi Badenok said, that it's more recent than it may be more recent than that, that it is essentially the first assumption was that when a racism charge was was uh was was thrown then uh that was instantly believed and the the the young man on the ground was assumed to be a wrong and assumed to be lying when he said that he'd been stabbed. Now that is this is years of this filtering you know filtering down through right down to an operational level and the police are in in a very, very difficult um put in a very difficult situation in the dark. But institutionally , that's what's been done to law enforcement in this countr in this in this country. So I I just think it is uh I I think it's a mistake to jump ahead and make this about Nigel Farage. I do think there's a I do think there are all sorts of problems with what he's saying. I think we uh we should be very worried about political violence and um and uh this country occasionally has a habit of uh spilling over into rioting. So p people should try and stay stay calm. But I I I'm afraid I can't just elide and move on from the the the video itself and what it reveals about our policing culture and Straits of Farage would be my I I I I I I think I think that's very interesting, Ian. I mean I one of the things I thought looking at the footage was the hands of this young man were were complet ely white and he was on the ground saying he'd been stabbed. And you know there, is cle there are c learly a lot of questions for the police to answer in terms of what went went wrong with that uh in those few few crucial minutes when uh when the the 18-year-old was bleeding to death on the ground and when they handcuffed him . I mean you you you do you do wonder with a lot of the cases where policing goes really badly wrong whether the instincts are correct and I'm I'm not anyway, I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not sort of p particularly taking issue with your interpretation, but I also think that there are lots of different cases that we've been shocked by b about bad policing and you can't attribute all of them to some sort of top down cultural uh you know self censorship as it were. Some of it seems to be assessing , you know, a a s a dangerous situation in the moment, incredibly badly and incompetently. I mean I would hope that that would also be part of what the um you know complaint looks into, no. I I mean I agree with you, that video video footage is shocking and it's hard to move on from it. But but what's going on there is is is is is worse than worse than a misinterpretation. It's not looking at somebody on the ground bleeding to death and realizing that that 's what was happening. Do you not think? Yeah, potentially. I mean I think that we should um I I do think we should hear from Tim um you know I'm not sure And then I as I say, I I do think it's worth almost reading into the record what the judge uh said about the the uh uh you know about the complications of the case. Yeah. Okay . Tim, you say you're you're joining us um you're joining us um on a on a day where we're all trying to make sense of this really appalling story. What's your reading of it? And you do you agree with Ian that we shouldn't actually be jumping ahead to an analysis of Nigel Farage's address to the nation over video? But that actually we should dwell on the case. I mean or do you think that this is actually the political intervention is so dramatic that inevitably it's going to overshadow these other considerations. Well I I've I've watched um Nigel Farage's video and um I don't remember seeing him quite so angry. I'm not sure that anger um is h ha is helpful, particularly at this stage. But I think it's real. I think it's genuinely upset and um and I'm I've um I've been um not so well over the last few days but I ro I've been around Salisbury a little bit and um I walked to um Tesco early today and and three people stopped me. They know I'm in vault in politics. This is what they wanted to talk about It's got to people. And two of them mentioned it in the context of what happened to the Manchester Airport attackers of the um the uh when the Crown Prosecution Service deciding not to retry uh the people accused of attacking the policeman. Um now um has Marjorie Farage absolutely judged it right well time tough time will tell. But I sense sometimes you have to represent the rage of people. And I think I don't think rage is under stated um on this issue. You have to channel it well. But to automatically assume I think sorry Steve to hit back at you, but to automatically assume that this is political, of course he's a politician. There'll always be a politics of it. But I d I don't remember when uh George Floyd was killed last, you know, during the um the Covid period. People automatically assume when people were offended by what happened to him, outrageous police brutality that did occur. People assumed it was political. There was something underlying there, which was outrageous. And I earlier today I heard um Zia Youssef interviewed on the World at one, which we were recording on Tuesday, for those who may be listening later in the week. And um and Ms. Yusuf made the allegation to the BBC that they're obsessed with this issue. And so many of our public sector institutions are obsessed with this issue. And actually, later on in that programme, the programme ended with the BBC doing a doing a segment on gender-based referee, which may not seem relevant, but there is, I'm afraid, in so many of our public services, this obsession with identity politics and seeing everything through the prism of um race, gender, sexuality, etc . Now there have been great injustices to people of minorities, to women uh over the over the course of the time. But I think as we learned during the grooming scandal, the balance went too far. And you know, we we kn you know, the uh the police officer who um handcuffed uh Henry Henry Nova, that there will be he will now have to face an independent inquiry um uh into his uh his status as a police officer and that should run its run its course. But the very fact that he seemed to the ra the the racial allegations seemed to be at the forefront of his mind, not the um not Henry's complaint that he was you m you mentioned Randy had his hands were wiped. Yeah wiped. Yeah he was clearly not well he wasn't representing a threat to anyone. And yet he was handcuffed, he was rolled over, and that is, you know, extraordinarily, you know, his rights were read to him um in the last moments of he had on earth. Yeah. People people are angry. They don't understand how that could happen. And I think there is an ideology I'm afraid that was behind this that has led to this. And we do need to always be worried about racism and homophobia and sexism. But it just seems to these these these these these dimensions of identity politics seem to take a s level of attention in the public sector that isn't you know about loneliness or good basic policing or you know there are plenty of things wrong in our society. But it's it's it's identity politics that above all others. And I I think when you have these two incidents very close to each other, the Manchester Airport incident and this uh killing of an eighteen year old boy, people are understandably very, very angry and very concerned. They're very angry and they're very concerned because this isn't exactly a surprise. We've been talking about this for years and nothing's been done about it. And because nothing really has been done about it, actually the institutions have become even more focused on these issues, then you get the rage. And that's why you're having the rage. And yes, it's good it's raining at the moment because I would worry about what might happen on some of the streets of England. Let the rain continue for a few days and maybe the uh some of the heat will go out of the rhetoric of some color Yeah well I agree I agree about the rain. But just to come back to you again on on uh Nigel Farage though, Tim. He wasn't saying that he was reflecting ra ge. He was recommending that people react with rage. Those were his words. Is that is that is that within the scope of just feeling a genuine emotion and expressing it? I don't know. I I I feel rage about what's happened. I'm not the sort of person who will go out and riot and take that um 'm not the sort of person who will riot and take that rage into um onto the streets. I'm afraid we do know there are people who will. And um uh I probably wouldn't have used the words that he used, but I'm not gonna criticise them for them because I understand his his anger. And if those people that I've met in Salisbury I met some at the weekend will just talk about the Manchester um airport incident are typical . Um Middle England is is in rage already. So it's not exactly but Nigel Farage is not the main problem here. The problem is the underlying incident which I think I am I am fairly focused on. Steve, what's your reaction to that? Well I I agree with a lot of what uh all of you are saying. I mean the video um which I can't really watch um is uh so unbearable that what you have is uh a reaction of inten se almost disbelief and anger. Um but you know we were uh you you asked me to comment on the intervention from Farage and I think as I say, in these situations, you don't fuel the rage. The rage is already there. And I think you've got to be really careful as figures of political movements at times like this, to extrapolate too much from it. Voters will, or a lot or or some will. And you know I get angry with a lot of police conduct and there is uh things going on which shouldn't go on in the I mean this is m uh you know statement of the obvious of course in this nightmarish case um and but but the reasons why uh this happened are often complic ated and uh uh uh deep and and where people have to respond uh to a situation quickly. Um it's much harder I think to sort of extrapolate all kinds of cultural implications from it. But yeah, I agree that uh uh with a lot of what has been said. Uh I mean it it it we should we should point we should point out that that a life sentence was handed down, right? Yeah. And and and and the c th the the injuries were so severe that they were fatal injuries. Yeah. Just you know Yeah Miranda, just can I sorry this just might it might take a minute, ninety seconds, but I just think and it's actually had very little coverage, but Danny Shaw, who's a former um BBC home Affairs correspondent or editor uh uh flag flagged it on Twitter uh or on X yesterday and I just think it's worth highlighting it's basically what the judge said uh afterwards and he this is an attempt by the judge to focus it on the lies of the convicted murderer of Vikram Singh Bigwell. And I think it's a really interesting passage from the judge. And the impact to it' abouts the impact of Digwa's lies. Another consequence of those lies is that the attending police officers honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him with the consequence he was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated, and the arresting officer began CPR. The police were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident. It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife would not have been obvious. There was blood on Henry, it would not have been clearly seen coming from that wound. Henry was complaining that he'd been stabbed and was struggling to breathe, but that would not necessarily have told the officers how serious the situation had become. It's the experience of the criminal courts that sometimes someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released . These police officers were faced with having to make quick decisions in pressurized circumstances about the best way to act. The genuine shock to the particular police officer when he realized that he'd been giving CPR to Henry when he had a serious chest wound, tends to show that he was doing his best in a very difficult situation. Now there will be people listening to this that will object to that and say that that is the that that's that's the judge you know the the the judge is giving you know giving you know too much understanding there but it it is an interesting framing that the the judge attempts to focus it back on the person who's responsible who is the the the the perpetrator who wielded the knife and has been sentenced and con uh con victed and uh and sent I think I think that's very fair, Ian actually and I would say um I think I've listened to a few experts um on my sick bed over the last day or two, and quite a number of them have said um actually knife wounds can be quite hard to find, particularly in the dark. You know, um th it isn't obvious that you know you you imagine a gushing wound or something. That is often not the case. I I have to say though, even though um and when you have someone said he's been attacked by a knife. Um Miranda's already talked about the whiteness of his hands. This man did not look well. Now it wasn't you know, perhaps he didn't look well in the policeman's eyes because he was being accused he'd be arrested by the police. That would be enough to turn certain people um looking very scared. But I think um Henry Novart did communicate enough to the police officer to suggest that he should have he should have been examined more thoroughly than he was . And and and and and also the attacker, you know, clearly was a very plausible convincing liar, according to that account of from the judge . And I mean, you know I mean crimin you know, criminals are well known for being very plausible liars, right? So there are all these other things hedging of hedging it about . But surely that that sort of undermines the idea that it was kind of blind obedience to some sort of diversity principle, doesn't it? Yes. I mean I say have particular challenges and uh it's it's it's always quite dangerous to extrapolate wider uh conclusions from from the particular I'm pleased Ian read that bit of the uh judge's statement out, uh, because it shows to some extent the complexity of this specific situation . And and and that's why I think you know, to rush in and you know, fuel the rage is is i is irresponsible . Hm . Interesting. Well we'll we'll I mean we'll have to see. We need to take a break, but we'll have to see um see where this goes in the in the few days ahead. Um because I'm sure that it doesn't end here. We you know we've had we've easily It must it it must it it mustn't. It really mustn't. We have to we have to have serious we have to have serious questions about what's happened to our public sector institutions. And you know I'll I'll I'll reach out this much to Steve. Um I think if those serious questions are to happen, I would hope that everyone keeps um the rhetoric under control and if there is any possibility of some sort of cross party work on this, uh that will be better than it to become a party political issue. But um certainly sometimes if something is not a party political issue it's not taken seriously and getting that balance right isn't always easy. Well I mean I I I hear I hear you on that. I'm not sure that this is is gonna help you know a calm sober assessment I must say. Anyway, we better take a break and then we will come back and uh move on to all of the other huge uh political stories of the week . I'm Ginny, I'm forty five and have two young children, and I've been living with stage four cancer for almost five years now. One of the hardest things about an incurable cancer diagnosis is talking to your children about what lies ahead. The Ruth Strauss Foundation helps parents like me, find the right words to have these conversations. Please support the Red for Ruth fundraising campaign. Together we can make sure no family faces incurable cancer alone. You've got social dialed in. Search is doing its thing. So why do your marketing results look the same as six months ago? That's because you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else. Podcast listeners are a different audience entirely. More engaged, harder to reach through traditional channels, and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're Ac ast, and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book, host, reads, or run your own ads, and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. Acast. Acast.com forward slash advertise . So welcome back, thank you for sticking with us and uh we we we turn now to the recurrent theme, I think that's the polite way of putting it chaps of Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandels on, and his time as British Ambassador to DC , because we've had the the latest enormous tranche of messages to and from Peter Mandelson from various members of uh the Star mer government and some of it is uncomfortable for those who who whose messages have been released. A lot of it is redacted, but what but but probably the most embarrassing message that's come to light, and certainly the one that is plastered across most of the front pages uh today, the following day, is from poor Pat McFadden, who uh you know is now grappling with the welfare system and welfare reform, but at the time for a lot of this period was in the cabinet office and he messages Peter Mandleton to say all of his meetings with Labour MPs tend to focus on please put up some tax es so that we can spend more. And this of course is an utter gift to all Keir Starmer's political opponents. And the paper's having a fi absolute field day. Steve, what do you think? Is this sort of you know, the cloud of Peter Mandelson, the bad spell over the government, is this just sort of inevitably going to go on and on and on and they'll never get out from under it? Or do you think um do you think this will sort of uh will will will will will pass uh like the rain clouds I'm looking at looking out out at? Well I I found the latest batch uh really fascinating, but only uh as an exercise in the way the media works because obviously everyone was told thousands of pages were to be published. So everyone got ready, extra people were brought in to read it all. So the grammar of the event demanded a sense of that this was dramatic revelatory stuff. And it wasn't. I was surprised that it wasn't much more revelatory because Mandelson is a gossip and has the knack of bringing people's malevolent gossip out in conversation and texts and so on. Now a lot, as your FT colleagues noted, have uh have not got into the public domain. But that that did , honestly, the Blair Brown era, I could you know if there were text then it would have been ten thousand times more embarrassing than this. And on the specific thing of Pat McFadden, this is not remotely surprising. They were fighting to protect those welfare reforms. Um Labour MPs actually not saying tax more to do it, but was saying that these specific reforms didn't address the problem. There was the most almighty clash it's unsurprising that McFadden, who knew Manson well, expressed his frustration in this way. And if that was it it, was in a way surprisingly unremarkable. But because of the way the whole thing had been built up, it had to be a huge story when it wasn't. Ian, what do you think? It doesn't help the government, does it, surely, to have this uh tax rises and welfare costs equation you know, in the words of a senior cabinet minister. Yeah, well I disagree with related Yeah I agree with Steve in one respect. I I I agree, I don't think it's actually that that useworthy. And I think we've now reached the limit really or the outer reaches of this stuff actually being interesting and the way in which our contemporary media handles these stories and it'll be most of it will be forgotten next week or is forgotten by today. Where I disagree is on the welfare reforms, which I I just don't agree uh we've discussed it before, I just don't agree with that categorisation. I think Pat McFadden is in trouble with Labour MPs for for basically telling the truth, which is that you know, and he he was was there, the he's the person in those conversations, and his account of it is that pretty much every conversation he had was someone looking for a way to you know, in increase taxes, increase revenue. So as he put it, he didn't just talk about spending, he talked about it but being spent on benefits for other for other people, which is what it is. So McFadden, who's seen the lot, you know, been there with with Blair and, you know, uh r right from right from the start of that era clear you know sees the situation clearly which is that we're sp we're spending far too much money as a country. The welfare bill is rising in a way which is unsustainable and our politics is unmoored from that basic reality. So I I mean I'd I'd he' he he's getting criticism. I would I'd give Pat McFadden an an award actually. I I I have to say that what I've thought was it surely is not going to make it any easier for him when he does come forward with whatever his proposed solution is on uh welfare reform to have those negotiations with uh the Labour backbenches, surely because Yes, but then yeah I believe that's the the point is also you know no one quite knows what to do about welfare reform. But even if you come up with something clever, you've got to get it through and the great surprise of the last two years is that a government with this scale of majority can't get things through. Doesn't this m doesn't this make make that worse? I would have thought Yes. And that that that's back where I do uh you know do agree with Steve. And I I take it slightly you know one step further, which is that actually when I was watching I was w we were home watching the watching it and I was just thinking most of this conversation, right we we all have a sense of glee when you see other people, when you see communications you're not supposed to see. I get I can get that point I get people to roar amusement it's a very human thing but that stuff is most of it is just the stuff of how people talk about their work, about how they you know, vent frustration with a decision that's not gone their way, about how they tackle problems, about that that is that that applies in a school, it applies in um you know, in a f in a factory at a s any workplace. Any workplace for journalists journalists. Journalists, the biggest gossips of the lot to get sanctimonious about about people talking frankly about their colleagues. See what happens on church committees. They're the worst in my experience . But isn't that right isn't that righteous i you're if you're being bitchy about your colleagues in the context of the church Well I've got a theory on this, but I think when you're in the church setting people have such ridiculous expectations of each other that when they fall short, which they inevitably do, just sort of more sanctimonious and upset about it. But my goodness, the rows I've seen in churches, the sense of offence. been inside political machines and uh and observing them for decades. Tim, do you do you agree that this is just the kind of run of the mill uh you know bitchy bitchery that always goes on? I mean I did think it was quite clever of Weather Streeting to release the messages between himself and Maddelson early because it meant that that wasn't the story this week. And probably otherwise would have been would have been because what Epstein's trading of young girls did is one of the great crimes of modern politics. Um I'm I'm not sure the focus we've given on the Mandelson dimension to it merits is it merits the attention we've given it. It's a it's a subplot of this. Um I don't think we learnt very much yesterday. Although call me cynical. Is there's one more tranche is there? If I was um if I was a cynical government person, I would make sure that the second tranche was a bit dull and keep so therefore when the third or final tranche comes out you keep the stuff that's a bit naughty in there 'cause people probably won't take so much an effort now having um processed the second tranche. But y so you think somebody's manufacturing fatigue? Possibly, yeah. I uh I uh I do know how I've been around politicians a little while now. I wouldn't put it past them That would be truly that would be truly truly sneaky. Well M I think a lot of that stuff them I think there must have been some things that were redacted that we would have found a lot more interesting to be honest. And I think also that the the closeness of uh Peter Mandelson to to his his clients, his commercial clients , and quite how often those companies and individuals get mentioned in official government business is of interest actually and I think that sort of conflict of interest dimension to this story is quite important in terms of future appointments um and in terms of keeping the whole business clean. That's that that's all the subject of the police investigation though at the moment, isn't it? So that's why I think it is probably been redacted. But but but again, you know what I thought about that though? I think it you know it's very important to keep an eye on that sort of uh hygiene, as it were, between commercial interests and and political appointments and objectives. But also we all know that government re relies on a network of people in the know. And actually ministers wouldn't be able to do their job if people weren't saying, oh well, actually I know so and so and you know, let me tell you how they see it and do you want me to set up a meeting? So so long as things are transparent you actually do need a certain level of contact, um which I th which is what I thought when there was w you know, that there are parts of the the the tranche that was released this week that are all about trying to get the UK US trade deal through and some of that involved Douglas Alexander, the m the minister who was very involved with that wanting to hear what some commercial interests had to say. And on a trade deal that's really important, isn't it, Ian? I mean it's Yeah. Exactly. This is the stuff this is the stuff of life of politics, of negotiation, people you know work ing out a way round a problem. It's just how human beings talk and for the me for the media to present this as you know as as something more than that, I think is um uh yeah is very revealing of what's going on in our media culture and just how addicted it's become to Ursat 's drama. There there are lots of genuinely dramatic and interesting things happening in the world at the moment. Um Ukraine defence, the energy crisis, what's happening in Iran, goodness is a long list. But that that cache of emails, even calling it a cache, you know, is is designed to give it some sort of fake um fake allure, uh I think is is revealing in itself. But I think we've got to take a break, haven't we? We've got to take a break. And I think we Steve, do we have to say goodbye to you? Because you you have to be elsewhere, I think . All right, all right, brilliant. Well, with the shock revel revelation that Ian thinks that journalists are sometimes sanctimonious We will we will take this short break I'm Ginny, I'm forty-five and have two young children, and I've been living with stage four cancer for almost five years now. One of the hardest things about an incurable cancer diagnosis is talking to your children about what lies ahead. The Ruth Strauss Foundation helps parents like me find the right words to have these conversations. Please support the Red for Ruth fundraising campaign. Together we can make sure no family faces incurable cancer alone. You've got social dialed in. Search is doing its thing. So why do your marketing results look the same as six months ago? That's because you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else. Podcast listeners are a different audience entirely. More engaged, harder to reach through traditional channels, and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're ACAST and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book, host, reads, or run your own ads, and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. Acast. acast.com forward slash advertise . Okay, welcome back. Right, we're just gonna wrap up quickly with um a bit of a bit of this early elec tion chat. Now, Ian, you famously right from the start of not another one two two years ago said you thought the election might be earlier than than the last possible moment in twenty twenty nine. Um there's been a lot of speculation over the last week or so about whether if Andy Burnham actually manages to secure the premiership, whether he would call an early election. Steve, I know you've got to rush off, so I'll come to you first. What do you think about these early theories? I think um Andy Burnham has played this down. Of course at the moment he's got he's got to play that down because I mean he's he's he's at the moment that got to pitch to so many different constituencies, there's the by election, then of course there are Labour MPs. And a lot of Labour MPs in marginal seats don't like talk of an early election, given where Labour are in the polls. But of course if Labour remain in that position in the polls there won't be an early election. However, if and there are so many hurdles here, but if Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister and gets a honeymoon uh and Labour are ahead in the polls, which I think is not impossible during a political honeymoon of a new Prime Minister. I think he would be very tempted and I don't think we should rule this option out because uh incoming prime ministers between elections this happened to Gordon Brown, it happened to Theresa May are tormented by the the mandate And given the focus in the by election on change and Labor's got to change and all the rest of it, um it will be quite acute, I think. Now there are ways round it and he might uh navigate all of that and keep going for the whole of this parliamentary term. He's got every right to do so. Uh because parties are elected, not prime ministers. But in a honeymoon situation with this unusual context of this focus on change change change that he's making in the by election, his own mandate must be so tempting if Labour finds itself ahead and Steve Steve I've got to say to you.