Prince Harry and Associated Newspapers Trial

Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name is Andrew Huntamur. I'm the Private Eye studio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen, and Matt Muir, and we are going to start off today by talking about social media. We are. It's very exciting. There's a new study out about this exciting phenomenon on social media, which reveals everyone now hates it and has gone off it. Um this is a report by Ofcom, isn't it Matt? Yeah, it's the latest DOFCOM data that was published last week into uh UK media uses, specifically online media, uh showed that basically we all hate social media now, or at least we're not engaging with it in the same way that we used to. Uh the numbers of people who are actually going online and posting, for example, to Facebook or to Instagram, commenting, liking, has dropped to just under half of people. And this has kind of led to a spate of articles that kind of hand wringingly saying, well is that it for social media? Oh now that we're banning it, are we all just gonna sort of stop using it after all? But that's not quite what the data shows. And I think it's kind of important to to push back ever so slightly against this narrative. Because I don't know if you notice, people people still look at their phones a lot. I don't know. I'm like I presume you still look at Instagram. Um fair to say yeah. Well I've only just joined. I'm a bit embarrassed about it. Just because everyone else is leaving it's not too late to stop. You can you can you can kind of get out of this like a proper content creator and isn't this kind of part of c this what's happened is that the casual Who you are though. I've seen I've seen you on there. But the the kind of casual like you might just post something for your friends kind of stuff is dying away and it's becoming more professionalized? Is that part of it? That's basically it. I mean there's there's a long standing trope here . The media all media will eventually in the same way that all life forms on earth become crabs eventually. So all media Well, you just threw that one in there, isn't it? You can go look it up, carcination's a real fact. Um but all media eventually ends up being video. And fundamentally social media, if you think that Facebook has been around for twenty years now, more or less. And when it started, it was a place where you went to connect with friends, to attempt to flirt with people that you went to school with, break up your marriage and, post pictures of your holidays. And it is not that anymore. It has become a far larger, far more complex platform, series of platforms, and effectively, fundamentally, most social media platforms are now like television. Whereas before they were lean for ward participatory things, now they simply tend to be lean back. So for example you will log on to Instagram and rather than posting to your grid of pictures or seeing the things that your friends have posted to their grid of pictures, you'll instead be served a vast quantity of video content made by people that you don't know that is designed to entertain you, much like TikTok does, which is exactly what Snapchat does, which is exactly what uh YouTube Shorts does. Everything is basically now short-term video. And so it's not that people are using social media less, it's just the manner in which they are engaging with it has changed significantly from being something, as I said, participatory to something that is fundamentally about consumption. Aaron Powell We should say private eye as a traditional news organization will never, ever pivot to video. But your mention of TikTok's interesting, right? Because that is kind of I think where the pivot really happened. Everybody decided that the kind of the four U algorithm was just a much infinitely superior way of content. When it's one of the one of the oddities of social media and whenever you read people surveyed about this, people always say in conversations, Well, you know what, I really miss the old days of Instagram where it just go on there and it'll be the things that my friend had posted and I would scroll through and it would go backwards in time and then there would be a and people always say this, but every single study that has ever been t undertaken by social media companies shows that that's bollocks. And what people actually like is the algorithmic feed because they really, really like being But people are posting a bit less. People are posting. As opposed to words or pictures. And also we are now a little bit more attuned to the fact that having your face all over the internet possibly isn't a great thing for lots and lots and lots of people. Yeah. Um w women women, it turns out, tend to have actually often quite a bad time when they post pictures of themselves on the internet for a variety of reasons, whether it be abuse or whether it be someone using Elon Musk's magical unification tool to turn them into porn stars. Um so you can kind of see why people might be somewhat reticent. And one of the other elements of the Ocomf study that was out last week, or the their survey, is the proportion of people saying social media is good for their mental health. That has come down to thirty six percent, which I would say is still remarkably high. I mean if you if you use it a little bit and you just check in, see some funny videos, I mean most of my usage, apart from the dead-eyed brand extension that I'm up to, is just checking in and seeing sketch comedy, and which I I don't mind. But two years ago forty two percent of people said it was good for their mental health. Now it's thirty-six. It does still seem very high. But it brings us on to one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you today, Matt, which is of course the chat about social media bans, uh the huge lawsuits that have been happening against Meta and YouTube, those are over in the States. But here people are saying do we need to regulate this quite firmly and in particular stop children uh under the age of sixteen from using it? So can you tell us where the law is on that at the moment? So currently the government is undertaking it's one third of the way through a three month consultation. So they're soliciting respons es basically on the question of yes, should there be a ban for under sixteens, what would be the positive consequences of this? What might be the potential negative consequences of this? So so far they've had somewhere in the region, they've say they were saying a couple of weeks ago of thirty thousand responses, which by the standards of government consultations is a fairly big uh big uptake and it's got another two months left to run. There are obviously there's a lot of interest behind this. Um Can anyone respond to it? Is it any member of the public can't be able to do it. There are three separate consultations. One is for parents, one is for younger people, and one is for any other interested parties who may have skin in the game for whatever reason, whether it be professional or personal. Exactly what's going to happen to what may well be a hundred thousand responses, how they're going to be triaged, and to what extent it's just going to be fed into an L L M because that's almost certainly what's going to happen. Don't you think it'd be like they'll do a sentiment analysis on it essentially and they'll go they'll w they'll they'll ask the LLM to say what percentage of these said I hate social media and I want it banned We're gonna get the word cloud, aren't we? Yeah. Without without a shadow of a doubt. It'll just say feet. What if I don't like large language models? Where do I express my views about that in a way that will mean someone reads it? You're really not going to like the future very much. Okay. God Okay. So this consultation is running. I read that there are trials that are happening in three hundred homes, they're gonna actually experiment with cutting social media usage for children. Absolutely right, yes. So the these are limited trials that are happening around the UK. Simultaneously there's another study that was launched last week uh in Bradford, I believe, which is an exceptionally large longitudinal study over the course of a year that's going to track or seek to track the impact of social media usage on young people's uh emotional well being. And that's going to run until twenty twenty seven, which does rather make one wonder okay, so we're gonna take a decision on this before we have all of this evidence because because it does feel possibly slightly premature. But the interesting thing about this and one of the really interesting things about the debate as a whole is that over the course of the thirteen years that I've been writing about these god awful companies and the terrible things that they've done to the world, there has been a a lot of research that has passed across my desk debating the impact of these technologies on the mental well being of both adults and younger people. And what's been striking about it is the complete lack of any sort of consensus. For every single piece of research that says, well, these things are the worst thing for young people since we got rid of child labor, um there's another that says actually they have no discernible impact at all when you take into account all of the other things that are going on in young people's lives. And this kind of comes to the recent rulings in the States, um which while ostensibly can be seen as very, very bad news for social platforms, probably aren't quite as definitive as the media has wanted to paint them. We we should say what those are. There's there's a case in California where Meta and YouTube were fined six million dollars for designing deliberately addictive uh algorithms to get children in particular in. And the other was in New Mexico, which was a three hundred and seventy five million dollar fine. Just just to point out, Andy, that that's that's naught six two percent of Meta's income from twenty twenty five. Okay. Okay, it's a start. That was over claims that the products led to things like child sexual exploitation. Exactly. And that the platforms weren't protecting children from being approached by by creeps or potential abusers on that. That kind of thing. Meta and YouTube are appealing those verdicts. But the aim is to try and launch as many cases as possible to to try and rein them in. Basically, yes. I mean the big one, whilst the New Mexico one has a very big headline figure, uh meta themselves have kind of laughed off the find, frankly. The one that's more significant is the LA case, primarily because there are potentially thousands of other cases waiting in the wings that were this verdict to be upheld after the inevitable appeal, would set obviously a precedent that could then actually prove quite significant in terms of potential liabilities for the companies and requirements on them to modify their services to frankly potentially avoid any sort of huge long tail legal kickback. The difficulty, of course, is that A Meta is going to appeal and YouTube. YouTube has a very strong ground for appeal because I think they can make a reasonable case that they're not actually a social platform in a meaningful sense. They are. They really are just they're a video streaming platform and I think they can probably do that. Meta it's a little bit harder, but the case rests on the fact that Meta's products are addictive . And that's that's quite a contentious thing to prove. So for example, there are there are literally no studies out there, no studies whatsoever that show that technology products of any sort, but specifically social media, have the same effects mentally as actually addictive products. But it is not the same as smoking or doing heroin. Right. It does not light up fundamentally designed to keep you looking at your screen and keep you on that platform, aren't they? I was I was talking to a a uh a an anti-gambling campaign or recently who made a really interesting point about even WhatsApp, which you think of as being a sort of relatively innocent one, the two-tick thing is designed to have you there, you've sent your message, you've done whatever you're gonna do. No, you're gonna stay there, you're gonna keep looking at it. Have they read it yet? Has everyone in the group read it? Has anyone all someone's typing? Everything is about keeping you on that level. And you can feel that. I mean I feel it myself when I'm scrolling through my phone. There's a point where I go, put it down, Adam, put it down. And and I just there's a bit more, a bit more, a bit more. You are entirely right. They are designed specific ally because fundamentally speaking that's what venture capitalists demanded when they invested very heavily in these services and they wanted to see user retention and all of these things. They're not very well designed for that these days, I find, because I'm I'm I was on Facebook for a long, long time, left it last year. Again, sa exactly the same problem coming up with Instagram now. That all I seem to be getting are sponsored posts about things which the algorithm is convinced that I'm I'm interested in. I mean I'm I'm a bit of a geek, but I don't need to see one million posts about those two Do you also get heavily owned by the adverts? I do, because it's obviously clocked that I'm a woman between the ages of forty and fifty, so all it wants to talk to me about is hair loss and dry vaginas. Oh Viagra Viagra Viagra, I'm afraid. Yeah, middle aged man. Interesting. I had a I had a very interesting experience last year where for reasons that I can't adequately explain, uh the algorithm on Facebook decided that I was a gay man for about a week. And it was a genuinely fascinating insight into a world that I don't personally experience. Lots of very beautiful, well-muscled men and incredibly Can I can I drag us back to the prospect of a ban which would stop us seeing all this? Australia have just banned They have. And we have we've had our first kind of little glimpse of how it's going. It's really early, isn't it? It's incredibly early. It's been a couple of months effectively. And the first the first big proper government mandated uh data on this is going to come out, I believe, in May from Australia. So that's kinda gonna be the first proper official cut. But you know, anecdotal evidence and reports that came out again last week suggested the about seventy percent of Australian kids were just swerving this. The age verification stuff doesn't work particularly well. It is actually quite easy to bypass. And you know, we've all been teenagers at various points in the distant past. And we all know that there is nothing more powerful than a motivated teenager that wants to do something you don't want them to do. You always find a way around. And social media bands are no exception. So firstly there's the difficulty in actually enforcing this in any meaningful sort of way. Secondly, there isn't a coherent evidence base that suggests that it is necessarily a factor in young people's mental health. Thirdly, there's also an argument to suggest that by implementing a ban for under sixteens, what you're effectively doing is uh letting these companies off the hook slightly. Because rather than requiring them to make meaningful changes to the manner in which they operate, you're instead just cutting off the swathe of people from using them. Whereas it could be argued that it would make more sense to attempt to make them change the way in which, for example, algorithmic uh content delivery functions, or the concept of an infinite scroll, which would theoretically benefit all users rather than simply preventing one contingent from using the platforms. I don't know how I feel about this 'cause I think my m analogy for this always is is tobacco. And you're right, there it is different in the sense that we just had ev straight up and down evidence eventually by a certain point that that was killing people. But you could say all the same things, which is that kids, you know, would send their mate, their older mate into the shop to buy um cigarettes for them. Or like, you know, or actually should we ban it for kids or should we try and drive the tobacco companies out of business altogether. And I think all those things are true, but I think there is some social power in saying we think these things are poisonous and we're against them. Even if people get round that this is this is completely fair and I completely agree with you. I suppose the other point that I would make , which is I think slightly ignored in this debate, is the extent to which over the course of the past decade these platforms have become infrastructural. They're not elective really anymore. There is a certain extent to which significant swathes of modern life require the ability to navigate these platforms, whether it be for social reasons or increasingly for administrative reasons. There's also the fact that, okay, so 16-year-olds are going to be given the vote, right? Where do where do most young people currently get their news from? Oh, it's social media. Do you want to do you wanna cut off the place that they are informed about the world, whilst at the same time giving them the power to affect the movement of that world in a more significant sense. I don't know. It feels not being socialist enough here, Matt. What you need to do is mandate them all to receive a copy of Private Eye. Are you somehow telling me that fifteen year olds don't all read private eye, I mean? I hear there may be some of them that don't. They're not meant to, but you can send someone into the shop to get it for it So what what happens next? We wait for the consultation to end, although I mean the Prime Minister has been making increasing noises uh about the likelihood of there being a ban in some way, shape or form. I mean the House of Lords is obviously mad keen on this Baroness Kidrons that keeps slapping amendments onto every single bit of legislation she seems capable of doing. Really? Yeah, I mean she's she's you know, she she this is very much her hobby horse and this is from the filmmaker isn't who made her film IRL a few years ago, which was exactly about radicalized her into believing that all of these companies should be fundamentally torn apart. So many of these attempted amendments, there was one that was almost put through a couple of months ago, that would basically have banned under sixteens from using Wikipedia because it was it was so broadly written. There's currently one about chatbots that Baroness Kidron attempted to implement into a piece of legislation which would I think seemingly ban um ban kids from using using any sort of AI related thing, which if you consider how much AI has been injected into all sorts of products kind of becomes problematic. And this was also in evidence at a common select committee the other week when once again the charming I need to remember this man's name, Wilfreda Fernandez, who is uh the spokesperson for X on safety? What a thankless job. You know what? I get the impression that he's very well remunerated. I think he probably sleeps quite well at night. Um but he was quizzed about um X's algorith m and whether or not it's right wing or whatever. And he gave some very smooth sounding answer about the fact that the algorithm was transparent. And it wasn't challenged by anyone. And that's because people don't really understand they use the word algorith m as some sort of complexive thing as though they actually know what that means. And and in most cases they don't. And so currently, for example, uh the way the algorithm on X works is that basically it's um it sort of throws stuff into Grok and Grok decides and no one knows how AI works. So literally nobody nobody on the planet you can write, you can make that transparent, but there's a whole big black box in the middle that nobody understands. And lots of algorithms are like that now. Like the major social platforms are all built on maths, recommendation maths that is so complex that the even the people who built it can no longer really get a comprehensive picture of exactly how it functions in any given We haven't really talked about X being now a you know full of very euphemistic C S A M child sexual abuse material. Which is I mean it's stuffed with it. This is grok produced stuff. Is there any appetite to tackle that in a legislative way? I mean I presume this is in offcomms remit. Because it's AI services, that isn't currently under the terms of the Online Safety Act. Come again? Yeah. AI, AI and chatbots don't currently fall within the remit of the Online Safety Act. So it will require the Online Safety Act to be tweaked. So we're even though they're within X. Yes, but it's a separate it's it's it's AI, so it's different. Child sex abuse material is accordingly is illegal. I mean is that not just a fairly straightforward should there not be prosecutions under existing law? Does it matter how it's produced? One might one might argue, Adam. I mean yes, but but I suppose there are also questions about and without wishing to get into fairly unpleasant conversations about gravity of imagery and things like that, there are questions about the extent to which it is technically falling foul of CSAM legislation as it is, whether it's a gray area, et cetera. And that that is very unclear because the R. It's also riven with code words, right? It's all like liter or whatever it might be. Like people make these arguments that what they're actually doing, it's like an ambiguous teenage person. And I think that's that's something that the that the AI thing is also quite bad for because people can argue that I never prompted it to produce child sex. I s I simply said I want an extremely young looking girl but but of but of legal age. It seems like there is an appetite in the UK to dish out a beating to plenty of these companies. It doesn't feel like it's a vote loser to say I want these you know things dealt with. I mean that's probably why Starmer is leading on it. It's one of the few areas where he can do something that people seem to want and like. Um the difficulty, of course, is that and this is something we're going to come up against again and again and again, is that there's an extent to which one could argue these companies are fundamentally too big to regulate. What meaningful sanction can you place on a company that is worth literally trillions of dollars? I mean I hesitate to say something polyannerish but I'm about to some sort of global coalition that you know where all the world's countries come together and w decide to regulate in parallel. And that's definitely not going to happen when we've got a White House who align themselves completely with any sort of restriction on uh social media is a is a is an attack on free speech. Yeah, I mean the State Department of the West Department was quoted uh I think a week ago specifically calling out X as a positive vector in the war against foreign influence and propaganda. So I mean, you know, what are you gonna do, right? Well that's a I'm depressed. That's such a cheery note to move us along with it. Look at Instagram for a bit to cheer myself up. Look at some cat videos. Let's come now to the local elections which are happening in a month's time. I know anyone watching or listening to this will have been excited already. You'll have been watching all the launches, collecting all the pamphlets you can get your hands on already. But they are going to be very interesting. And they're gonna be interesting partly because this is I think the first big electoral test in a nationwide sense of of reform UK and the Greens. I mean that we had a little bit of it in the last general election, but since then their numbers have absolutely shot up. So uh we thought it might be worth finding out what reform and the Greens actually propose in policy terms. The obvious place to start on this is the fact that um reform have said that they would keep the triple lock on pensions, which is a kind of really interesting kind of move for them. Because I it was I I thought it was like brave and good and therefore I couldn't really understand why they had done it. They said they would scrap the triple lock up till now. Essentially the issue with triple lock, it was brought in in twenty ten, right, a as a way of saying we think that pensions have not kept up with inflation, we're going to introduce these three measures by which it will always rise. It's whichever is highest out of inflation, wage increases, or two point five percent. So even if inflation and wage increases are both on the floor, it'll still go up two and a half percent. Yeah. And then what happened is obviously it acts as a ratchet. And not quite often you can get two bumps in a row from the triple lock. So one one measure goes up one year and the next measure goes up the next year. And actually it goes up way above inflation. So we have this post financial crash situation in which in real terms working people's incomes have been really stagnant, but there has been this constant ratchet effect. And this, you know, the triple lot brought in for very good reasons, pension of poverty was you know extremely high. We've now got a situation actually where I think if you take into account housing costs, pension incomes are on h higher than working age incomes. So in one respect what ev somebody should be going is thank God, no m you know, many fewer grannies are freezing in winter. Well done the triple lock, job done. Unfortunately there is a problem, which is that the older people who get the triple lock also vote in enormous numbers. So no party is willing to put any expiration date on this constant up rating essentially that outpaces inflation. And it's the only benefit that's pegged that way, isn't it? I mean there's that does it true anyway. So actually losing money in in real terms for those. Um so yeah. Yeah. So reform have have just said within the last week, oh actually no the triple lock is a lovely is a good idea. And it's I mean they're not the only party being dishonest on this. See also Labour , the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats. The the Greens have been dangerously radical in that they propose only a double lock. They propose removing the two and a half percent, and I think it's going to be whichever is higher out of uh earnings increases or inflation. So Has anyone gone for the quadruple yet? Is it gonna be like razor blades? Just more and more. I think there was something wasn't that at the last general election, I'm sure Sunac proposed. Yes, it's g it's giving me vibes, I remember this. The really interesting thing is, I mean I know I'm addicted to sticking my hand in wall sockets uh in terms of things I talk about. That the amazing defensiveness about this subject is really extraordinary to me because as soon as you say maybe we should have a double lock or a single lock, you know, maybe it should just go up with one measure of inflation and track the economy in that way. People say, I've worked hard all my life, I've paid in, why don't you take it off immigrants instead? Like the level of defensiveness that you might slightly tweak this benefit. really It's extraordinary. People clearly take it in a spirit of you don't value me anymore if you say you're gonna take away the triple lock. Like I I I see one of those things where it feels like a very emotional response. Whereas what I think it sounds like you're saying is that it's just not sensible to say for every square on this chessboard I will put on double the number of grains of rice. At some point that's going to become an unsustainable thing to do. Yeah, if you follow the projection, there would be a point at which it would consume a hundred percent of GDP, right? I don't see a problem with that, Helen. And I think it's pretty weird and a bit um age phobic that you do. Right. Yeah. I know. Well, the thing that's really interesting about it is actually, it has good support throughout all age categories. This is not a situation in which absolutely pensioners love it and young people think, you know, so do you. Actually, most people are in favour of the idea of the triple oc. Okay. But it's one of those things that obviously at some point it's got to end and it it's really fascinat ing game of chicken to see who will be the one who actually finally does it. Yeah. Uh and given the mess that we've talked about before in this podcast that Labour got into with even means testing winter fuel payments or restricting them, you know, still comes of out the case, completely toxic. There have been various other kind of gimmicky events from reform. You know, Niger will pay all your electricity bills for a year, Niger will give you some cheap petrol, but just you Well learned off vote leave who did an incredible job where they had a po essentially like a pools competition for predicting I think it was a football thing. And it was like the the chances of anybody correctly predicting all of the games was infitesimal. But in order to sign up for it you had to hand over yes, very important valuable data about your address and email and and and then you could get text messages from the campaign. Seen as one of the great campaigning innovations of the twenty tens there. Because a lot of people who weren't really interested in politics but were the kind of people who might vote leave if they could be got to turn out registered and signed up for it. So clearly Nigel Farage has learnt a lot of stuff about campaigning over the last decade and a half. Well that's learning from social media as well, isn't it? The uh the email address point is actually a really interesting and important one. So if you if you run adverts uh on social media platforms, you can create what are effectively called lookalike audiences. So the idea is that you have a database of people, you have their email addresses, you feed them into for the sake of argument, well let's say Meta, uh so to advertise across Facebook and Instagram, Meta will look at all of these email addresses. It has data about all of those people, and you can say, find me people who are like that. So if you have a database of reform voters, you can give them to Meta, and Meta will go out and find you people who it thinks are like those people and who that therefore are also likely to vote reform. So it becomes an excellent way of multiplying your potential reach with very, very, very highly targeted advertising. Which is also how MRP polling works, right? Is you you essentially uh correct for sampling bience by looking at the type of people demographically that are in every constituency and then you could kinda have more of a sense of what those kind of people you'd where you'd expect them to vote to check your weighting. But this is which it was now I think you know it's very hard to talk about how politics has changed just due to the huge amounts of data that we have on people. But they the those are two very obvious examples. However, there is also still a place for the brute force would you like some free money approach to politics. Also still very popular. Very popular. Yeah. But the problem that is still dogging reform is personnel related. That's a bit of a euphemistic way of putting it. They will keep on recruiting those Nazis. Well, do you mean the Welsh candidate who did the Hitler salute? That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah. Uh there's also Simon Dudley, the housing spokesperson, who told a discussion of Gremfeld Tower uh that everyone dies in the end. Do you know what? I'm just because I again wool socket red. Oh, you're gonna That wasn't that comment was abhorrent. He shouldn't say it. It was a casual, flippant, cruel thing to say when lots of people lost their lives. The point he was making, which is that post-Grenfile housing regulations mean that we haven't built a lot of housing, and that has caused a lot of misery and unhappiness from people who are stuck in moldy , horrible temporary accommodation because of the the missing houses that haven't been built. Yeah. Was a fair one. Oh. And annoyed the hell out of me that everyone got their free hit in on how terrible it is. And we will never have the sensible conversation that actually, for example, the staircase requirements and things like that are stopping houses being built and w that is a huge crisis. That means kids are growing up in hotel rooms. Anyway, so that's my I'm today I've defended a reform spokesman. I know sticking forks into every But Hitler Salute guy, I'm against that. Just for clarity . Interesting, interesting. Okay. But they they I mean they keep having these, you know, they've got their they've got their grab bag of former Tories, you know, many of the the best and brightest . Which set do you think repulsed both uh voters the most? Do you think it's the sort of Nazi saluters and and and and and Grenfell I don't I don't know. I don't know. I don't think either of those are winners in terms of attracting voters. So I read Matt Goodwin's book. I I've done my I've done my time in the mines. And one of the things that was really interesting to me about that book, A it's terrible. It's just a a wine of white grievance and like it is it is sort of actually it's X in book form in that it's very poorly sourced, overtly racist, and actually just dull. Not even the interesting racism and you that's what that's what I really object to. But what's interesting about that is uh he got absolutely slaughtered for that book in the spectator, in the critic, in unheard, in all of the On GB News he did a debate with Andy Twelves a guy and I thought that's fascinating that there is no solidarity on the right for this guy who is who's just run as a reform candidate. Suggesting to me that the most repellent figure in reform is actually it's Matt Goodwin. Clearly. Other people who have people who agree with his politics hate him personally, and I think that's very impressive. Do you think we can expect to see Goodwin uh caping for restore? Uh really, really hate him. He was writing articles for The Guardian about how terrible Islamophobia was. They think you're just you know, you're just you've just switched for for tension astonishing unanimity across the right for the H Matt Goodwin. Very impressively done. So maybe it's something we can all agree on? Well I I thought it was a bad book. It depends how people who agree with politics think it's a bad book. That's selling like the clappers, and it 's sold more than my book. So who's the real winner here? Should we come to the Greens? Let why not come to the Greens? Okay. Their policies are double lock on pensions, very exciting, and they've got a range of other interesting proposals, haven't they? Which I went back and I read the Greens twenty twenty four manifesto and the reform twenty twenty four manifesto, and they are interesting mirror images of each other. So the reform is basically will have tax cuts, huge tax cuts for both individuals and businesses. And we'll pay for that by scrapping all this net zero bollocks. So essentially, like let's have loads of carbon and that's how we'll make our sums work. Also, they claim they were gonna get fifty billion of savings from waste, which is one of those ones that I love, which is like sort of Planck's constant, you just put it in there to make your sums work. So their one is basically tax cuts for people we like funded by more carbon. Right. The Green Manifesto was m direct money transfers for people we like, pay rises for doctors, more money into the care system, teachers, funded by a tax on carbon. Huh. So there like there is like giveaway money in exchange for I think they were talking about a hundred and twenty pounds Okay. And uh and obviously this wealth tax of one percent on people who have more than ten million or two percent on people who have more than one billion. Yeah. Of whom they're only they think a hundred and seventy one. So it's kinda questionable. But they were just very interesting of like two big money giveaway packages in various ways, either through tax cuts or direct spending, funded for by things involving carbon, which I thought you'd appreciate. Yes, that's very interesting. They' bveoth got a a carbon-based thesis of of the uh the economy. And the other thing that's really interesting is that they've both now got podcasts. Both Reform and the Greens. I've listened to the new Reform UK podcast, which is fascinating to me. The first one's out, it's about 30 minutes. It is produced and sounds exactly like a radio four documentary. So it follows Nigel Farage. It even has some criticism of him. It has protesters blocking him. It's never really said quite what they object to about him, but there's but then boo protesters. And it follows him giving a speech at a venue where it's a nine hundred capacity venue and there's three hundred people in the overflow. So he goes and gives a speech to those guys and does a QA with them too. Right. So the message throughout it is the thing that's also funny is it's voiced in a V. The same thing happened after the sermon on the Mount. There was actually an overflow mount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A small mount. Why he'd come out best. Big night for the meek. Um But the thing that was interesting about that was also the thing it funny if you listen to it, you're waiting for it to turn into a kind of look around you style spoof because it sounds so exactly like a BBC Docker and goes Nigel is coming down the road. You're sort of waiting for it to go like he's got an enormous fish. Something completely bizarre and random. So that's one approach which but it is not visualized. So it's up on YouTube but merely as audio, imagine. Old school podcasting. Whereas the Green's version of podcasting is Zach Palensky's bold politics and this is much more what you have come to expect from the world of vodcasting. Bold politics. Sorry, I had bowl like keys in a bowl and I thought, oh that's another dream policy I'm not totally sure about. Okay. Compulsory swinging, yeah. Bold, but I think I think it's got something. Anyway, so it's it's Zach Polansky interviewing people basically. Right. Which is the classic I mean Matt you've probably listened to a million of podcasts in this genre. And like the w you see it in the the magosphere a lot, right? The same circulating group of people all just interview each other endless. Well Gavin Newsom and wall behind him with sort of So but but it's what's fascinating about that is A it puts him in a slightly kind of beater role, right? 'Cause the interviewer. Whereas Nigel you, would never do that, right? Nigel is the star. So it's a slightly more humble approach in that sense. But also, he has basically transplanted the Corbynite intelligentsia wholesale, lock, stock, and burial, into it. So it is James Medway who advised John MacDonald on economics, Grace Blakely , Rachel Shabby, Owen Jones. The failure of your party becomes even more stark in this context, right? Because there was clearly an establishment there and a group of outriders and thinkers, and the Green Party has just got them. Like they are now all of them much more into Zach Polansky than and and essentially it's gonna be interesting. We'll rerun this election with a Jeremy Corbyn who doesn't complain all the time. You know what I mean though? In the same way that that that reform podcast is Nigel Farage going and speaking to people because he loves doing that. He loves jacing people else saying, Oh, the Guardian won't like this. Zach Polanski loves going and talking to people, saying, Oh, the Daily Mail won't like this. Yeah. Both of them ha have got that always-on content creator abil ity. And David Plough, who ran the Obama campaigns and the Kamala Harris campaign, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last week that said essentially this political candidates now are content creators. You need to have a studio. You need to be twenty-four-seven pumping out your messages, owning your audience, like on on on. And that is to me is what distinguishes Nigel Farage and Zach Polansky from Kemi Badnock and Kirstarmer. And it all comes back to social media again to square the circle slightly because because it's all about video. Now you need to be punting out video because that is what fills these platforms and that is where people get their news. And that's kind of cross demographic now. Fine, okay, so older audiences still go to mainstream media first. But for pretty much every other coterie, fifty below, like it's it's mostly social based discovery now. It's um it's in feed. You see your headlines, or you see people commenting on the headlines, or you see podcasters pretending to podcast about the headlines that they might have read yesterday or heard about from some other podcaster. It's it's a soup, basically. Yeah, and the politicians that do well are the ones who are good talkers. Right. That is the kind of table stakes now to entry. Which is why so Angela Rayner is going to launch a podcast, which is exactly what you would do if you wanted to be labour leader. Is it her and go for the the first episode? I I I wouldn't bet against that. That sounds like the kind of thing that would happen. It's very interesting this is a separate point really, but podcasting has a a reputation or a feeling of being authentic. And that's why you often get people to say controversial things, stick their fingers in wall sockets on podcasts, is because people think, well, no one's really listening. Or yeah. I don't mean that about I don't mean that about the this podcast which gets terrific numbers. It's more conversational, it's more intimate as a medium. It's cosier. I think that's the cosier thing. So both the thing was interesting is that Nigel Farage was like a fake documentary, uh you know, that was essentially it was it was designed to sound like BBC content but that was all about how great Nigel Farage was. Right. Which is really interesting for that audience. Whereas the the Zach Polanski one is basically look at all these people who are terrific friends, you're among friends. Like being on the left is not a minority opinion, lots of us are socialists, we should come out and say it. And and creating that idea of a of a kind of like here is a a a gang that you can be part of, which I think is really crazy. Really interesting. Again, it's you know all things are fundamentally tied together. But what we were talking about with the the changes in social media in the first part are moving from a a a a social connection where it's your friends and you're seeing what they've done and what that and their holiday pictures and stuff to a sort of parasocial one where you are following these high profile you know celebrities or politicians or whoever. And it's exactly the same thing with that, isn't it? It's you're kind of being invited into the gang and and invited to to to to come along with with with the person, rather than it be the politician at the lecture and who's just kind of um making speeches and things. And it does well I mean th there is an army out there of people. You will probably see some of them in the comments under underneath this uh this very podcast who are absolutely vehemently, a bit like they were with Jeremy Corbyn. You know, they they are fully signed up to the cause and will accept no criticism. I want to see even sort of legitimate things. And Jack Lansby's been very good at this when there have been sort of legitimate things in in in in the right wing press about uh his his stances and his background you know, and so he said, Well these are smears and I will not be cowed by by by the right wing media and uh it's that's a great narrative, isn't it? I will not be counted by the right wing media is a very good phrase under almost any circumstance. No matter what you've been caught doing. I think he's incredibly talented political performer in a lot of different ways, but that he has got a an appetite and a talent for reinvention. Yes. Well he was a lib he was a Lib Dem. He was a Lib Dem at the height of austerity. His you know he changed his name because he wanted to embrace his roots more authentically. But you know he is somebody who a he was an actor. I think you find out all the criticisms that people made about Tony Blair, oh he's a bit too slick. I feel like there's a journey of discovery that people are gonna be going when they uh in ten years time they might kinda go, Oh yeah, that guy he was a bit too slick. But works very well now. Works very well. Can I give you my personal scoop on Zach Polansky? I was in the same gay pub as him on Saturday night. Get out! That's what they said to me. No. Brilliantly, with my top investigative journalism hat on. Didn't notice . Hang on, he didn't . Well no, you wouldn't expect him to notice me particularly. I didn't notice him. We went in, had a look round, thought, oh no, it's all straight women, it's all hen knights, we'll have one pint and go home. Zach Pelansky was there on the dance floor the entire night apparently. The only scoop I can give you courtesy of a friend of mine is very nice shoes. What was he dancing to ? Uh I d I d I I do not know. It's an extremely good playlist at the uh food and fruit. Salmon Allen. Free drinks, please. Lovely. There we go. We've ended this with SpawnCon, so that's good that we brought ourselves full circle. We're finally going the proper podcast for we've got a very exciting new format. Uh this week we are going to be doing a play. Adam, you have been following the very convoluted, long, messy, and expensive We've talked a lot about this on Pocos Array, so I'm gonna go into all the ins and outs of it, but essentially the story of this . At the uh end of the trial last week, uh David Sherbourne, who was the kind of inevitable barrister as he is in all of the celebrity cases for the uh the the the claimants, was reduced to uh a closing speech in which he said that he needed uh although he couldn't offer a lot of specific evidence for instances of uh unlawful activities being undertaken on behalf of associated, uh he asked the judge to extrapolate from what evidence he had been able to find. Uh his job that's that's not allowed, is it? Well, this has been the ongoing argument, in fact, between uh Mr. Justice Nicklin and David Sherborne throughout the trial. I do mean argument. There have been I mean I the days I was in court there were some extremely um terse words exchanged between the judge and and and and and and the barristers for Prince Harry and his pals. What uh Sherbon said in his uh in in his final speech, and it's this lovely image, but I'm not sure it's a winner. It's a bit like playing pin the tail on the donkey, with us being partially blindfolded. That is how pin the tail on the donkey traditionally. works It becomes a very easy look. With us being partially blindfolded and there being very little donkey left for us to pin the tail on, does not Which he pins, if you like, on the fact that uh there is very little paperwork remaining from the period in question, which does initially look very, very suspicious, until you remember that the period in question is going right back to the nineteen nineties and and and into into the early noughties. And the point that associated lawyers made when they were on the stand was that, you know, you don't retain documents for all that lot. Can I ask you a question, which is were there perhaps any amazing emails or text messages between Prince Harry and members of the press revealed during this trial. I see what you're doing. Objection. She's leading the witness. She absolutely is. So Harry's evidence right at the outset of this case when uh everyone was taking a lot of uh a lot of notice of who was turning up at the High Court. Uh was that I mean he said it was it was hard running. He genuinely was on the verge of tears in the witness box on the 21st of January. He said that the Mail and the Mail on Sunday had a campaign, an obsession of having every aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their competitors and drive me par anoid beyond belief, isolating me and probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers. It was suggested to him at that point that actually back in the day he was quite keen on talking to journalists himself and members of his social circle, his kind of friends who he was he was palling about with back in the uh early noughties uh were were were leaky, that that that they they would they were they were kind of giving stuff to the press. He he said absolutely not, insists they weren't leaky, he said he'd immediately cut off anyone he even suspected of talking to the press. For the avoidance of doubt, he said, I am not friends with any of these journalists and never have been. Now in a sort of mic drop moment in the last week of the trial, a tranche of Facebook messages, we're back to Facebook and social media again. Uh were revealed between Harry and Charlotte Griffiths, who was uh the diary editor on the Mail on Sunday, kind of high society uh diary that she used to run. Um they did appear to show quite a lot of evidence of The period in question, in December twenty eleven to january twenty twelve. Now we have to specify uh Harry is now sort of you know recre, he's the sinner that repenteth, he's he's he's entirely a campaigner against the press. He's he's he's he's very sort of right on now, him and Meghan supporting all sorts of progressive causes. This is not that Harry. This is Harry back in the days of of of partying. This is not long before those infamous pictures of him in Las Vegas . Questionable.an Fcy dress. Naked billiards. Fancy dress is a bit before that. This is Bum out Vegas, Harry. This is slightly pre-Bum out Vegas, Harry. This is when he's training to fly Apache helicopters between two stores of service in Afghanistan for the Army. But specifically Ah frost nipped, I think you're fine technically. Frost. Frost nipped penis, which he revealed . That sounds very real. He revealed the existence of his frost nipped penis in uh his his his his his autobiography spare a couple of years ago. So we cannot say that we are invading his privacy. This is a privacy evasion he did himself. With the piquant detail that he treated it with Elizabeth Arden Cream, which was the same Why have you written this down? Is there a point to this line of questioning? There is. I am merely, Your Honor, setting the context for which the following exchange of emails should be uh uh considered. I have for you a script. Great Helen. Would you oblige by being Sherlock Griffiths in this scenario? Should I go like ten percent posher for this? I highlighted you. Go posh it up. Woo I would absolutely posh it up. What she said was that uh she got the bulk of her stories from her high society friends. Matt, this is very unusual. We don't normally have dramatic readings. I'm I'm here for the Andra . This is great. You've got a part in it. Hang on. Oh well. Charlotte Griffith's evidence in her witness statement on the sixth of March was that she had high society contacts from school days and she continued to socialize in high society and with the uh with the aristocracy uh throughout her uh journalistic career. I am going to take the part of Prince Harry in this, if that's all right. Matt, approving, can you take the role of Facebook and and give us the concept. So we're reading from the bottom here. This is the full exchange of messages. If you wanna be Mr Justice Nicklin, you can simply sort of sit there and huff and puff a bit at this if you like. But I just do have to emphasize this is not something we've made up. This has not been written by the Private I Jokes team like the WhatsApp messages from the Prime Minister. I was the narrator every year in the nativity, still sod. It's it's a noble profession. Narrator is good. Well it prefigures a journalism career, doesn't it? No, exactly Source. Yeah, okay. Okay, right. Far away. I'm so excited. And action. December fourth, two thousand eleven, eight thirty-six PM. It's H, in case you're confused by name and picture. Kiss. December fifth, two thousand eleven. Hello, mister Mischief was indeed confused by both. Effing awesome pick. Did you get home okay slash did you actually find your car? And did you beat Arthur down the motorway more importantly? What a fun weekend of naughtiness. Can't we all get up to no good in the countryside every weekend, damn it? Smooches, CG string, kiss, kiss. December 5th, 2011, 4 15 PM. I did beat him, but by accident, I think, drove most of the way with my eyes closed. I found myself eating pizza with skip of all people two exclamation marks. Was without doubt the best of those weekends I've been to. What a c rowd. Never lost so much in twenty four hours. Mr Mischief. How do I get that title? I was surely no worse than anyone else. Ooh, apparently a Cinderella's shoe was found outside that door so it can relax. Please stop panicking. You've got a bit Terry Thomas at the end , if I'm honest. December 6th, 2011, 1217 PM. Yup, that was me. My windows were so steamed up and I'm afraid my little golf GTI was just no match for your bloody Audi . I had a children of men moment. This is inexplicable. Presumably by the assuming she looked out the window and saw Pam Ferris being brutally beaten in a refugee camp in Lex Hill. I don't know, I can't. I think that's a bit with the yeah, when the car and that one continuous shot where they're being shot at, rather than Or she looked out the window and realised there were no babies in the world anymore. Who can say? How did you not end up eating Chinese? You must be mad. I dominated a duck pancake or two , or five. I respect well mister Mischief is definitely a compliment, by the way. You weren't worse than anyone else. We were all competitively out naughtied each other, which is why we all had so much fun. Phew about the shoe. I was very worried you'd have to spend a fortune picking up the phone and ordering a new pair of freebies from Amanda. Pierce, speaking of which, did you manage to get your new phone number organised? Good that she's doing the journalism. I respect that. She's looked that in. December sixth, two thousand eleven, two twenty nine PM. Wish it had been Chinese, but skip wouldn't allow it. Sad face emoji. No new phone number yet, but sticking with redacted phone number, but yet handed over for now. Serious withdrawal symptoms still. Had to make polite conversation with strange people at a dinner last night, begging them for money for charity. Really fun. Not reunion with Josh sounds fun . Hope w wasn't too dull wherever you are. Um we have been missing out on some serious bants on the group email front. I'm going to go in big with an amazing Marco snap to make up for lost time. Pew this week hibernating in the frozen wasteland of Parsons Green is dra it would be Parsons Green, wouldn't it? New Fulham was heading towards this conversation. Almost thirsty Thursday though. Sounds good. Josh is such a ledge. Oh my god, this is like Purest infernos of twenty eleven. Oh can't think of anything to make anything better, but January's oh so far away. I think a team reunite might be an order in before the week's out. Non . December fourteenth, two thousand eleven. Seven thirty Okay, I'm very unimpressed. Your skippy surfing seems to have inadvertently trumped all of the scandal on our weekend. Damn you bloody maverick, and now you're all heading to BVI, British Virgin Islands. Double trumped , double hump. Thirsty Thursday plans. Kiss. December fifteenth, two thousand eleven, three PM Ha ha I win, right? Mean new heading to the BVIs. Got too much shit to do. Got dinner with some friends . Gotta be hung over again for the third day running. You missed a good party last night. Skippy was on great form. January twenty second, twenty twelve, eleven PM. H bom we missed you so much at Arthur's last week. Skip cracked out some serious moves, but I did pack for my three weeks skiing holiday after a night with him at the box and forgot to pack skis, boots, jumpers. Basically I've been very cold since. Goddnam drunken packing . Anyhow, after some shir ping in Valde and Mirabel, yeah, casual whatever no what ev's, sorry. Important I've arrived in closters and been watching some center barley snow polo. Does that mean you're here and I can dominate you off the black runs, slash steal one of your ski boots and feel Trez non guilty Is there much more of this? You got one more message and it's a good ie. January twenty second, twenty twelve, eleven PM. Ha ha Charlie, I wish I was there, sugar, but unfortunately stuck in Cornwall doing army stuff. Sad face emoji. Otherwise I would have been there playing and then drinking you under the table all Double exclamation mark, question mark. Bummed beyond belief to have missed Arthur's as well. I've been seriously busy since I last saw you, but plan on getting back in the mix for Feb. You best be around. Hope you're really well, Griff. Miss our movie snuggles. I'm off comms all week in case you think I'm being rude, but keep me posted. Kiss, kiss, kississ. K kiss kiss. Kiss. Kiss kiss. And there we have it. Little insight. A tour de force. So what you're saying, Adam, is he he did hang out This would certainly appear to suggest that at that point in his life he had a um sh we could go so far as to say quite intimate relationship with certain journalists, I think. Who among us has not had movie snuggles with a journalist? But he was without scene, cast the first side on that one. And so now the case has ended. What's the upshot? Well uh Mr. Justin Nicholson has retired to uh consider his verdict. Uh he said it's going to take him some time to write. Uh and after that that dramatic rendition, I really would quite like them too. Essentially, I would be very surprised if the case goes in Harry and the others' direction. And there is I mean beyond all this there is a really, really serious issue in this, which is Baroness Lawrence was a part of this case. The evidence on which her part of the case was based largely came from Jonathan Reese and Gavin Burroughs, two very discredited private detectives. There were there are rumours certainly within the mail cam p that she was not keen to she was trying right up to the last minute to drop out of this um this this litigation. Right. She was kind of the the the imprimature on this, the the the bit that made it serious, if you like. I mean this this was the just as with the original phone hacking scandal, which lest we forget, did start off with Royals, it was the hacking of Harry and Williams uh royal household at that point and the and their kind of communications secretaries and uh and and senior staff that kicked the whole thing off with the News of the World in two thousand six. No No one got really, really excited about that scandal in twenty until twenty eleven when it emerged that News of the World journalists were also hacking the phone of the Millie Dowler, the missing schoolgirl who later turned out to have been murdered. The hacking and illegal activities I'm saying uh to target Doreen Lawrence would be of a similar kind of um uh um gravity, I think. If that verdict goes against Doreen Lawrence, uh and it's discovered that the male were not doing that, not only is it completely destroyed a relationship which was extremely strong between the Daily Mail and the Lawrence family, who who you know the Mail famously championed them right the way through in a way that surprised quite a lot of people. That that that front page that said, you know, murderers, it named the the five suspects, two of whom have since been found guilty and sent to prison for Stephen Lawrence's murder. Yeah, I've said before that Paul Daker literally had that front page in his office, right? To him that was the crowning pinnacle of his editorship. He stood up for a young black guy who had got murdered by, as he saw it, thugs. And uh and like to to him so I think this case was extremely personal. I think the result of that one I think is the really kind of interesting one to watch because that's outside of the sort of realm of of the celebrity tittle tattle, however upsetting these people may have found imtrusions into their privacy. So there is quite a lot at stake within this and it will be very interesting to see uh that judgment when it finally comes through. Yeah. Okay, well we'll wait and see and of course it's going to be in private eye when it happens. That's it for this episode of page ninety-four. We will be back in a fortnight with another one. Until then, thank you to Helen, Adam, and Matt. Thank you to you for listening. If you would like to get more jokes, stories, journalism, cartoons, all of that. PrivateEye is available now. If you would like to subscribe, you can do so at private