The Consequences of Unchecked Presidential Power

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If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and twenty four seven support Call one eight hundred Granger, click Granger. com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done Page ninety four, The Private Eye podcast Hello and welcome to another episode of Page ninety four. My name is Andrew Hunter Muray, and I'm here in the Iye stududio with Helen Lewis, Ian Hislop, and Richard Brooks. We're here on a momentous newsday. It turns out that Britain is going to be renamed E Greater Manchester Andy Berham has done a big speech outlining his big vision for the future of the country. Can we also mention that he's called Andy Murray Bernam? I know, I know.ight. There's been an uptick in the number of Andy Murrayayss in public life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just getting over the last one. We will say it was in terms of the vibes, the vibes were good. It was happy, it was summery. He was in a little t shirt with a suit and he gag at the beginning about how Kemmy Bad Knock wasn't going to like this and he was halfway into his Manchester clothes And he made a joke about how he was going to buy longer shorts or repeal the public decency. L there was just There was just a level of breeziness to it that I thought was quite good and somewhat refreshing. And for a public. had a lot of speeches by Kir Starmer. I mean this one just looks Good even if the bar is quite low And I kept thinking, Richard, a lot of his diagnosis of what is wrong, you would have to agree with because you've written it and I've published it. R about outsourcing over centralization, no money in the regions. I mean, you do agree with some of these things. You know the principle of more ution regional devolution power to places that should know what to do with the money, you know is a great one The trouble is that Wh over the last few decades, while so much has been centralized, so much power and money has been brought into Whitehall taken away from local government, So have the things that can hold those areas to account when they do spend the money. So local democracy isn't it shocking state because people aren't really that interested in the bin collections, ye or things like that There's no auditing of spending regionally, the Cameron government abolished the audit commommission, which used to look at local government spending. So now if you spend money wastefully, fraudulently, you basically get away with it. And thirdly, Local media as well barely exists. Hundreds of local newspapers have shut in the last twenty years or so what's left is often sort of cheerleading for the region It means there's no scrutiny in local journalism really. So you're suggesting that with no one looking at how the money is spent, it might not go well That's right. Do you have any examples of mres who perhaps have spent rather like the drunken sailor and given contracts for their friends, Richard has. Yeah. they're ever called Ben Huchen whoo's a mayor of the Tees Valley, who's sorry, not Ben Hatchchen, the former judge at the political podcast awwards twenty twenty six. The one who overlooked us, you mayt winning Ss enough of this pey griping. Sorry. sorry. So yeah, I mean, Richard, what's really useful S suppose is how how things have gone wrong and what you would do instead as in you know sorry, Tide as an example where it's gone wrong and what could have been done to avert it. Actually, Hauchchan is in the telegraph this morning writing about Burnham saying why he'll fail. And I wrote up what he said, he said to It points out that actually regional mayors have it quite easy because they don't have the really difficult things to do that the Prime Minister, for example, has to do So he says, we rarely make the calls that lose you friends crater your poll ratings and keep your awake wondering whether history will forgive you, right The thing is he's made a couple of decisions that should be keeping him away that we've written about. Yeah. nototably know with the spending of vast amounts of public money, which is what Andy Burnham is now proposing for regions around the UK. And it is re industrializing, which is exactly what Berham is proposing to rule out. these can create these decisions, especially as Burnham says, you know we need to bring everybody in. We need to bring local businesses in as well as you know local government The trouble is when you do that, you've got to keep an eye on what they're up to with the money. And in T'ide, the deals that have been struck to regenerate the former steelworks, which closed down in twenty fifteen That's what we've written about quite a lot. Those deals have cost the local taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds. essentially Lord Huchch and as he is now thanks to Boris Johnson gave a deal to a couple of local businessmen who can now buy that land once the taxpayers remediated it for one pound per acre And a couple of issues ago we wrote about the latest manifestation of that where a data centre company plans to anthropic plans to build a big data center on that land It's agreed a deal in principle to buy the land from those businessmen for two hundred and twenty two million pounds and pay them another couple of a hundred million just to to the local wire network, which is like a sort of local grid for power because they control that as well because they were able to buy that under land option. They bought a you know, they bought a wire network with twenty substations for about ten quid And so they can cash in on all this and it relevant because Burnham specifically mentioned steel I mean, I think it is reasonable to look at examples that are in the North that are about Steel. Yeah. I mean it involve local mayors and haven't gone so well. Exactly I Tachide is the archetypal example because it is this old industrial region that was You know, very successful in some ways industrially and could have been again because you know, there it has a lots of geographical advantages Pase Estuy But yeah, it's being absolutely thrown away. There's already been a kind of example of something similar to this with Andy Burnham, which is the debate over Sasha Lord, who Andy Burnham's nightlives are, who had to pay back an Arts cououncil grant for COVID essentially, and was seen to be having preferential access as a mate of Andy Burnham's. That's been the mail, which is one of the local newsletter type operations has reported on that quite extensively you're right, I think to say that the scrutiny level just goes up a notch when you move from regional to national And that'll be the thing I think that'll be the hard adjustment for Andy Burnham to make. I mean, he's already served as a mininisry ass Mister for Culture, all this kind of stuff before. But you know as he said this week, he's been out of Westminster for a long time now. and I think that might be a bit of a shock to the system. The other one that reminded me was the fact that he said he wants the largest council House building program since the Second World War I mean, in London, you can't be developers to build private houses that were selling off plan for seven hundred thousand pounds a pop, right? Because of what they call the kind of the green tape the new staircase requirements post Grenfell, the demand for a certain amount of them to be affordable housing. You know We have laden down developers with lots very good stuff, but it means that more and more of them are saying, we can't make this process work. So if you're talking about council house building, you're saying somebody the state is going to have to take on that risk that they won't get planning permission, that risk of their upfront Costs of it I'm not entirely clear where the money for that is going to come from And some local councils and some we've written about have decided to do house building themselves and it hasn't gone very well Well, there have been some people trying stuff quite near where I live in Lewishham, they built essentially modular housing, that very cheap kind of version of that. So people are trying to think creatively about it. But it is still an incredibly difficult thing to get through the gauntlet of all the regulations and then all the objections from local people. And that you know do I worry about that you're not simply saying we can't have affordable council housing anymore, or it's just too difficult to do. No, no, but what I'm saying is if you want to do it seriously and I hope that he does, because housing is a huge issue, huge issue, particularly for younger people in this country He will have to A make some enemies of some Nimbies, and that is also known as existing homeowners, of whom there are a lot. And also he will have to find some funding for it from somewhere. And you know there is a quote from I think Howard Lis, who was one of the people involved in Manchesterism, saying the way we got so much built in Manchester was by ignoring those requirements for a certain amount of affordable housing, right? We basically just brought in developers and said, let it rip And that's very different build anything. And if you build enough houses, then eventually they will become affordable. There are parts of greatreater Manchester that haven't seen this, you know spectacular rejuvenation that he's claiming he will, you know that will fan out across the country Central Manchester hass done extremely well largely because of a big housing fund that was funded by George Osborne in about twenty twelve, And a lot of the money has gone into the big skyscrapers that you can now see if you go to Manchester, the skylinees transformed mostost of them built by a single company that has made some people very rich We've written about Chap who runs that company, the company' is called Renacre Chuck called Darren Whiter appered on the Sunday Times rich list at somewhere over seven hundred million. Andy Beram rich and can do that to the rest of us far here at Brit. And I't talking down Brittain anymore from you. Yeah Yeah, we've just got to level up a bit. Those skyscrapers were supposed to have affordable housing get the funding. They claimed that they were going to be profitable when they could get loans from this fund. But they escaped the requirement to put affordable housing in by claiming they weren't going to make enough money. put comments. So there were these games played B you know, which is you know why you have to keep an eye on it. I think one interesting thing is that Bern will be the second recent prime mininister to have been a mayor Bor Johson was the mayor of Lond And his deficiencies as Mayor of London translated ont to a larger scale when he became Prime Minister. So example number one Do you remember the Garden Bridge? Which was came to be a beautiful literally a garden bridge. It looked absolutely fantastic in all the CGI renderings of it cost a lot of money was never built. When Boris became Prime Mister, that became Let's have a tunnel to Ireland was. So the smaller eras will be magnified. They'll be magnified B you know, Burnam was clear that this is a sort of ten year plan ten years is a long time. you know, so it's great to hear a bit of long term thinking. when you think of all the problems that are going crop up along those ten years and whether he'll survive them, whether he'll be able to resist them in a way or not bow down because he's kind of known for just wanting to keep people happy and giving in to what people lobby him on do things stick to it, show the resolve over that kind of period is pretty questionable. Well, one of the things he did say is he doesn't want such heavy handed whipping. Which I feel like is the kind of person who has not yet had to corral four hundred meoters at the PLP to vote for something really unpopular that he thinks is good. But you're right. The interesting thing about that is that some of the things he was talking about was essentially following up this twenty ten's Labour project in opposition of what they called insourcing or the Preston model. Do you remember the Preston model?'. But it was the idea essentially that local council should try and commission more services in house bring investment back into the region. And that's the kind of thing he was talking about, saying he wanted to be able to prioritize British businesses and contracts That kind of that stuff, there is a fully developed we might laugh a bit at about Manchesterism and expose its contradictions, but there are people who have been thinking about this stuff quite hard. And one of the things they talk about is the active state or the participatory state. know The idea that actually you do want to get more involved. you don't want to just leave things to the market. I think they're more comfortable with that than Starmmer was. think Star really strong view on the market in either direction. I can't We don't know what his views were No. But that was partart of the problem. Yeah. It's time yet. He's. He'll set out his missions in his memoir, probably perfect timing. But there were more ideas, I thought, in the Burnham speech and more evidence someone having given some of this some thought, then we'd seen for quite a long time. and that presumably I mean Overall, I kept thinking I agree with a lot of the diagnosis here. As I've said, you know, our local council column will be saying a lot of these things, you know, this is right But what are you going to do and can you do it You run the money, Cum, Richard, Where do we get the money? Andy Burnham also hinted that he doesn't really want to raise taxes. He said he wants to give everyone a bit of a break on that front, didn't he You know you either race taxes or you borrow it. There is a bit of room for that, borrowing for investment infrastructure Inide the fiscal rules. Yeah, that's right. Rachel Reeves had changed the fiscal rules slightly, although Anny Burnham didn't remember didn't know what they were a few days ago. He perhaps does now, but she relaxed them a bit so there's a slightly friendly measure of overall government debt, something called public sector net financial liabilities, which is a bit lower than the debt. amazing. And there's a bit of room there borrow for investment, not for day to day spending, but for investment. So he can take advantage of that And also if he can change the way that the forecasters and the watchdogs look at this to give him the benefit of growth that will come from that investment. it's bit know, he was a bit dafted, a bit naive to say we don't want to be in hock to the bond market a few years ago. Don't say that. Don't mention the bond market. But there's a bit of room there. You know there is some some possibility And I noticed that he manag to reference both Germany and Finland the suggestion that countries might have some ideas Yeah, it' outrageous. Yeah, outrageous. So Germany is this idea of the kind of essentially you have to equalize all your regions which I presume in Germany came from the fact that the East was always so much poorer than the West. and post reunification, there was a real transfer At the moment, London is just this mad massive drag weight on the rest of the country generating huge amounts of the income that then gets redistributed around the place. That again I'd be interested see how that intersects with Sadi Khan's feeling that actually he would like a bit more investment in London I think he made the point in the speech, didnn't he that you know he was quite careful to be nice about London as well. and so would get into London. Yeah. ye ye yeah he wants to sort of London of the North, but in London. That was a bit he slightly lost me bit, I have to say. Yeah, theres some big ideas. you have to give him credit, but we make ideas. I think we should say that none of this is going to happen if he makes the dangerous mistake of making an actual communist Ed Milliband Chancellor. So can we all hold that's unfair to communist, Andy Maoist, how much further can we go You had an interesting thought about this Richard, basased on Miliban's previous time I mean Milibam was at the treasury for eight years, ceding his radical communism, I know. But you had a thought about his sort of prior record. Well he was Gordon Brown's special advisor from ninety seven until two thousand two. when Cn Brown and Tony Blair were very keen on the private finance initiative, which was esssentially, it was financial engineering to borrow money without the appearance of borrowing money. And it ended up costing A lot of money, we ended up paying well over the odds for hospitals, prisons. So it's a sort of an cautionary tail really in the dangers of too much financial engineering with the public And that's what he's going to have to resist. You know, there will be the temptation Back then government had debt of forty percent or a bit less of GDP It's more than double that now. So the temptation is probably even greater So he's not reded, he's blue Eed He's dangerously right wing. He's much too right wing to be Chancellor. Yeah. Flexible E. Which is, you know, in keeping with the Burnnamism, isn't it? But the noises that have been coming out of the Burnham camp people close to him, so on are that They may be looking for more conventional ways borrowing we talked about earlier, which is the way to do it. It's it's a lot more honest for one thing.. And it's more cost efficient because you're not paying rivate bankers and investors profits that you have to do on private debt. And I thought I mean, not entirely because of your efforts, but there is a bit of a consensus on PFI now after a couple of decades that it wasn't a great idea That's right. Yeah when the when the coalition government came in, they they commissioned a review of it and said no, not value for money, we're not doing that again There was something called PF two Why did they call PII didn't really work? Why' PFII? like raman numerals? What's wrong with these people? You to be a special advisor. Dropping the requirement for civil servants to have really, really good latin was where it all the rot set in, in my opinion I think the fact that people really hate Ed Millilibander or at least there's a big briefing war going on against him has to be related to the two things. One that he has been seen as ennergy Secretary to have been dabbling in other people's departments in a way that they have found annoying. And also from the right, the criticism that he's trying to basically take you know makeake you all eat a carrot and never drive a car again. Hair shirts and lentils. Yeah ye But Where does he stand on air conditioning? Andy, that's where I'm going to take my view of on Ed Milliban from When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns With Granger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done Call one eight hundred Ranger, click ranger. com or just stop by Ranger for the ones who get it done. Granger knows, when you're a procurement manager for an office park You're not managing one building. you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners Light's about to fail, filters ready to clog, HVac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind Count O on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and twenty four seven support Call one eight hundred Granger, click Granger. com or just stop by Granger For the ones who get it done. Can we agree that it's been quite hot? You never know. I look forward to the mail bag, but I think it probably has been quite hot. It's been quite hot. If you're watching this it might have already got past thirty degrees again. By now, ye, it's been too hot. and a furious debate has now broken out about air conditioning. I can't install it my house for physical reasons, but I am pro it because it is it's too hot to work in my house andat apparently that will be the future until I die is that for a couple of weeks every summer I'm going to broil slowly. No, it'll be a couple of months by the time we're twenty years older. so don't worry about that. Yes, scared air conditioning. You know, if you can afford it, terrific. in weve I've seen the last couple of weeks, this big debate about a relatively I don't wantan to say relatively unimportant because you know it is important. Air conditioning protects for you. If you're very old, very young, pregnant, you're otherwise, know vulnerable, it can save lives. It's great And there's this mad sort of attempt to have a culture war over it. But it doesn't reflect at all what the situation actually is, which is The consonservatives are trying to say there's a labor war on against air conditioning fact ban De facto ban. There are a couple of councils which have been a bit restrictive on it and I think they absolutely shouldn't be and I think they're going have to change their rules. But the idea that there is a de facto ban is in the old phrase, it's not even wrong. It's so wrong that Labor will pay you two and half grand towards the cost of air conditioning in your home. In your home watching this. This is by a heat pump, right? There's a thing it's called an air air heat pump. it basically does you cold air in the summer and hot air in the winter The reason the government wants you to get one of those, to the extent that they will give you two and a half grand of the cost is that it means you need to use a gas boiler much, much less. It basically decarbonizes your home heating very effectively. That's why they'd like you to get it. free air conditioning on the government. let's all get it now. Thats. It' a bit like the Guardian's air conditioning, which notoriousity packs up when it gets to se degrees th.s That's my worry about Eco I think No it's you know, it all goes back to the Gardian. all goes back to the Gardian. No it's all I hear about every summer th. I mean, yeah, the reason that I think this debate which is I just want to say it's not a debate get it. if you can afford it, terrific, get it. Partly because we'll have so much solar on the grid by twenty thirty that it will the demand for air conditioning will perfectly soak up solar and then you get, you know, it's very advantageous to do it partart of the debate is, I think that you have now a block in British politics. This wasn't the case five years ago The block of reform the Conservatives who have decided that they're going to focus only on one element of the climate thing. right The climate thing is too harsh. It's adaptation because we need to adapt to the fact that the world is much hotter than it was thirty years ago And it's mitigation, which is stopping the problem from getting worse and worse and worse The way you deal with that second bit is to get to, if you like, a net of zero J to coin a phrase, crud going from the bowels of hell into the atmosphere. That's how you do it And the conservatives and reform have decided they're not going to bother with that. They're going to scrap the twenty fifty target. they're going to scrap all incentives. they're just going to scrap the whole thing. They're basically saying We don't want to deal with this. So the reason they're talking about air conditioning is basically their attitude is, well, we'll just adapt. Will just everyone get air conditioning? It'll be as hot as Saudi Arabia, justust don't go outside It's an anti reality position that they have found themselves in. Reform have always been like this. The Conservatives sign net zero into law What seeven years ago? T May's. Tsa May. Boris Johson, the one thing he was right about apart from Ukraine is clean energy. And the conservatives have absolutely abandoned a position of dealing with reality on this. It's a crazy thing. and that is why I think we're talking now about air conditioning so much is because it's part of adaptation and it's a useful and important part. commommunication at the other bit If I understood the arguments on the other side correctly. We can only have air condition if we drill in the North Sea tomorrow. Yes that's very have I got that right? Yeah If you want to get air conditioning and it comes from renewable, the extra emissions are pretty minimal If you do want to drill a whole new oil gas field, they'll be a bit higher. and presumably will not allow us to have widespread air conditioning No, I mean, even Donald Trump has been weighing, I mean, he always talks about the North Sea. I don't you know, unlock the North Sea. And we had fourteen years of conservative government who like granted licenses, you know, it's our bit is mostly knackered Anyone whose main priority is the NC isn't really can't do sums about what works and what works is going electric and the reason for that is the very boring thing that it makes your devices if it's heat pumps, electr cars, its like three or four times as efficient. That's the gain you get. If someone invented a petrol car that went two thousand miles on one tank They would be fated for all time. They'd win Nobel prizes up the wazoo This comes back to my conspiracy theory about recycling, and actually turns out to have been validated a couple of years ago. that lotots of recycling just get shipped off to China and put in landfill, right But why does everybody big businesses were very happy to wang on about recycling because it was saying it's up to you. A actually climate change, it can really be materially affected by youting separating out your paper from your milk bottle.. And I feel like the same thing about AirCOon. It's saying, Well, we can't do all these mitigations that would be expensive or trying to get to net zero by putting money a levy on your bills or whatever it is. Yeah. Instead it's up to you to buy an air conditioning unit. and if you don't, that's your fault That to me is it's about, you, just shifting it back on to being an individual problem on the collective action problem And lots of people can't afford air conditioning, either to buy the thing or to run it because it will add to your electricity bills. And that is another big part of the problem is that policy matters basically. But there's also a left critique of air conditioning, right, which is the sort of degrowth one, which is essentially like the left wing attack on JLP ones, the antiesity drugs, which is it's a sticking plaster. So the idea is you have to morally suffer in your very sweaty house therwise, you'll never feel the pain that will make you want to attack climate change. In the same way, you shouldn't take a drug that spresss your appetite because we should fix big food That's I think the reason that the left can be quite puritanical about judging people for equity. And coming from the center, I'm always thinking can we not do both of those? No, we're not collective and individual action? What is limiting the progress on these you know, these air to air pump air conditioner things, which sound like, you know They sound a bit scientify, don't? Yeah I mean, gil. I think until recently the government was focused on air to water, which is where you he keeps your water, so it does your radiators. and that's because most people have radiators in their hes. so it's sort of a natural first step I think it probably will catch up, you know. There's lots of money available for it, which is a good thing. And thank you to the readers who've been saying Get with it air to air, not air to water Yeah as of last week when I read these letters, Andy, I'm big on air to air It's great. and having gotten out of water the system a year ago, that's absolutely fine. The degrowth thing, I think is a bit of a mad perspective because people don't want to give up things they have. You see it a lot in the argument over cars, for example. People will say we shouldn't go to electric cars because A actually active travel is much better Much better. you know, we should be getting people walking and taking the bus you know what I mean? Cycling, this kind of thing. Yeah. But good luck doing that in America where one town is a hundred miles away from the next town Right This is the thing, even in the Netherlands, even in. Like crazy the Netherlands, I think about nine percent of distance traveveled is is active. Now that's in the Netherlands, which has had decades of strong support for active travel cycling very flat So the idea that that is going to be the answer is just not quite real enough. the Climate Change Committee have done the done the numbers on this and basically The savings that you get from going electric are so much greater.'s good that's part what I think of is your kind of climate sensibleism that I think hope I hope whoever becomes chancellor, listen which is energy expenditure matters less than how that energy is generated. Globally, about twenty percent of our energy usage is the electricity. So you do need to clean up electricity generation. But the other almost eighty percent is the stuff that has not yet gone electric, so that's cars and home heating and all that stuff l low temperature, industrial uses, all of that. And the opportunity to electry that is big. And that is why Especially in the wake of the Iran warar, you're going to hear lots more about electrification. It's going to be a big focus of the COP meeting in November. because it just gives you these massive efficiency savings. and that is one valid criticism of the government the current government's position, which is that they've been really focused on getting to clean power twenty thirty And old Sparky has written a lot about this Clean power twenty thirty is great, but it is expensive to do the last few percent, and actually there are lots bigger gains to be had As in if you run an electric car, even if you're basically only using a gas powered electricity grid to make the electricity That's still better for the environment than a petrol car because you know that is so much more efficient. Butolks you need a huge investment in the national grid as well, don't you? You do. And I think we've needed one for a long time and there just hasn't been much action on it. But yeah, the idea, Oh, that's another good thing about ECon It gets more electricity used, which spreads the cost of the grid. It's going to be really expensive. The economy is basically a hybrid car at the moment, which is running two systems at once. And Burnham did say infrastructure Yeah, once. att least once. So I imagine he's all over this. I think he's been quite good on Green stuff. I think I see a bit of a difficulty with the number of commitments he's making there. Right You know, the Green' going cost I mean watching grad and on and also the capability to deliver this. you know, if you haven't invested in the skills for generations. Yeah, there is a g. We don't really have the engineers at the moment. so it's a rebuilding is difficult process. You can't just chuck money at it. Yes. So I mean, it's good to him talk about education and apprenticeships and technical education and leveling it with academic education. you know these are, again, great ideas. It's not easy to it was the least blareright bit of his delivery, which you was pretty solid Tony for quite a lot of it. And then he's going, you know, and I promise you that a lot of you won't go to university. That's marvevelous. Yeah Well if you could become an engineer or technician without a eighty grand debt. wouldouldn't you? The numbers make sense they. And sorry, just the last thing, there is quite a sort of the electoral point is always a bit dullar to me because I'm just a geek on all the tech. but Labour's voters tend to like this stuff And they've been losing a lot of votes to the Greens and to the Lb Demens, of course. because they seem to have been going a bit further right on all sorts of things And I think if they do roow back too far then there's a real risk that they'll just lose more to their left. But also it be a big expashy thing to say. I mean one of the things he was talking about was more greater public ownership or public accountability for energy companies and utilities But again, very expensive. But ye Kir Starers's labour we' renationalizing the railways. like a great big deab ha been asked for a really long time. and just no one knows about it. No one knows about it's extraordinary. It was the same on the energy stuff. Like the record is terrific, but they seem to have been quite unwilling to make the case on it. It is weird. And the thing that plays well with people is actually not arguments about jobs or The economy People quite like, well this is protecting the planet for future generations. We we all have to do our bit. This is a global problem Electorally that does better than There are this many jobs and this much investment, which is a spreadsheety thing to say Burnnham is a storyteller. He can tell these stories,n't he? You were telling him me he's got an English degree. Yeah. I' thrilled. I've got an English degree I might not be b them Yeah, if you look at this panel, you'll find quite a lot of English degrees? I got an English degrees as well. Oh dear. There's a very sad bit apparently in his memoir where he talks about the fact he didn't get into his first choice of Cambridge College. ye He's been through suffering Aversity adversity Yeah Well as stories of working class defeat go, that's pretty shocking os, I haveaacada project while Cent andi. Our Achina Porento Nunas Alexion de Puertas andradas Santteriores personersalisabas. Adamasur Achentad doo Aresunid the doos Ramientas the Wolf de V devolos magax P Scientos Centae Nueo Ares. Yenel Pes de Los try to lista the materialescita and ununa photo I reivona coticasion andinutos Now we should come to someone else who I'm not sure whether Donald Trump's got an English degree. He's got such a fluid command of the language that I think he probably has a few honorary ones anyway. But Helen, you have been keeping up with know, we're fresh from America two hundred fifty. Oh yeah. The cage fighting on the White House lawn and now there's been another book out about it ich is exciting and? Yeah, by two New York Times journalists, Maggie Haberman, who is known as Trump's psychiatrist. That's He sort of invites me right It kind of knows Gold couch. Why doest my father love me? B essentially, I think. Right. And Jonathan Swan, who's an Aussie originally, did a very good very fact based interview with Donaldrum a couple years ago kind of made his name. Anyway the books called regime change, because their essential conceit is that Trump is now running what they call an imperial presidency. We've talked about this before about Cesar maxing. But their thesis is essentially would have been better had Trump won again in twenty twenty Biden not defeated him Because in his first term, he was disoriented, he wasn't ready. He was restrained by various chiefs of staff, by the Republican Party in Congress not doing what he wanted, by judges, by the concept of conflict of interest rules And then he had four years brooding in the wilderness, meditating on his grievances, and he also attracted a cadre of loyalists who would just say and do anything And so in the second Trump presidency has been an imperial one where he's just smashed through absolutely everything. I mean, the stuff that the boys are the boys, Eric and Dom Jr. and now Baron have done in terms of mingling their business interests with the family. extxtraordinary through the crypto firm worldorld Liberty Financial, through deals there's been a deal recently with either a Kazak or an Uzbek tungsten mine You know, the fusing of the foreign policy and the Trump's family's own financial interest is extraordinary. Is it called World Liberty Financial?? It's like it sounds like a made up name. It sounds like a made up name of an evil company in an eighties movie. Yeah. That's ye. I don't know why that would be appropriate. But essentially, the idea would have been that he decided in the first home he tried to obey conflict of interest rules, and he feels he didn't get enough credit for that. He was like they were still mean about me anyway. I only did a little tiny bit of corruption, and I never got any credit So now I might as well go wild. It's the idea that a second term following immediately on from the first one would have what it would have meant more chaos and more incompetence and more not getting his way. And now it would be over. Yes, exactly. Right But what actually happened was that he returned to the for the second time round Eight intntent on revenge against everybody and B having won the not just the electoral college but the popular vote, absolutely in command of the party. So he's got a speaker in Mike Johnson who does whatever he wants. know He has primaried so many people in the Republican Party, there is no one left really. There is no Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah, who was very critical of him voted for his impeachment None of those people are around anymore.. None of the chiefs of staff that he had previously tried to restrain him. He's now got Suszie Wiles, the Florid operative who sees herself as enacting his views. You he doesn't have Pete Hegsad has been sacking people left right and center in the military. So he doesn't have the generals holding him back. He now has Dan Risin Kaine as his top general, who seems, although comes across in this book as being very skeptical of the Iran warar, certainly hasn't, you know, Stopped happenpping. It stopped happening. Youve asked your work forred it. So it is a really fascinating portrait. of what it means to hold the power of the American presresidency without really anyone to rein you in at all. know The Democrats obviously bloodied and defeated basically. The only people really holding anything back are the courts and usually like individual justices who say, well, you know, there's a bit where Stephen Mill, his immigrationss wants to repeal habbeas corpus, right? He wants to just deport people without giving them any kind of hearing. And that gets held up by a judge And so they go to kind of war against the judge. You know that kind of stuff happens over and over again. And you know, it just shows you how fragile It is. And then the other thing that comes out very strongly from it is The way that Biden on his way out used the presidential pardon power to preemptively pardon his son who'd been involved in a load of felony convictions actually, but accusations too, and various members of his family So Trump having seen that seems to be now the feeling, well, look lads, let's all get Absolutely involved and then's quote in it about, you know, I'm going to pardon everybody within sort of twenty five feet of the Oval office on my last day, whichich is totally within the presresident's power to do. just to preemptively pardoned just say that you cannot prosecute anybody for anything that they did. during this period So a time period rather than doing it as part of their job. Yeah just you could say anything that you can't prosecute anyone for anyone they did in this time frrame. Right. And he's already, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, got very wide presidential immunity powers for himself, right? You can't retrospectively go back and say We think that this deal was dodgy and actually mounted to fraud I mean president, presumably being told that you're going to be pardoned whatever you do is not automatically conducive to good behaviour No Right. It doesn't have a chilling effect, I think it is what you're say. Yeah ye. Imagine if you said that's like a sort of seven year old, right? anythingy you do this week on holiday at the end of it, I'm going to completely forgive you. Be' just very like paint all over the walls It would be a bad plan. You should to be describing modern pains Yeah That true. Helen, how much of this gen is changing the system perermanently the irreversibible and how much Have we just got to get through and get rid of him and things will improve Their thesis which I tend to sign on to was that most people, including people in Europe and the wider world, treated the first term as an aberration. This was a fluke. America's just having a bit of a room springer dallying with having an authoritarian. But no the second term and the bigger win They they mean it, right? And they talk about that meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office as being the moment that European leaders went, Oh, it's like NATO as we know it is over The idea of America interfering outside of its sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere. Interfering, contributing his expertise and wisdom. Thank you very. It doesn't work the other way r around, does it? So Trump announces that really he does not want Ed Milibanders just. ir foreign policy comes our way's just we no longer have any say at all. The only thing about it that gives me hope and this is the bleakest kind of hope imaginable is the book ends with all the decisions about Iran strike And it makes, I think probably due down to their sourcing, abundantly clear that no one really, maybe maybe a bitmark a Rubia, secretary of state. no one really thinks that's a crack a bang up idea Jadie Vance is very worried about it. Tucker Carnlson comes in to intercede with him about it. Susie Wiles doesn't seem thrilled General Dan, Razin Kaine doesn't seem, But no one can say anything anymore And no Republican in Congress which doesn't get asked to vote on it they don't get a say. the judiciary doesn't get a say. There's no one left to in him in and this kind of comes back all the way you were saying it was a hopeful point coming up at some point. Well, actually the imperialness of the presidency creates the seeds of its own unpopularity and destruction, and which comes back not to come back to teide, a very similar. I wasn't seeing any echoes at all. But the idea that if you don't have this level of scrutiny, what you don't get is any pushback on your bad ideas and therefore they get through and at some point maybe you do meet the consequences of Mention power And the quote I liked was this quote that Trump believes about himself that he has more power than Mao Stalin, Roosevelt, Augustus He said In his original quote, this came from a historian, but it wasn't historian, was it? It was Gary Player, the golfer's Caddy who printed out a list of the fact that Donald Trump was one of the top ten historical figures along with Hitler and Mao, handed it over to him, and he went, Yeah, those are the big dogs. that's me, I'm up there. It's only the second best quote in the book. The best one is I wrote this down because it moved me so much. When Elon Musk flounced out of the administration after being a special government employee a since deleted tweet saying the reason they haven't released the Epstein files is because Donald Trump is in them. Donald apparenticallyly sat in the Get your hanky ready. Sat in the oval Office with a dejected pensive look and said They always leave, they always do this. This is why I can't have friends. If you have tears to shed. Try them now And that's an example of why they uses a direct quote, which they say they only do if they've heard it from somebody who was there. Right. And this is one of the extraordinary things about this book is it has direct quotes from discussions in the situation room, supposedly the most secure You just don't have that level of insight from any previous administration. And a lot of the book is the subplot is the Rasper who gets the nomination next time And that has been fascinating to me to see, at what point does Donald Trump graciously move on for the next generation feels a touch out of character. And so what he actually enjoys is once again running it like the apprentice and you know, there's a line when he says about all the gold decorations that they've had in the White House. Someone says, willill the next presresident keep them? And he says, Well, Cubans love gold. reference to Macobia because Cubia background rather than his alleged successor, JD. Vance, the vice president. So he's really enjoying we take a small moment of consolation to the fact that he's torturing J. Bance and Marco Rivo by kind of alterimately favouring each one of them. I like your idea that Who could the source be in this situation room? Given he moved the situation room to Marilago, and there's a wonderful photo of a man peering round the black thing looking in watching them presumly discussing the invasion of Iran or the non invasion or the bombing of Iran, and he looks like he was one of the waiters Yes in the next door room. like Presumably, there are a lot of people who' leaked stuff. Well they made you're right. They made a makeshift I think they call it a Siff in, which is the secure communications thing. But doesn it doesn't look it is in the corner of a ballroom. It doesn't look all that secure. But you know, they also had people dialing in on speakerphone. And this is a government where many of the people involved either were podcasters, want to be podcasters, have podcasts but didn't inhale So there are a lot of people who are trying very much with one eye on on not even the memoirs, but the future podcasts in this administration. Why is this book So big. whyy is it? worked when lots of people have written Trump books I think because the level of detail and insight and reporting I've got is so much greater than anyone else's. you just are being taken inside And no one in the administration seriously disputing anything that's been reported. This isn't like a, let's be rude, a sort of Michael Wolf where he's written down some like third handand things that Steve Bannon told him about stauff. Oh No, but those books sold incredibly well, but they were a little, shall we say, looser in their sourcing. Th these are two New York Times reporters who at the end of the process had an on the record interview with Trump you know, to kind of put all the allegations to him Some of the hereere's the other bit that got me. He's got this woman, a thirty four year old woman called Datley Harp whose job is to print him things and bring them to him And she once sent him a note that said, You are all that matters to me And Susie W' the Chief staff finds it and is just like, What are we in high school? What's happening? What's's happening? She's signing like you know signing her name Natalie Trump for the kind of stuff he's doing at thirteen. Very very fascinating business. Trump