Social Media Regulation and Leadership

Hello, good morning and welcome. It's Tuesday, may twenty sixth. Parliament is in recess And despite all the action, British politics seems to have tak a bit of a pause over the bank holiday weekend for the record temperatures. And we're going to look into what lies beyond this recess as Westminster readies itself for two very consequential months in British politics I'm Anne McKlvoy from Politico. And I'm Sam Coates of Sky News. The rest of the world absolutely isn't waiting for us to get our affs in order, should we say, President Trump authorized fresh bombing raids in Iran overnight We'll do a little bit on this, Anne, but I just want to read you the headline of the Bloomberg lead on this story. It's up on their site at the moment. US strikes target in Iran as Trump hails progress on peace deals. I think that just about sums up the modern era of news. We're back to the idea of bombers for peace, but all in one headline. After days of Donald Trump talking up a peace agreement, the US and Israeli jets struck Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and other targets. US Central commommand said the strikes were targeting missile launch sites and boats trying to place minds and stressed they were defensive in nature and intended to protect troops from threats posed by Iranian forces. My sense, Anne, is that the foreign Office absolutely knew that fresh strikes were on the way as recently or as far back really as the middle of last week So what happened overnight shouldn't have been wasn't a surprise to our government I'm But whether or not this really takes us closer to peace, I don't know, the US Scretary of State Marco Robio was telling reporters during a trip to India that talks on Iran could still take several days, adding that Trump could either agree a good deal or no deal at all. And all of this is a powerful reminder that whether it's Andy Burnham or Kiia Stahmer or anyone else who ends up in number ten, the essential global challenges and the backwash for the UK economy remain the same. Yeah, so we thought we'd use this post bank holiday one off recess edition to take the slightly longer view on the challenges that we face And luckily for that, we' able to do that with particular vigor because you ended up working for quite a lot of the last few days over in Prague. Listeners might remember that's where Anne was last Thursday at what's known as the Global National Security Conference. And you were there all weekend alongside one very well known voice to this podcast outlining the challenges that everyone faces. Yes, this is the GobSc conference so called held in Prague this year, Sam it's really a big meeting of a lot of defence security, quite a lot of military top brasses as well, lots of stripes on shoulders. And it does face, I think, more towards Etern Central Europe, to the Balkans to the Baltics and into the Ukraine crisis than some other gatherings. And that's intriguing because one prominent British figure there was Morgan McSweeny, the elusive Mr. McSweeney. I mean, I had taken to calling him McCavity like the mysterious cat in TF Eer on the podcast. Well, in fairness, to McSweeny, he really was out in public at this conference on a big panel which we're going to sort of dive into because we thought we would kick off this morning by listening to the warning that he had to British politicians about the international situation and how it feeds into the changes in technology, in fake news and in other things that he thought we ought to be worried about. apart from the fate of Kistama. People think that the danger would misinformation is that citizens believe lies. I think and I've beenomeing increasingly out of the view Greater danger. is that people become exhausted people become so overwhelmed by anger division and mitipidation that he don't just believe in anything at all. I was chief of staff in the UK goovernment from twenty twenty four to twenty twenty six. It was the first. Labour government in fourteen years It was very clear to me that the new labour government that we've got now is governing in a very different era to the previous labour government So for politicians The challenge is how do you govern in an era of permanent disruption notot how you just react to it It is an era that I think politically has been shaped by the insecurity O voters And in that context, I think AI is not just an information channel It is a new system of politics. I think this is a really good moment to dive into some of the things that he was talking about. It's really interesting to hear him range much more widely So we did it as one other appearance in public that select committee a few weeks ago in front of Bemlys Dbriy and her team just about Really what he's doing is talking about what it's like when, you know, for life in number ten in that extract, he talks about people being exhausted, not believing in then thing, the permanent disruption era shaped by voter insecurity. I'm His remarks felt, if anything, a little bit like a Cry of pain from his own time in number ten And I can I can hear lots of sort of opponents, not least those inside the Labour Party going. Yes, you talk about, you know, voted disengagement fated disillusion and you know, up to a point, Lord Copy, you can't blame it. Other people on that entirely, given that Kir Stonin came in with a landslide majority but now seems to have all but squandered it I'm I do think that he makes a decent point about permanent disruption coming from overseas. I don't know whether you've picked up this, Anne, but there is a sort of a vein in labor thinking, maybe some not self pitting. mayaybe there's a point to it. I'm interesting what you think that says that actually Kist Aarma would be pretty much in quite a strong position right now if it hadn't been. Donald Trump and in particular what he's been doing in Iran, but generally with how he's conducted foreign affairs, you know, you've got good Data recently, just small uptick in GDP, a massive drop in net migration you've got possibly positive data on waiting lists. But the thing that's really causing a problem in the British state right now is the knock on effects on inflation from all of the stuff that Donald Trump's been doing. and wouldn't Ker be in a much better position if it wasn't for external factors and You know I just thought that mayaybe the idea of permanent disruption for Morgan McSweeney was a tilt to that. and that's obviously something that won't go away if there's a change of Prime Minister here. What do you make of that argument? Well, I think just on the big picture that Morgan McSweeney was talking about, this idea that disruption and insecurity of voters, that's the spine of a kind of big problem for government communications machines in the UK, but also in the democracies as a whole that is making governing a whole lot harder and that the Iran crisis really does play into that and I certainly left this conference of people who they are not professional panickers, put it that way. but the defense security establishment, I think, much more worried in a way about the immediate aftermath of Iran than they are about the trajectory of the war in Ukraine in terms of really affecting voters and driving choices there for those in power and for electorates on your very good point that I think you have put your finger on something I was also around some other people who've been in both in the Kia administration and previous ones in labor at the weekend. And I think they do have a tendency to sort of blame Donald Trump for the problems that Kia Staharmmer is having. two points on that. Well, those are the waters you swim in in politics, you don't get to choose who is the president of the United States. And when we look at the conditions in which Donald Trump came to power, in the fact, the Cara Harris' campaign for the lefteft and the center lefteft hadn't really worked at all. It would appear that the problem goes a bit deeper than just wishing that Donald Trump wasn't there. But I think you're right, I think there is an element of that. The difficulty there is that argument that Kizama had a very good week lastast week, he was certainly I thought was much more relaxed and it had lost a lot of the stiffness that people were criticizing him for some of the other data points he mentioned were good for him. But you come back to the fact that W Kia Starmer have these problems if he weren't Kirstama, if he had been able. to leverage his leadership better. and leverage the fact that he did come in guuided very much by Morgan McSweeney in the election campaign and beyond, if he'd sort of done better in the job of Prime Minister, well, maybe that is the more fundamental issue than who is in the White House. Nobody will ever definitively be able to answer that question, which makes it a great podcast question. Now, you were sitting in the audience while Morgan McSweeny was talking And that means I think by my calculation, you've become the first journalist to be able to put a question to him And it's about the sort of core topic of this conference, which was security, particularly in relation to AI. Let's just listen to your exchange. So I'm just interested if there's anything you've learned from practice that makes you think I would coulduct this a bit differently knowing what you all know from media and politics. So I think AI is different. The risk then for democracies is that election campaigns become, much less of a national story and much closer to individual stories And that becomes harder. So there's a question then for political parties and for the media but how to also act in a national interest I think it's important for political parties and for democracies to be able to master the tools and not just try to police them It is not unusual in the UK and the US, especially for the left. to begin in a luddite position and to allow a rightite to dominate the mastery of a new tool I don't think I think that's a danger with AI because it's not just about the left and the right It's about Democrats against authoritarians. And in that, I think the UK and other countries can learn a lot from how Ukraine is dealing with this moment Yeah, not just by your calculation. Actually Morgan Mcsweeneedy confirmed to me that it was the first on the record answed ever given to a journalist in a very long career. So I take that home as my medal from Prague. The point that he was making and you heard it in the clip there clearly is that he feels that the way that elections election campaigns are going to be conducted in the era of AI It's going to be massively different from the kind of technically adept campaigns that he and others have been running in the last few years to get their parties elected whether they were on the center left or or the center right of politics And he did make this very interesting point, which is certainly stuck in my mind, Sam, about the idea that AI just segments the voting population very differently to traditional campaigns, even as he says the ones that he was being told were so up to date when we thought about WhatsApp being the biggest change on the block. Well, he's saying that was interesting. It's a tool and many digital tools, but AI, he suggested fundamentally different. It targets individual groups and their stories And it can multiply like that because it has no operational constraint. He said, Well you might have maybe chosen the ten groups you wanted to address, now you could maybe decide it's five thousand or so and where does that leave the idea that you're trying to campaign on the national interest and define it against your opponents who were also having their picture. but I think he was worried that the whole idea of national interest would go down the middle. Let's see if that's what in fact turns out to be the case, but the idea that AI was really coming absolutely for Our elections and our election campaigning as a moment of massive upheaval. that did stick in my mind. I do wonder whether or not this is going to be true so much of the next general election in twenty twenty eight twenty twenty nine, when it's not clear to me that AI will be quite as advanced. but I mean, you know, if you're looking at a ten, twenty year tim scale It looks like it'll have a big impact in a way that you that you absolutely cannot predict And I suppose the big bet that he's making, which doesn't seem a bad bet, is that effectively AI sort of swallows it up and becomes our main way on our main route into understanding the world But again, you don't know that yet, but it does feel like it's like it like the sort of tid is coming in and don' we don't know how much it's going to envelop us. att its core, there was a really interesting distinction that I hadn't heard before, which is there'll be a national story and then AI will tailor everything for individuals. And so the sort of media will go off dp off and cover a sort of national agenda that everyone sort of decides at an elite level. But that won't really play a big role in determining people's views. I mean, we've had a go at that being the way of doing politics ever since back to to the Brexit referendum with Dominic Cummings and his segmentation But he just thinks that AI will take that to a new level and the segmentation will be much, much more refined and virtually tailored to the individual. Ag, let's see how that works Clearly, what he is saying is that there's a massive prize for who can master the electioneering AI tools. And given that we don't even know what they look like or who might shape them at the moment, this is essentially an emerging new fascinating field of political science and political practice that we don't even know who the pioneers are yet Certainly the elections that we're having at the moment, whether you're looking at Makerfield or there's a national election vibe to that and quite whether or not there's a great deal of segmentation, I don't know. One thing I do recall six weeks ago, listeners might remember I did an interview with VJ Rangarjen, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission. And he's really interested on this, interesting on this. He says to look out for who are sort of in some senses pioneers of where democracy is going to go next. places like Israel and Ukraine sort of frontier countries in, you know, challenging circumstances and u it's places like that where there's just fundamentally a lot less regulation where you can see the sort of the new forms of electioneering battling it out. So Whenever we get to that Ukrainian election. There'll be and we know that Morghgan Mcsweenin is interested in that election. We'll be able to see where perhaps the future of voting ving ges. Completely. you're absolutely right on Ukraine. I mean, one thing it's in plain sight and what we've discussed is that Morgan Mcsweenie has embarked on the next stage of his career and I think seeing him a bit on the international circuit, particularly that part of it that faces into the challenges of Russia and Ukraine and the dangers to its democracy, that I think that's something that I'd expect to see him doing more work in that area And he said exactly you what you had heard in your conversation if you weeks back that there was Ukraine was a place that we could learn from as well as thinking that we can support and take our knowledge and he said something really interesting which I thought also had the ring of truth about it, that there was a tendency on the left, he said in the UK and America to be a bit luddite. about AI and think only in terms of how to constrain it or regulate it rather than mastering it for the good of democracies. And I think this was plainly something that was going to be on his mind and others that if your only approach I along the lines of this is coming at you like a train anyway. and your response to it is only how much do we dislike it? How much do we see the dangers for our democracy, but you don't mask the tools of how you can also deploy it. It's a sword and a shield, if you like. I thought that was very intriguing and that is certainly I think the way that people who were speaking on that panel and beyond from Kyiv and also in the Balkans, from other places that feel that they are threatened by massive Russian disinformation and meddling in their elections also made that point. One of the sort of themes of Morghgan McSweeney on that panel was And he didn't spll it out too harshly, but just the vibe is that there are bits of the British system that are a bit ungovernable That is a theme that keeps coming up at the moment. And what do you make of that as a central charge for where we are? Because it's very pertent as we consider changing prrime M ministers, whether or not it's going to make much difference. Yeah, it's just a narrative. really think quite works. I think what we're saying, we're not inherently unovernable if you've lived in societies that have fractured to the point of being in civil war or conditions close to it, then you know, then you've lived somewhere ungovernable. Indeed, if you look just sort of technically at the state, like Belgium, it's ungovernable. It structurally it doesn't work together. That's not true of the UK. and we have massive executive power. Why do we know that? Because we talk about lawmaking and driving through of laws and the problems that can arise along the way daily on this podcast and in our coverage. So we do have government structure, but we do also I think lack and this is what you might be tilting towards is that our systems, both of delivery by government, the government machine as it's known and political voting systems, can get into a situation where they're out of sync and where they can't form majorities there are solutions to that. I'm not particularly advocating for proportional representation, but if you look at a country that has a coalition system built into it like Germany, they're just as invver toome as ungovernable as we are at the moment. they can't agree on what their reform package is in government. But the government will probably be more stable. You won't see a turnover of leaders that you see in the UK because they have an electoral system that kind of locks in a different kind of thinking. So ungovernable always sounds to me like a a cry of despair. But what do you think? I think you tend a bit more in that direction than I do? No, I'm an optimist. I think there have been big structural changes from the last time labourr is in power, but labour really, when it was in opposition should have paid more attention to them to be prepared. There's just big divisions between the inside the political parties caused, not least by the Brexit referendum which licensed division within political parties and those wounds never healed. I think another reason why politics is so much more difficult these days is because of social media, not just the sort of algorithms of public social media I think that literally WhatsApp has made life a lot more difficult for party systems because closed groups of MPs can get incredibly hit up about individual issues or sort of groups of concerns and end up violently back at the leader, and something of a surprise to people like the Whips. But all of that can be dealt with by sensitive good leadership and, you know, charismatic people at the top. And you know, I think that people paying sufficient attention to what's going on really really does kind of deal with a lot of the problems in the political system And, you know, and I think and so I think there is a case for optimism for people that get it right maybe the sort of challenge just is one of not having leaders that have been quite there in the last few years on both sides of the aisle who who have who have who have challenges to deal with? Well, well, can I ask you something that's also around this morning as a big then do you then think that something like limiting social media access for the under sixtens or even an outright ban That's something, isn't it? whereere as you point out, you've got like massive buy in from different WhatsApp groups and different positions about what they want to happen on the back benches. In a slight sense, I think that the backbenches are really seeing themselves as driving what they want to happen in policy rather than waiting for the big government review and then responding to it. We've had Angela Ryna calling for an outright ban over the weekend We're streeting piling in urging ministers to treat social media like tobacco, where you would absolutely, most people would agree. You want to restrict access to the under sixteen West Streeton telling the Guardian, it's extremely addictive. It's bad for our health. He used his health secretary, former health secretary elbow a bit on that one. Claybook also reporting this morning massively strong feeling ammong MPs who just don't want to shut up on this and they feel if they push right now, they can sort of get the leadership to move in their direction That's kind of difficult, isn't it? because there are so many different ways in which you could go for regulation of social media. So you end up with, if you like a lot of passion being poured through a very narrow funnel. and I wondered if you had H that same impression that I had on that one? Absolutely. Look I think this is a very good kind of example of exactly the problem. Look If there is a change of Prime Mister, if Andy Burnham comes in, he'll face the same challenges, the same problems. He's actually locked himself into a lot of the same self imposeed constraints on things like fiscal rules and EU policy. But to be a success as a prime Mister He's got to get and keep his own labour MPs on site. He's got to invert what you just described with the tail wagging, the dog. He's got to be the leader taking the party to somewhere rather than just lurching in response to the party because in the end, The Labour Party like all parties has a morass of views and you'll never be able to keep all of it happy all of the time. So you've got to be leading from the front that, I think, not being in control. of the labour partarty in Parliament, despite your huge majority is kind of what went wrong for Kir Starmer which feels like a good moment to maybe Wrap things up and I think so It's such a wonderful morning. I think we should get out there. We certainly should. Apologies to those who have been distracted by the birds who have played a bigger role in this morning's podcast. Welcome, I hope but prominent is is what I'm told it sounds like down the microphone. So W Birdsong in the air and birdsong in our heart, we say goodbye and we will be back with you next Monday. Oh, Sam, you're in your landed country state in South London. Lishams only. Lewisham's fin us.