119: They Predict A Riot

How online disinformation (and dubious reporting) contributed to the last week's riots across Britain. Plus,  a look at the Conservative Leadership betting odds (place your bets now!) and a look at how Huw Edwards has changed in the last year. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the Private Eye office with
Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop.
We have gathered here to discuss the bigstories of the week and quite a lot of
big stories actually going on this week.
, we're gonna be covering various bits ofthe BBC, various bits of what remains
of the Conservative Party later on.
But firstly, we thought we'd talkabout the riots, which have been

(00:26):
spreading across the UK in the lastweek or so, for people who, either
live internationally or might needreminding what this is actually about.
This all started, , about a week agowith the murder of three girls in
Southport, the attempted murder ofeight others and two adults the alleged
murderer was not named at the time.
due to being under the age of 18, he hassince been named, and the judge who named

(00:48):
him at Liverpool Crown Court said that"continuing to prevent the full reporting
has the disadvantage of allowing othersto spread misinformation in a vacuum".
And how it has spread...
there were rumours that the allegedmurderer was, a Muslim or was a
recent immigrant, and this has inpart led to enormous amounts of
disorder and unrest in various placesaround the uk, places very far from,

(01:11):
Southport, Aldershot, Hartlepool...
just all over the place.
And huge amounts of stress and,unpleasantness in policing.
How did this misinformation spread,is one thing that we're interested in?
It's

Ian (01:23):
interesting.
The judge said misinformation.
I would say it was disinformation.
A lot of it's deliberate.

Helen (01:29):
there's also a very interesting thing where you in two
the different things that happened.
So one of the accounts, that was thefirst one to give a false name, this
false name of Ali Al Karti for the,the alleged murderer, which is not the
correct name, was someone who said, ifthis is true, then all is the thing is
about all hell is about to break loose.
So that was the first kind of thingthat you do online, which is you
just go, I'm just passing this on.

(01:49):
I'm just saying it.
Who can say that it's true or not.
I'm just putting this in the,injecting this into the bloodstream.
And then Nigel Farage on July the30th said, I just wonder whether
the truth is being withheld from us.
I don't know the answer to that.

Ian (02:01):
why not
find out?

Adam (02:03):
Yes, this is the thing.
We've talked about this before.
This is a new style, isn't it,of going, just asking questions.
the point of just asking questions isthat you ask them to people who might
be able to give you the informationand Nigel Farage is now after eight
goes in quite a good position to dothat, given that he could have turned
up at the commons and asked somequestions of say, the home office.

Andy (02:19):
how did this start in the first place?
How did this disinformationstart being spread?

Helen (02:22):
There's a disinformation researcher called Mark Owen Jones who
looked into it and timestamped allof where the, false name came out.
And the first person to put out thatfalse name was a woman called Bernie
Spofforth, who runs a swimwear business.
in every other respect you'd say.
She was like a delightfulDaily Mail feature subject.
Her husband's a sculptor.
They live in a very nice housein the middle of the countryside.
One of her kids is an actor.

(02:44):
But somehow during the Covidpandemic became a lockdown skeptic.
She fell into that crowd.
So you can see appearancesfrom her on both GB news and
Talk Tv, talking about that.
And then she's billedas a social commentator.
What that means is, has gota popular Twitter account.
And so she was made into a person who weshould listen to be interested because
those channels had a kind of Covidskeptic shaped hole that they needed

(03:07):
to fill, and she, put herself into it.
She afterwards said, she completelyregretted how terrible it was.
She made the most biggestmistake in her of her life about
naming the...
about this false name.
She said she wasn't theperson who did it first.
Someone else had told her.
Then her story changed.
She got it from somewhere else.
But what's interesting to meabout that is so often the people
peddling this misinformation aren't,dispossessed and marginalized people.

(03:28):
They're actually very comfortable onpeople, often top end of Gen X, lower
end of baby boomers, who've livedthrough periods of peace and prosperity
and stability in their own lives.
And actually in their ownday-today lives, you wouldn't say
we're economically struggling.
But I remember the guy who paid moneyto have Gina Miller, the anti Brexit
campaigner killed, was a, vi count.

(03:50):
we have to have, talk about thefact that lots of middle class,
middle aged people spend a bittoo much time online during Covid.
And these days you don't just end upfalling for one of these kind of tropes.
You become a lockdown skeptic, whichbleeds into a vaccine skeptic, right?
Which bleeds into, you're worriedabout the World Economic Forum
making us all eat insects.
Or you're worried about 15minute cities in control.
And then you're worried about MK Ultraand thought experiments, and then

(04:12):
you're worried about com trails andthen you're worried about whether or
not they're controlling the weather.
And then you're worried about whetheror not, all of these kind of, racist
memes that still perpetuate around you.
And was there a girl who was turnedinto a donna kebab by an immigrants?
That's a very big one, right?
In the annals of far rightconspiracy theorists.

Andy (04:26):
Ironic.
Ironically,
5G Internet is responsible for a lot ofthis stuff, but not in the way we think.
But what's

Helen (04:32):
interesting is that people end up drifting from one bit to another.
Yeah.
All of these kind of different islands ofconspiracies are connected to each other.
How interesting.
And yet

Ian (04:39):
the people who appear on the streets, many of them without their shirts on are
not those agreeable middle class peoplespending too much time on the internet.
No.
No.

Helen (04:47):
You don't actually hear from a lot of those people on those TV channels.
Actually, that's the kind ofinteresting thing about it.
So I can see why they feellike they are being locked out.

Adam (04:54):
Do hear lots of people on those TV channels saying, this is just
the concerns of the white workingclass, which I just find the most
patronizing nonsense in the world ever.
there has never been anyone betterassimilation than the white working class.
If you go back to the Bristol busprocess in the 1950s or Cable Street
in the 1930s or Stockport last Monday,it's just this drivel, some idea that
all working class people are racist.

(05:15):
No, sorry.
It's

Andy (05:16):
not true.
I think some of those people mightbe, lockdown, skeptics, the people who
are doing the rioting, although theyhave got a very nasty surprise coming,

Helen (05:27):
But you are right.
the, kind of the nexus of accounts thatreally pushed all of these narratives,
particularly about being a legalimmigrant, were often people who were
banned under the previous iteration ofTwitter, which had its own problems.
But for example, the Manosphereinfluence, Andrew Tate.
Who said, I think thisis an illegal immigrant.
The really odd thing about that is thathe has converted to Islam after saying

(05:47):
Christianity was quote "cucked", and he'ssaying the same but set of things that
led to people trying to attack mosques.
So there's him, he's back.
Bernie Spofforth was, bannedover Covid misinformation.
She's back, Tommy Robinsonbanned and is now back.
So what's happened is we are now seeingwhat it, what it's like when all of those
people are allowed back into the open.

(06:08):
In a way it might be quite usefulbecause clearly there was some
coordination also going on inprivate telegram and signal groups.
These encrypted apps and what is now madevery obvious is that there is a network of
people who all talk to each other and theyall have the same set of talking points.
And we can now see that.
Out in the open, which if it was allhappening on Telegram, we couldn't.

Ian (06:27):
So that's useful for the

Helen (06:28):
police, for example.
Yes.
They might take an interest insome of that because I think there
comes a point when, certainly

Ian (06:34):
having been attacked on the streets and then beaten up and vilified by the
people who claim that law and orderis there, their abiding principle,
maybe the police will suddenly findthey've got more time and interest,
in policing anti-police sentiment.

Helen (06:47):
Yeah, I think there is a really interesting question about whether
or not, , some of the people who havebeen posting openly, some of the stuff
they've been posting is tantamount toincitement to violence and that's a
very, obviously a difficult line to draw,but if you look at the images of people
writing, they do just seem to, a lotof 'em be having a really great time.
one doesn't like to slur.
Anybody, but this is supposedly aprotest against the murder of children,

(07:11):
and that has somehow turned into peoplelooting branches of Lush bath bombs.
It's not hard to suggest thatthere, maybe it may have drifted
somewhat from its original aims.

Andy (07:21):
it's

Ian (07:21):
not coherent as

Andy (07:22):
a protest really, is it?
No, this is reminiscentof the riots in 2011.

Ian (07:26):
And previous ones.
And, the idea that the people involvedactually quite violent confrontations
with the police is not new.

Adam (07:35):
But I don't think we can blame all of this just entirely on, on social media,
because the other dangerous thing thatI've wanged on about for ages at Private
Eye is the way that 'mainstream media' touse that horrible phrase is more and more
being dictated by what's going on online.
we do a lot of this just silly click baitstuff, which has now taken over every
single newspaper website Priti much...
but also that kind of agenda of whatis being talked about on Twitter and

(07:58):
Twitter being quite a different beastof what it was 10 years ago, is now
feeding right back into a very rightwing nexus of, mainstream media outlets
who, know that they've got a marketthere they can target with that.
one of the things that struckme was Darren Grimes, who
is a presenter on GB News.
And as such ought to, be a journalistand know some basic journalism.
And we did a podcast, I won't go overit all again now, but we did, one a few

(08:19):
months ago, which people can go back andlisten to about, reporting restrictions.
And, the simple fact of it, it'sjust that if, a suspect is under
18, they have automatic anonymityuntil the point where a judge says.
That their name can be released,and usually that's at the full
end of a trial after a conviction.
The comparison that Darren Grimes madewas with the Brianna Ghey killers,
and that was certainly the case
it went right through to sentencingbefore the names were released.

(08:41):
And I can't think, I may be wrong aboutthis, but I can't think of a precedent
for a name being released at this,stage of someone who is still under 18.

Andy (08:49):
I think part of it was that the suspect , was only a
few days away from being 18.
I think he was six days short of it.
So I presume there was a, a.
consideration that given theamount of civil unrest, this
appears to be prompting, shallwe just get this cleared up now?
Was that not it?
I'm not objecting to it.
I think in

Adam (09:04):
this case, it was the sensible thing for, the judge to do, to
get out there and to say this namethat's going round is, a false one.
But I had a look at the GB News websitetoday, and very interestingly, it seems
to got this new strap line, which hasappeared at the top, which says, "don't

let them silence you (09:15):
support GB News."
who are the them here?
is it the hedge fund owner, Paul Marshall,multi-billionaire and owner of GB News?
Is it Eamonn Holmes, Ex of ITV and Sky,and now applying his trade on GB News?
this sort of narrative of us andthem and something is being hidden
for you, which has been propagatedjust as much by Nigel Farage and
Lawrence Fox and Tommy Robinson...

(09:37):
an awful lot of dodgy peopleonline is feeding right into a
much, much more mainstream media.
And I thought as well, interestinglyon Monday's Telegraph, the fact that
they chose to go, this is on the,I think the sixth day of unrest.
Yeah, the day afterthe, sixth day of riots.
And they chose to go withthe head headline, "Far Right
Clash with Muslims In Rioting."
Strictly speaking is accurate,specifically to Bolton protest yesterday

(09:57):
where there was a counter protest bypeople who were chanting Alahu abar,
but also there were things were kickingoff in an awful lot of different cities.
That's, that is an interestingframing of what has been going
on over the last few days.
not going right out there, butit's a little bit dog obviously,

Ian (10:10):
isn't it?
It is.
And the immediate response, certainlyof the Mail, I was intrigued by the
Mail on Sunday's response that, itwas, this is appalling, this rioting.
the far right are there...
who on Earth can be to blame for this?
I think it's the woke membersof the cabinet, and I'm
reading the second para....
I'm saying what?
Yeah.
A, they've been in powerfor about five seconds.

(10:32):
And, b, how did you get from the firsthalf of that sentence to the second half?
And it's because of the failureto deal with immigration by...
the Labour government?
Okay.
It hasn't had long, to deal with it.
and I suppose they're objectingto, not voting for Rwanda, but
it's an, immediate response isto say, this is appalling, but.

(10:55):
And that's the same sortof heading for the whistle.

Helen (10:58):
What is quite interesting here is that a lot of the things
that you are now getting fromcommentators on the right, IE.
People have got legitimate concerns.
They haven't been heard for too long.
So long was exactly the things thatpeople in the left said about the 2011
riots, which was sparked by the policeshooting of a guy called Mark Duggan.
and so there was a kind of theriots of the language of the
unheard element to that too.,

Andy (11:16):
Is there something to do here as well about crime reporting?
Because there are a lot of crime,influences on TikTok who have the
potential to spread a lot of miss anddisinformation, and there is obviously,
there's always been an obsessionwith crime reporting, but now there
is such an enormous appetite for it.
Is that reflected in themainstream press as well?

Helen (11:36):
I think that's a particular problem, which is the way
that our laws are structured,which we talked about before.
I, the idea that, now everythingis kind of subjudice to say in the
sense of there can't be lots of morespeculation about the suspect because
he's entitled to a fair trial...
and into that vacuum, there's a lotmore of 'why aren't we being told this?
This has all gone very quiet, isn't it?
Very, it's all very suspicious.'
and I think the same thing happens.

(11:57):
the way that the rule here is,you shouldn't publish things
that could prejudice the juryis very different to America.
And I think because the Internetis so American and so many of these
right-wing influences are really.
Either funded by or pluggedinto American internet.
They think it's oj you could justwrite everything you want about
a trial while it's going on.
And therefore there's something innatelysinister about the fact that our press

(12:19):
conducts itself in a very different way.
And it also fundamentally, bydoing that, our press also leaves a
vacuum of people who want to consumethis content and are not being
offered it by the mainstream media.

Ian (12:29):
It was interesting seeing a former police chief saying, is there
now a case of balancing the rightto a fair trial with the right for
your cities not to end up on fire?
is there something that the policeand the judiciary can do between
them that allows a fair trial stillto, to, be conducted but also.
To get in and stop the lie,putting its boots on before

(12:51):
it's halfway around the world.
And I think that's a reallyinteresting development.
And again, we have been writing aboutthis before in the magazine, but there
does come a point where you think thisis, we do things differently here to
the way they're done in the States.
Is there a way of getting an officialsource in earlier saying this isn't true?

Helen (13:10):
Yeah, I do wonder if our, rules around reporting are, actually sustainable
in the long term for exactly that reason.
one of the ways that this can happen, forexample, is, like the fake name thing.
If enough accounts tweak that, and itreally doesn't have to be very many,
it can really be a couple of hundred itwill then vary in a short space of time.
It will then show up in the trendingbar on Twitter, at which point

(13:31):
people see it and assume there'ssomething they're not being told.
They go and look for it.
Yeah.
And the way the engine of this worksis that then, hang on a minute.
It's not appearing in the mainstreamnews, which is just more proof that
they aren't reporting it, right?
It's this incrediblyself-reinforcing narrative.

Andy (13:44):
This happened recently with a story about Jay Slater, who's a
teenager who went missing on tenor reef.
He wasn't found for weeks and weeks.
There were searches all over theisland into which there stepped this
massive disinformation about washe involved in the Moroccan Mafia?
Was there, was he dealing drugs?
Was there all of this, his,his poor family were trying to

(14:05):
just cope with their, son beingsearched for and not being found.
Eventually he was found, he'dfallen into a ravine, he'd been
lost and he'd been out and he'd gonewalking and not found his way back.
And he, that was the simple truth of it.
But the number of people who've triedto talk to me about, oh, this is
interesting as Jay Slater thing, isn't it?
What do you think's going on there?

(14:26):
It's just another vacuum.

Helen (14:27):
That's the interesting thing about it.
Ultimately it, whatever, it turnsout the circumstances of his death
were, it's not something that isbeing covered up for any reason.
It was just a purely people notknowing as the search was going on.
Yeah.
And there is this kind of think whatyou're describing is that innate
suspicion that if you're not beingtold something, there must be.
A kind of, dirty reason for it ratherthan, it's this is when we talked about

(14:50):
this before, the simple inability todeal with the fact that some things
are currently unknown at any point.
That's the kind of tensionthat we're picking up here.
We talked about

Ian (14:57):
great repeating private eye print jokes is an enormous headline
that says Why did something happen?
And then in tiny lettersunderneath says, we don't know.
Yeah.
And that's the truth of the story.
Yeah.

Andy (15:09):
we had this with Kay Middleton at the start of the year, which
feels like ancient history.
Now we know.
Why aren't we being told what's happened?
Has, has she been bumped off and it's beencovered up and there's a mistress thing?
No, it's, she's ill and they just didn'twanna say so far and they've got young
children how many times Pause a vacuum.
Yeah.
How many times is, this going to happenbefore either rules or protocols change
about what is being put out there?

(15:30):
We dunno.
Yeah,
so now let's turn from somethingincredibly depressing to something...
else that's incredibly depressing.
Huw Edwards.
So this is a story that we covered a yearago on the podcast when Huw Edwards was,
removed from his job at the BBC supposedlyfor sending, explicit messages to someone
who might have been under the age of 18.

(15:51):
But the story was not reportedterribly well in The Sun.
And Adam, you wrote a lotabout this at the time.

Adam (15:56):
Yes, but readers may be confused as exactly how what's
happened now, the grimness of itrelates to, the, Sun Story last year.
And the simple answer to that is itdoesn't, the supposed 17-year-old who
may have been an 18-year-old, who, wasbeing talked about in The Sun last year,
who Huw Edwards had solicited 35,000pounds worth of explicit images from,

(16:17):
is nothing to do with this latest case,which is much, grimer and it's to do
with category A, B, and C photographsof very young children indeed.
Okay.
Which he's now pleaded guilty to.

Andy (16:26):
And so the just completely separate cases...

Adam (16:30):
The Sun clearly knew that he was a wrong one, and there's an awful
lot of other stuff come out about HuwEdwards since which, bears that out.
So this prosecution appearsto have risen out of the
conviction of another pedophile.
a man in his twenties in Cardiff,I think last May, , who once he was
convicted of distributing, imagesof child sex abuse, the police then
followed up all of his contacts, one ofwhom appears to have been Huw Edwards.

(16:50):
And that's where thesecharges, over 41 photos.
Came from.
So it's an entirely separate thing.
But interestingly, that Sun story isstill growing and metastasizing in a
way because, now The Sun famously didnot have the young man in question who
he can now refer to as a young man.
He was referred to as a young person.
Okay.
And The Sun suddenly got very keen ongender neutral pronouns, which are not

(17:11):
one of their usual areas of interest.
They, which we talked about before on thispodcast was because they were so worried
about outing Huw Edwards, that they gotthemselves into a bit of a tangle over
that and had to refer to him as "the childof the two people" who they did have on
the record, and we're talking to them whowere this person's mother and stepfather.
Now, this last weekend, the youngperson who's not particularly young

(17:34):
anymore, he's now 21, did give anexclusive interview, but not to The Sun

Andy (17:38):
okay?

Adam (17:39):
he's gone to The Mirror.
This is some proper old school tabloidrivalry here, that they have bought
up the son of the family, but thestepfather and the mum are still
with The Sun who attempted to do abit of a spoiler over the weekend.
It's very confusing.
Very.
See this footage that the son isnot with the son is in The Mirror.
S U N
So thank you.
Okay.

Andy (18:00):
Sorry.

Adam (18:00):
The Sun attempted to do a spoiler where they said, we've
got this video of the stepfatherconfronting Huw Edwards at a station.
And actually it turned out when youwatched the video, they didn't at all.
They had a video of Huw Edwardsstanding at a station, which
didn't seem particularly...
looked like the sort of thing thatanyone who spotted that man off
the news standing at a stationmight have videoed themselves.
So they slightly fell down on that one.
I,

Helen (18:19):
I wonder if it's time to say a word in.
praise of The Sun, really, whichis that at the time that story
came out, people maybe includingus were really critical of it.
But is there a case for saying thatthey actually had got a huge amount
of information on him and they werefairly sure that there was, he was
acting in various inappropriate ways.
This was the only one theycould get over the, line.

Adam (18:39):
I think they may be certainly Victoria Newton, the editor of the
Sun, did give an interview thisweek where she said they'd been
investigating Huw Edwards since 2018.
And other stories, if you rememberNews Night, at the time came out
with a load of allegations aboutinappropriate behavior towards,
younger, , members of staff at the BBC.
There's some more stuff has come aboutthat, including him inviting a young
producer over to stay in his hotelroom the night after he'd been covering

(19:01):
the funeral of Prince Philip, . Soit was a tip of the iceberg thing.
but yes, so there is something, as Isay, The Sun worked clearly onto him
being a wrong one, but not onto thespecifics, which turned out to be,
much, grimmer than I think even theyprobably at that point were expecting.

Ian (19:14):
And a huge amount of the coverage at the time was spent, in the media
criticizing the BBC's, either failureto investigate or its reaction to this,
, piece of information about The Sun andthe, 32,000 pounds worth of photographs.

Adam (19:29):
Yes.
the police were very quick to clear upthat particular thing and say that there
was no criminality involved in the,story that the sun were writing about.
And the young person in question was veryclear that he, at that point didn't want
any prosecution to take place and thoughtthat nothing illegal had gone wrong.
He has since then changed his tunein the latest, interview with
The Mirror and does say that henow feels that he was groomed.
And there are other cases as well ofpeople who come forward, and said that

(19:51):
Huw Edwards, sent messages and were ina very, controlling and grooming a way.
One of whom we, learned over the weekendis having therapy paid for by the BBC.
the, BBC have been on catch upwith all of this, and they have
to be fair to them, put, been putin a very, difficult situation.
, Huw Edwards was suspended.
Priti much the moment that he announced,through his wife and a PR company run by

(20:13):
Andy Coulson, ex News of the World fame.
And, John Stifel, who used to bedeputy editor, I think of the,
daily Mail came in and did it.
And what we said at the time wasan extraordinary good PR job,
which was to, put it in a cynicalway, play the mental health card.
And so that he was having treatmentfor his mental health, which at that
point killed the story completely.
Yep.
The BBC and no one elsecould comment at that point.
And when it emerged much, lateron, they heard from the police in

(20:35):
November that he had been arrestedon suspicion of, possession, of,
images of, of child sex abuse.
They were stuck in a position becausethey still, he was unavailable
for any sort of questioning.
the BBC very famously screwed this upwith Cliff Richard a long time ago when
there was a police investigation into him.
Ended up paying out an enormous amountof money, and there has now, because

(20:55):
of various legal, findings, which we'vetalked about on this podcast before,
there is now a precedent that youdon't name people, at, well a, while
a police investigation is ongoing.
But it did mean because Huw Edwardsis always top of that, awful chart
of the enormous amounts of money paidout by people at the BBC and even more
unfortunately for them, got a 40,000pound pay rise in the last year and
continued to be paid his salary...

(21:16):
there's an awful lot of money, licensedfee payers money, which has gone over
to him, not only during the period ofsuspension, but post-arrest as well.

Helen (21:23):
Getting your pay rise while you are suspended seems very ambitious.

Adam (21:26):
Tim Davies be very clear that the pay rise was agreed before.
before the suspensioneven, but it's not good.
The optics are absolutely bloody on.
The b CBC has to pay rise.
So you can see there's gonna besome internal anger as well as
there is an awful lot of internalanger at the B BBC over this,

Ian (21:43):
but this is the counter narrative, isn't it?
we are reading Huw Edwardswas a God, he was untouchable.
why on earth did everyone defer to him?
And my memory was that nearly everyonefrom the BBC didn't think he was a God.
They thought he was really tiresome andpompous and was given all the best jobs
for reasons they couldn't understand.
And the person who really thoughthe was brilliant was Huw Edwards.

(22:04):
So I, again, there's a bitof backstory here, surely.

Andy (22:09):
what should the BBC have done?

Adam (22:10):
It seems, I, can't quite work out how legally, I don't think they could have
done anything differently, but, morallyis a different thing to legally, isn't it?
Which is why it looks so bad now,Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary,
has suggested that they should tryin some way to claw back at least
the 200,000 pounds that they paidhim since his arrest in November.
Whether there's any sort of legalprecedent or, way to be able to do that.

(22:32):
it's a bit like, do you rememberrule that fuss over, Fred, the
shreds pension and whether therewas any way of clawing that back?
legally and contractually thesethings are quite sealed up.
may maybe we find a way maybe he willvoluntarily return some of that money.
He surely got enough of it by now.

Ian (22:46):
it's almost exactly the same point we were making about procedure, in the
previous discussion on the podcast, at thepoint in which the police told the BBC.
he's been, investigated.
He may be charged.
Is there an argument for saying this mightbe the point at which you stop paying him?
Is there some, halfway mechanism,which again balances these two sets of

(23:11):
rights between the police, don't wantyou, naming him so that it messes up
the investigation, but it's going tolook terrible in three months time?
I feel there must besomething that's possible.
It would

Adam (23:22):
be surprising if there wasn't a clause somewhere in that
contract about not bringing theBBC into disrepute, wasn't there?
yes.
Yeah, possibly.
There will.
She

Ian (23:28):
definitely has done, definitely very much has done.
Yes.
Yeah.

Andy (23:31):
I'm gonna have one last crack at covering something
that's not totally depressing.
I think we can do it.
I have great faith in us.

Helen (23:37):
Go on.
What's your cozy momentfor this, this episode,

Andy (23:39):
the Conservative Leadership Contest.
Oh, thank goodness.

Ian (23:44):
Great.
One of those Olympic sports.
That

Andy (23:46):
doesn't,
matter too much

Helen (23:48):
if you don't cheer up at the hit, just the sound of the words.
Mel Stride.
Then are you even alive?

Andy (23:53):
You're right.
The starting gun has been firedand there are just three short
months to go, of waking up everymorning seeing how everyone's doing,
putting more bets on all of that.
I would imagine everyone in theconservative party had their
bets on weeks ago, haven't they?
yeah, I'm Priti confident about mytenner on Penny Mordant, actually.

(24:14):
5% of the parties, MPs are standing.
Just a few stats for you.

Helen (24:17):
You only needed 10 MP's nominations to stand.
And Suella Braverman said she,totally could have got that many.
But that, yeah, it was clear thatthe party disagreed with her.
Was it like "my diagnosisof my prescription", I think
was the phrase she used?
So she will not be.

Andy (24:29):
Okay.
The doctor will not be delighting us.
All right.
so we've got, six for August.
Then in September it'llbe whittled down to four.
And then there will be hustings,which will remove two more.
And finally, there'll be a full vote ofTory members, and the new leader will
be announced on the 2nd of November.

Ian (24:44):
Squid game!

Andy (24:47):
it's long.
It's long.
So the, we should, just quickly talk.
The candidates are Pritti Patel.
James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch,Tom Tugenhat, Robert Jenrick.
And let's not forget Mel Stride.
I have found every single one of thesedescribed at some point or another
over the last couple of months as thefront runner in the race, with the
exception of Mel Stride, who no onehas yet described as the front runner.
But there is always time.

(25:08):
Do

Helen (25:08):
it now.

Andy (25:08):
I think he's the front runner.
Hey.
Hey.
You know what?
At least Mel's tried.
Oh

Adam (25:12):
gosh.
Sorry.
Awful.
I was trying to do somethingwith Tom tugging hat into the
ring, but it doesn't know.
It just doesn't know.
Oh no.
who would you like to know about first?
Mel Stride.
I'm fascinated.
I think there's a bizarrethought Experiment with fraud.
try this.
Listeners.
Try and picture Mel Stride.
In your head right now.

(25:33):
I bet you can't.
I've got, he's ubiquitousduring the election campaign,
but he's just there, isn't he?

Ian (25:41):
I've got Mel Smith, and Meryl Streep.
I've got

Adam (25:45):
Scho Mel from The

Andy (25:46):
Simpsons.
As far as I, honestly, I like the lookof Mel Stride, oh, so you'll have heard
if you're a sort of nerd who's listeningto this podcast, you will have probably
listened to him on the radio doing allthe media rounds, the run up the election.
'cause everyone else was trying to savetheir own skins and Mel generously,
and nobody stepped up to the plate.
He, here's a fun fact about him.
He has the fifth smallestwhat in the House of Commons.

Helen (26:09):
Majority.
It's 61 and very good.
I know this because I, thinkit is genuinely one of the big
things that counts against him.
If, and he'd actually did the same thing.
That poor old what Ed Balls did it.
In which election was it?
That he went and campaigned in everyoneelse's constituencies very generously.
And then that's when he lost his seat.
So it can hubris, can beswiftly followed by Unanim.

Adam (26:27):
Did you say majority of 61?
61.

Helen (26:29):
61

Andy (26:30):
...is the fifth smallest.
The fifth smallest.
There are four smaller than that.

Adam (26:34):
Is this why he's going for it?
'cause you get a bumpfor being Prime Minister.
Oh, prime...
the leader of the opposition.
God, old habits do die hard.
We do.

Andy (26:40):
yeah, the smallest majority at the moment is 15.
15 votes.

Adam (26:44):
Who's that?

Helen (26:44):
Rich Holdens is quite small.
That's

Andy (26:46):
Hendon.
Rich Holdens is between 15 and 61.
There we go.
Oh yeah.
Anyway, I'm interested in Stridebecause I think it's nice we're talking.
It's probably the longest anyoneso far in the campaign has talked
about Mel Stride and I like that.

Helen (26:57):
Has he got a heat pump?
That why?
I dunno.

Andy (27:01):
I dunno.

Adam (27:02):
He's got the six smallest heat pump in the Commons!

Andy (27:06):
He talked about changing the shape of the party.
'cause I think no matter whathappens in over the next three-

Ian (27:13):
What from very, very small...
to non-existent!

Andy (27:17):
Whatever happens over the next three months, they've got the
same method for picking the leader,which has produced such golden hits
as Liz Truss, Ian Duncan Smith,
you cut it down to the last two.
Among the MPs and then the membershipchoose whoever is the matter of those two.
That's a tried and tested formula.
And there was a speculation that oneof the last things Rishi Sunak might do
in his much more comfortable positionas Leader of the Opposition might

(27:38):
be to change that system possiblyso that just the MPs get to pick.
That hasn't been changed.
So we are going to get the matter of thetwo of whoever's remaining in October

Helen (27:47):
And there is precedent.
Michael Howard, when he was leaderof the opposition did exactly that
he changed the rules precisely 'causehe wanted a much longer, process.
'cause he thought that wouldbe more likely to lead to David
Cameron rather than David Davis.
And no, he was correct.

Andy (28:00):
Yeah.
And so there's been some tinkering aroundthe edges with the length of the context,
but the shape of it basically is the same.
Strider said, we've got to turn thisinto a mass movement organization."
exactly, what you're saying andwhere people are involved because
there's something in it for them.
Okay.
that doesn't sound very different to thetraditional thing, but is that, is he
talking about increasing the membership?
Because so far it is been a, one way...

(28:21):
trajectory for the membershipin the last 20 years or so.
And that does produce odder results, aswe've discussed on this podcast before.
But he has said he's not gonnatake strong positions on issues,
which I find fascinating.
That's the approach because he wasinterviewed by Politics Home and he said
that he thinks "candidates should not tryto appeal to sections of the membership."
His words.
I dunno, what contest he thinks he's in.

Ian (28:42):
he's, been watching Keir Starmer over the last three months; do not
have strong positions on anythingin the run up to an election.
It works!

Adam (28:49):
Prime Minister's Questions would be amazing if they both just stood there.
The, leader of opposition of the promiseis just going, ah, I, I don't know.
I know, I don't know.
What do you think could be, but that's
really, he might be right

Andy (28:58):
And he's the only one who said on the ECHR, I'm not gonna
give a strong opinion about whetherwe leave the ECHR or not, because
that's not what my job should be.
It's not about whether the leaderbelieves in that, which is a very
strange and different position.

Helen (29:11):
Does he think he's in the Green Party?
That's what's happened here.

Andy (29:14):
I dunno.
Also,

Helen (29:15):
don't you think all of that is a coded rebuke to Kemi Badenoch, who
is probably the actual front runnerwho has got a strong opinion on Priti
much everything that has ever happened?

Andy (29:24):
Kemi Badenoch former minister for, was it women and equalities?
Secretary of State for business?
And minister for askingyou out for a fight

Helen (29:30):
That was the Minister of Have It Outside?

Andy (29:32):
yeah.

Helen (29:33):
No, it's, I'm in the middle of reading her, the biography of
her by Lord Ashcroft at the moment.
And it, she, from her earliestdays, she was quite tasty.
She turned up at university anddobbed in one of her flatmates for
taking drugs and they got expelled.
she, woman who knows her ownmind, shall we put it that way.

Andy (29:51):
She, has been described as the front runner, hasn't she?
in lots of places.
The odds

Helen (29:55):
are on her.
Does Michael

Adam (29:56):
Gove

Andy (29:57):
know that?
'cause he's her strong

Adam (29:58):
backer, isn't he?

Helen (30:00):
Yeah.
She's very opposed to that sort of thing.
James Cleverly in other situations,you would think would be a very
strong candidate having beenhome and foreign secretary.
but I, my sense is a bit like JeremyHunt might just be a bit too normal.

Andy (30:12):
Sensible,

Helen (30:12):
yeah.
For the Tory membership, who likethe, exciting taste of Liz Truss.

Ian (30:17):
Again, I mean portrayed as Batshit Man in, in the pages of Private Eye weekly
in the great comic strip, due to the factthat having said, Rawanda was batshit, as
an idea, which it obviously was, he thenpretended it was a terrific idea, for the
rest of his time as Foreign Secretary.

Helen (30:36):
he's not a great

Ian (30:37):
candidate,

Helen (30:37):
is he?
Don't you think Sue Bravermandoes think that Rwanda is good?
Wouldn't you rather havesomeone who's lying about that
than somebody who genuinely isuninterested enough to believe it?

Ian (30:47):
I'm not gonna answer that.
It's one of those,
"I don't know..."

Andy (30:50):
Cleverly pitch is, as you say, as a centrist, and he's also said the
party shouldn't be quote, "sacrificingpragmatic government in the national
interest on the altar of ideologicalpurity", which again, does raise the
question of where he spent the last fewyears, because that his a stock in trade.

Helen (31:05):
I know, I'm just, I, for a while he was the kind of
designated broadcast minister inthe way that Mel Stride is now.
So I did lots of things alongsidehim and he had to defend during the
Brexit years some Priti wacky shit.
And I remember thinking, this iswhy I couldn't be a politician.
'cause you're sitting there going,when we might get this legislation
passed, hope springs eternal.
but he was always quite pleasant andnon weird in a way that I could not

(31:27):
say the same of everyone on that list.

Ian (31:29):
But what about when he sat the Commons and quite clearly said
shithole and then said he didn't.

Helen (31:34):
yeah, I mean he does seem to mostly get in trouble by saying things
that accurately represent his beliefs.
Indeed, they're true,

Adam (31:40):
but they do all contain the word shit.
They're gonna go weird.
They are going to go weird.
they were seriously considering awhile back, coming Ian Duncan Smith
back as interim leader, weren't they?
You with the Rishi standing down.
all this went on, which is just, if you,if Ian Duncan Smith is the answer, you
are definitely asking the wrong questions.

Andy (31:57):
Priti Patel is also standing and she would be the third MP with
an Essex constituency to be standing.
So this might well be an Essex stitch up.
Three outta six from Essex.

Helen (32:05):
The really interesting thing about Priti Patel's constituency is
she's also going for the Unite theParty that 'can't we all get a long'
approach, which is somewhat inconsistentwith her previous approach to politics.
But she wrote a Telegraph op-ed that was'put aside her ideological differences...
shouldn't we be more goodat building people homes?
But not in the greenbelt,' she was,she's definitely, and she came out and
condemned Nigel Farage's statement onthe riots and there has been this big

(32:29):
question about whether or not it's her

Andy (32:30):
former dance partner from the Conservative conference.
It's so sad she

Helen (32:33):
can danced with 'em, but

Andy (32:34):
she will not

Helen (32:35):
support

Ian (32:35):
him, isn't it, in terms of sheer disillusionment.

Helen (32:38):
But it is interesting that line has now been drawn.
'cause I think Suella Braverman is in,has been in lots of those very fringey
Conservative conferences that, or thekinds, the nationalist conferences
that also invite Nigel Farage.
So Priti Patel has clearly decided that.
you never go full bonkers.

Adam (32:53):
Priti Patel's gone very, quiet since she left the cabinet.
I've hardly heard anythingout of her at all.

Helen (32:58):
Yeah.
She hasn't been turning up at thoseweird kind of national conservatism
conferences and things like that inthe way that Suella Braverman did.
So there is an interesting, I alwayswondered at what point the Conservative
Party would claw its way back totowards wanting to appeal to the centre.
I thought it might takethem one more go round.
I think in a way my presumptionwould be that it'd be Kemi Badenoch.
'cause they really need toget it out their systems...
We really stand up for whatwe believe in, even when most

(33:19):
people don't agree with us on it.
And then they might go, oh, what aboutif we compromise with the electorate?
And like in another cycle's time?
But we'll see.

Ian (33:26):
They did do Liz Truss, didn't they?
Yeah.
So they have tried it out once.

Helen (33:31):
And then, but then Rishi Sunak was then crowned by the MPs.
So have they only had 49brief days of Liz Truss?
Was it enough?
Was it

Ian (33:38):
Not nearly enough.

Andy (33:39):
No.
No.
Tom Tugenhat?
Is there any appetite for-

Adam (33:42):
Tommy Tugs!

Andy (33:43):
Tommy,

Helen (33:43):
Stop it.
I wish you didn't say that.

Ian (33:45):
Don't like that.

Adam (33:46):
The nickname I'm not supposed to use in the office

Helen (33:48):
It upsets me.
But he's got the same problem as, as well.
Ian pointed out as James Clever'sproblem, which is that he was very,
sopping, wet centrist candidate.
And he's now saying, 'I thinkmaybe we should leave the European
conventional on human rights.
That's the kind of thingyou people like, isn't it?'

Adam (34:02):
Isn't this about his third time around as well?
I feel like Tom Tugenhat hasbeen running for the leadership,

Andy (34:06):
second or third, definitely

Adam (34:07):
since about 2000.

Helen (34:08):
Yeah.
He
came
fifth in 2022 and, Kemi Badenochcame forth, which was not a bad
result for her, given that she wasin that point very little known, but

Ian (34:17):
yes,
We literally have been doing the,Tom's put his Togan hat in the ring
every single year that I can remember.
so yes, He's been around a long time.

Adam (34:27):
That's literally all I know.
he has, he had, he was, hein the cabinet at some point?
Literally all I know about him ishe was being mooted as a leadership.
He may have, they always thought

Ian (34:34):
he should do defense.
He shared C committee because he'dbeen in the Army, but he didn't
chair that select committee.
He said lots of things about Chinathat turned out to be quite true.
he did have a sort of sense baseand as he says, unfortunately he's
decided that's not the way to win.

Andy (34:50):
But this is a really interesting.
switcheroo dynamic in this race.
All the centrist, boring liberalones are saying, no, we need to
leave everything and we need to,

Helen (34:59):
bring back the birch, tow the island

Andy (35:00):
into the middle of the Atlantic.
All of this stuff.
Yeah.
And all the ex nutters are,making some very emollient noises.
Weird.

Helen (35:10):
I'm genuinely really interested in what will happen.
In a way it's, as you say, apart from thekind of Essex dominance, it's also, it's
a very wide open race in terms of, gender,ethnicity and class like that is genuinely
quite interesting that is not a factor in,the Conservative leadership and suggests
Britain is in a slightly better placethan you might otherwise have thought.

Andy (35:30):
Five front runners and mouse stride.

Adam (35:32):
it is, that is something actually we should pay tribute to.
'cause that's true of the lastcouple of, of Conservative
leadership elections as well.
They don't mind, having ethnic minoritieson team and they don't mind women
either, which is something Labour alwayshad a problem with elect as leaders.
Yeah.

Andy (35:47):
Fun fact about Tom Togan hurt.
One of his donors so far isa man named Michael Tory.
That's nice, isn't it?
Which I mean, if you've lostMichael Tory, you've really, yeah.
Anyway, that is his

Helen (35:57):
hang minute.
Have you not mentioned the mostgeneric of all the candidates?
Robert.
Robert.
Generic.

Andy (36:02):
Generic.
There we go.
This is one of his ex nicknames.

Helen (36:05):
Yeah.
Robert Jenrick.
What happened to him?
Because he got, he was incabinet and then he was, he,

Andy (36:10):
so he's, he was a immigration minister under Rishi Sunna.
He resigned over a pointof principle in Rwanda.
Before that, he was seen asa, slightly centrist, very, un
sort of controversial figure.
He was briefly a health minister, LizTrusts made him a health minister.
And so But I did read in a profileof the spectator that this has given

(36:32):
him 'an insight into the bureaucracyof the healthcare system.' Alright.

Ian (36:36):
What, was his role when he, decided that in the children's asylum
you should paint over the welcoming,friendly cartoon and it should be white.
'cause we don't want immigrant childrenin particular to feel that this is a
nice, smiley country they've come for.
I think that was his immigration

Adam (36:53):
minister.
that was, was, he was Suella'ssort of deputy, wasn't he?
And didn't he make the same mistakeof resigning on a point of principle
about the same time that she wassacked and it slightly went unnoticed?
I think.

Andy (37:02):
He has definitely pitched as the, I'm the candidate of the right and he's,
he wants to bring back the Rwanda scheme.
He wants to stop the boats.
He wants to build more houses,more prisons, and definitely
wants to leave the ECHR.
I think that's not an unfaircharacterization of his.
Can I just point out that

Adam (37:17):
he's known for one other thing?
Which involves our greatly lamenteddeparted, one of our favorite press
proprietors on Street of Shame.
Richard Desmond, friend of podcast.
Yeah.
Moved into, property development,in fact, with the old, west Ferry
printers, site that used to printthe Daily Express in the Daily Star.
And Robert Jenrick made what wouldturned out to be an unlawful decision
over the, the fact that, RichardDesmond didn't want to spend 40

(37:41):
million pounds on, on supplying, socialhouses and, stuff for the community,
which is one of the conditions.
Of the development beingpassed by the local council,
Robert Jenrick overruled them.
And then a judge overruled him andsaid it was an unlawful decision,
so let's not forget that one.

Ian (37:56):
And he was complicated by, Richard Desmond, who's actually formerly known
as Dirty Des, gave quite a large sumof money at a fundraising due when he
was sitting next to, Robert Jenrick andshowing him videos of how wonderful the
West Ferry development was gonna look.

Adam (38:11):
Yeah, it was fairly, straight up uhhuh.
He

Ian (38:14):
It was, yes, it was straight up.
What word are we looking for here?
Are we looking for 'dirty'?
'Dirty Would do.
Dirty Certainly do.

Andy (38:23):
He wants more prisons built.
And maybe that's because heknows he'll get the contract.
So that's it for this episode of Page 94.
We do hope you've enjoyed listening.
If you'd like to get a bit more Page94, in print form, then you can buy

the associated magazine (38:37):
Private Eye.
Just go to private-eye.co.Uk.
Click the button mark, subscribe,and you'll be sent a copy...
almost as inexpensive asthis podcast is to listen to.
It's really a bargain.
Cannot recommend it enough.
We'll be back again in twoweeks with another of these.
We're going to be doinga summer culture special.
How excited that's gonnabe for your holidays.

(38:58):
It's gonna be great.
So tune in then.
We've never trailed thenext episode before.
I think we should startdoing it all the time.

Helen (39:05):
And in the interim, if you want to read my review of, Kemi Badenoch,
biography by Lord Ashcroft, thatwill be appearing in the magazine

Andy (39:12):
Yet another good reason to buy the next edition and all the
subsequent ones of Private Eye Magazine.
Thanks to Ian, Helen and Adam andthanks to Matt Hill of Rethink
Audio who produced this episode...
as he produces all the episodes.
And thank you for listening.
Goodbye.