121: Reasons To Be Keir-Ful

Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the private eye office with Helen Lewis, Matt Muir and Ian Hislop. We are here to discuss the news, not only of the last week since the last edition of the magazine came out, but also the near future as well, because there's a lot of exciting stuff about to happen. We're all back to. School back to term.

Yeah. And I should point out we are, back at school 'cause if we are not, we're gonna be fine. So I'm very glad to see you all in attendance apart from MacQueen. Yeah. who I hope will be paying the penalty.

He's been having a holiday outside of term time and we should make him pay 200 pounds for it. Yeah.

Yes. At least. Yes. Things are worse than we ever imagined. Oh, I've slipped into quoting again. Sorry. but this is the new, dominant note of, the government. Certainly in the short term at least, is things are really awful. We're gonna be honest. This is disgusting. Look at this mess. Look at it.

I'm enjoying it Hugely. A, I just, I'm Doism, or Doomers as we all are now, Baby Doomers for, those who are younger, you're gonna have to get used to this. And it's a great strategy because essentially the press in particular want to say things are terrible under Labour. And Keir Starmer is saying, yeah, they are. They really are. But they won't be in the future. I'm just happy, that we can have a different note because we had quite a lot of boosterism. You, do you remember Boris?

And you are a, I think a contrarian on the domer line of thought because everywhere I've seen the argument that this is a really counterproductive strategy. yes. But you think it might actually work a bit.

I'm not sure that, it's taken into account, the British love, the idea that we're all going to hell in a hand cart. and online everyone says, it's all finished, the world's over. and SEC's twist is, we're going to hell in a hand cart, but we're gonna turn the corner and we're gonna come back again. And I think this will, I think this will appeal. Interesting. So I refuse to be downbeat, which is, very contrary. But I do think it's ing that he's decided. He'll be, private Fraser from Dad's Army.

It's quite Continuity Sunak in a way. And that was a bit of a message, wasn't it? We, we've had a lot of tough times. We're turning the corner now. That was the Sunak message, whereas this is more Yes. That was tricky

though, because the tough times were previous Tory Prime ministers. Yeah. So let's turn the page from my predecessors in my party and I was

chancellor, which is a bit of a bad look. And Rachel Reeves, they, mirror very well. The full on gloom. and I do think, it's part of a, obviously it's part of a strategy, but it is a way of saying, everyone knows that when you, promise too many things, And then you don't deliver any of them. Q previous government people start hating Q hate us now. and I think this is very innovative. I love the fact that it was in the Rose Garden and for those of our readers who are of a certain age.

right

along with the sunshine, Andy. There comes a little rain sometime and I think that particular song is perhaps more thematic than any other Labour anthem.

God dear, Thero, the roses have

been deadheaded.

Yeah. And I know he should have had, he should have a sort of decaying Halloween backdrop. Shouldn't he gothic, like wilted tulips or something? I, the counter point to that is, so everyone I think will obviously mention Keynes's idea of animal spirits, right? The idea that markets want to hear this kind of story of, integration and growth. I think you are right, Ian. I think the thing they're worried about is everybody coming to them with their handout stretched.

There's another pay increase coming along down block

three. Yeah, that was buses. Hang on. Yeah, but I just wonder if they, I felt that made them look like Muppets. I wonder if they feel that too. And, but then you've got, they've got some big, they've got the Infected Blood scandal bill coming, for example, which is pretty large. and they have got the junior doctor settlement and they, all of these things are coming. Our cover last week was about the taking away, the winter fuel allowance from wealthier pensioners.

There was a bit of a debate about whether. In the closing days of August, a winter fuel payments cover was the most topical, but it was a really big story at the time.

It was a lovely picture of a penguin. My theory is always, you can't go wrong with putting an animal on the cover. Look, I

was on the holiday in Greece and it was very warm there.

There's a solution. Yeah, just, global warming. Move the elderly to Greece. Yeah.

I like the idea that this, the Starless doism is somehow an appeal or an attempt to appeal to younger voters who are, famously not wholly enthused by the proposition of the label putting forward for them. Because basically this is a generation that lies in bed. It bed rots, it doom crawls what is more on brand than they know you. You are, entirely right guys. Everything is screwed. Stay in bed. Yep. Yeah,

Do you remember how we heard about Liam Burns "I'm sorry there's no money" left note for 14 long years, and I thought they're passing What, Labour have proposed what they unofficially calling the Liz Truss Bill, which is the idea that the Office of Budget responsibility will have to vet all, fiscal statements like 10 weeks beforehand, which is essentially to say Liz Trust's mini budget ruined the country, which was a very appealing message to them, and I thought, we're

hope so. And, I do hope

you just love misery.

I do hope we'll be hearing more from her. Oh. 'cause it, in terms of comedy, it's very important that, that keeps going. But again, I, the other thing about the doism is it's just there is a narrative that everybody now. Says on social media and papers to say, oh look, this argument that the national budget is somehow like a household budget and you can actually run outta money. how naive and pathetic is that? And I'm thinking to myself, look, countries do sometimes run outta money.

Robert Genrich is now doing a, a George Osborn, turnaround. He's, looking and looking very,

svelte.

It's felt is a lovely way of putting it. Yeah. but he has taken Ozempic

hasn't he? Can he accuses me of being obsessed with who it has and hasn't in politics. Taken a emek. It's, and my private running title, but Robert General is one of the few who's admitted it certainly,

I'd like to imagine. That's why I was looking at. Actually at the, tour leadership candidates political ad spend over the course of the past month, because that's how I like to have fun in the morning. And, turns out that, none of them really spent anything apart from Genrich who's chucked 12 grand, adverts over the course of the past month promoting his leadership bid.

is this more, less, is more from

the Tories is you're gonna have to tighten your belt. So there, there is a, thing about, sort of personal optimism, which I wonder if, Labour have taken into account. I'm just, I'm interested in this because there's something about the fact that people tend to be optimistic about their own personal lives if they're polled about it and pessimistic about the national, mood that people tend to think their personal finance is going to improve in the next year.

lot with crime. People say, how do you think the country is riddled with crime? They go, yes. I hear it's terrible out there. People, constantly and they say, what you about your neighborhood? And they go, actually my neighbor's quite nice. Yeah. It just seems to be people mowing their lawn and Yeah. It's a sort of negativity bias.

Yeah. In terms of the Doism, I think part of this is, we've talked about not wanting to be Osborne, but it's, part of it is not wanting to be Blair. I'm sure Seki would love to get away from Blair, he's on the television most of the time or in the paper telling you what to do, but. I couldn't help thinking because I'm slightly older than some of you. the rose colored spectacles, not paid for by Wade, that are being applied to 97 are extraordinary.

I think things were better when I was young, generally, but I think that may be a, and it turns out from the massive interest in Oasis tickets that everyone in my generation also agrees with this as they spend 300 pounds to watch a man who can't sing, so extra a man who hates him. There we go.

but basically it sounds like Ian, you are very pro doom and it sounds like you are going to get lots more of it. So good news for you.

I'm pro doom 'cause I've had enough of, birdie boosterism, to last me forever. I'm interested where being, pro Doom turns into Puritanism. and I think the anti cigarette thing is quite interesting. and telling people. If they're going to have a tough time is slightly different from telling people they're not going to enjoy anything ever again. and that, that might be a bit of a gift. Yes. So I do think it'll be interesting to watch that.

Tom Watson did a great tweet about that, which was you ate an ostrich anus during the parliamentary term, which is a fairly unanswerable charge. I tell was anybody who's

been paying attention to politics for the past 14, 15 years, we've seen a selection of horrendous videos of Tori's dancing at their party conference to a selection of terror, I'm sorry. Yes, equal opportunities for terrible political dancing.

one of the people he defended there was Michael Gave, who said, I strongly believe in community safety. He's being allowed to terribly dance in public. So what

about Pretty Patel and Nigel Farage? No. There we go. I wanna

know. you're all puritans at heart, but think this podcast is pro dancing. I think we can say that. Yeah.

Okay, good. But the weird thing is that the Tories will now, as you say, criticize that idea of smoking ban in pub Gardens, having not three months ago, had a policy that was under 18, should never be allowed to smoke ever in their lives anywhere at any point. So it's really interesting to watch them try and balance those libertarian instincts. depends on them. We get your fav, your Caesar head, Faye Rob Genrich as Tori leader,

And will he be, telling us all to take Ozempic? Will he be putting that on the health service? I read a report saying pic. Enhances your mental capacities. it's time then. just

on the Ozempic point, if you ever want to cast iron bits of proof about the power of, well-funded public relations by the pharmaceutical industry the past six months have headlines about ozempic are an excellent, example of that.

I will have more on this piece in the magazine. Thank you, pat.

so we now turn to, What Helen did on her summer holidays, which was go to the Democratic National Convention. Yes. Because, Helen, you've been, writing a bit, about, American politics and there's been a development since the end of the DNC, which is from the other side of the aisle. Donald Trump's, great big podcast tour of the USA.

Yeah, he's having a, lovely time. Actually, it's funny, we talked about Duma Tism here because the big theme of the Democratic convention was joy. You had Oprah saying, only Kamala can bring Joy. Everything will be joy. but at the same time it came to programming to the Democratic convention was that Trump went on the podcast of a Louisiana former, standup comedian called Theo Von.

when you describe him as a professional fighter, you mean someone who actually physically fights as opposed to the Kemi Beja knock model of professional fighter of this. Okay.

there's a very funny thing if you ever look at any of these people, the best thing to do is looked at their Wikipedia entries and look at the controversy section. 'cause there's always the maddest stuff you've ever seen, right? Logan Paul's one says. Japanese suicide forest controversy. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

has a small boy wants to know, what's it like taking Coke? Yeah. Is it great? What's it like hitting people?

Is

that good? Or, I'd like to hit people. I'd like to and take Coke. Is are we saying he's in fact a 13-year-old trying to appeal to slightly older boys who've got the vote?

there's an interesting question about the demographics of these things. So Theo V's. Podcast has, I think it's 3 million subscribers, thereabouts. Logan Paul's has. significantly more, if I'm not mistaken. However, if you dig into the numbers, it does seem significantly likely that a large proportion of those listeners are going to be 13-year-old boys. And one, one does wonder exactly what electoral impact this is gonna have at the ballot box come the 4th of November.

It is also a, way of looking at it is, and whole new alternative ecosystem has been melded together of a couple of different things in commercial and sports. So lots of these people are linked by, Dana White, who is the president, USC, ultimate Fighting Champion. Which Trump goes to a lot, right? Because he's the kind of guy who grew up with casinos and hotels, and then all of this kind of fighting industries that you go and watch these.

can I just say the I Energy Drink

and a J Yeah. Is

incredibly effective and it's available. quite soon. Absolutely. Herbert Gassett swears by it, it keeps him feeling just 94 years old.

Definitely

doesn't contain cocaine.

yeah. But they do, they all, the Daily Wire, which is behind a big ultra conservative culture war site in the US has its own range of vitamins that are called, I think Responsible Man. And it says, because you need. To be No, because you need to be ready, like fighting ready for the cultural battles we face. We now have anti woke vitamins, is where we now are.

But cultural battles, they're not muscle pills. They're,

they're are. 'cause you have to be fighting for, to make arguments on the internet.

I

see, But

All of this kind of stuff that a particular tendency of kind of men's not

going to storm itself.

And you need fit bodies there. Yeah. But there's, something interesting about the strategy as well to. Pick up on what Helen was saying. So if you look at, if you look at the amount of money that's currently being spent on digital advertising in the us elections right over the past month, the Harris campaign since basically she was, or since Biden's resignation, at which point it became obvious that she was the defacto pick.

But that does remind me of Bo, there was a thing where Boris Johnson, remember that election campaign where he just used to dress up and someone said this as what an 8-year-old boy thinks grown up jobs are like. Like here I am, I'm a builder. I'm in a hard hat. Like they were all like little but, and but, and I think this is a sort of slightly more. Coked out version of that really. But you are right. The Harris campaign has taken a completely different media approach. It's paying for it all.

which, is the Trump. Trumpy model of conversation is this, to that, to this, to that. in terms of the audience who are watching these things, assuming that they're not all 13-year-old boys, as Matt points out, assuming a good chunk of them at least do have the vote, is it likely to work? there's a

huge split in gender terms in the us. Traditionally, there hasn't been that massive agenda split in voting norms, but in the US at the moment, it is really big, particularly among young people. Young women are really in the tank for the Democrats.

is this the incel tour really?

it, I'd say it's, incel adjacent. There was, an excellent piece of writing by a guy called Ryan Broderick, about this, who basically posited that, the entire appeal of the Trump campaign over the past eight years is pretty much being like going after people who really just don't like themselves very much and feel quite uncomfortable with who they are. And appealing to those very specific vulnerabilities.

presented in very racial terms, but it's not just young white men either. Joe Rogan's audience, I think is about a quarter, of that, of the young male demographic. Listen to it is Hispanic or black. And there is a sort of sense of like solidarity between the races in America. For young men is, that is a big, you have more in common than you do with women of the same race as you, which again, is very different to how politics has traditionally worked in kind of voting blocks in America.

so one of the interesting things about the targeting of this is that, it's not just the demography in terms of age and gender split, that's peculiar and skew's quite young and very male, but it's also the fact that many of these podcasts are very international. Joe Rogan, for example, is a truly global proposition, and whilst obviously it's an English language thing, it gets translated and clipped into lots and lots of other an anchors worldwide.

and it must be tricky. I presume that a lot of Theo Von viewers or listeners also watch Logan Paul and also watch Adam Ross and also watch blah. But that's, unavoidable.

there's an argument to suggest that, as, we, noticed during the election campaign over here, Kier kept on saying his dad was a tool maker. Because unless you say something 3 million times, the average voter will not retain it, which means that you are

kidding.

He was a tool maker. That's all I've heard.

There is an interesting thing though, which is it creates an intellectual climate and a kind of current, so even in our, politics, you will see the way that the Tory party is struggling to not bend towards some of the opinions of these people struggling not to bend towards the opinions of the American right, which are very minority opinions here.

but Trump's was the ultimate booster essentially. And he got into power by saying, I'm great. It'll be great. Things will be great. And I get the feeling. He's now without an act, because, he's got to say things are gonna be terrible, particularly under, this new joyful and happy Democratic party. So what, can he do? ' do as far as I, I gather it. that group of people that he's going through on the podcast want to hear that everything's awful.

yes and no. So one of the big blocks of Trump's support last time was people who are quite wealthy in America but don't have a college degree. So one of the ways that this was described as a kind of demographic was like boat people, like people who are wealthy enough to own a boat, but they don't feel like they're part of a cultural elite. Isn't here, isn't it? I don't feel

Trump's going

for the boat people landing in Kent.

People who would have a kind of, miniature yacht that'd be called something like, box and bell. And they'd more it in Florida, and where they'd come have their winters, but they would feel that the kind of snooty bike, coastal elites looked down on them. And there's a very telling moment in the Theo Von Podcast where. he says, under me, we had the greatest economy ever. The economy was amazing. And Theon says, yeah, my cousin bought a boat.

Now I have another quiz question for you all. Who here has an app called Telegram on their phone? I do. You are nicked Helen, and you are nicked Matt. Mine's the Daily Telegram.

Got an actual telegram every day.

Matt, can you tell us a little bit about not only, telegram itself, but also about its founder pov who has recently been arrested in Paris?

telegram is a slightly difficult app to describe. it's part messaging app and it's part social media platform. And effectively the way it works is like all of these things, you can share messages with people, either one to one or with multiple people in groups. Or you can have groups of up to 200,000 people. All of which can communicate with each other, which can be subdivided into different channels that can broadcast different types of things. And this can be written video, images, et cetera.

Anti weight vitamins are only a click away. but the, the persistent question, isn't it about telegram, is to what extent it really is at arms length from the Russian state, as you say, power dur of. Went into exile in Dubai. he obviously recently arrested in France. He's got a number of different passports. Hasn't he's got one from St. Kits. Nevis. He's got a French one. He's got a Russian one I believe, if

I'm not mistaken, UAE. 'cause telegram is currently based in Dubai for legal reasons, although interestingly, it's server architecture is spread all around the world, which makes it incredibly evil. Not incredibly easy, but it makes it very hard for specific domestic legal setups to prosecute them meaningfully because the data is so distributed that the jurisdiction for overseeing the use of that data is very, fragmented and hard to effectively track.

And presumably it's a national border thing that's happening in France on Telegram. Therefore, they've arrested him.

There is one charge which pertains to running unlicensed encryption tools. Within France, and it's this that is getting people's culture war backs up. as you can imagine, the arrest of this man who runs, what is in part an encrypted messaging service, it's not entirely encrypted. You have to opt into the encryption, which is one of the other reasons why it's in a very interesting position. because not everything on its encrypted.

part the more interesting one, I would say is. Is Tucker Carlson, if you remember of lately, of having traveled to Moscow to hear from Vladimir Putin about various incidents and grievances from many centuries of Russian history. And this has always been one of the big question marks about Telegram. It was, it is the, as well as you say, Hamas, isis, others. It is the defacto communication system for the Russian Army. And you, it was very popular in Ukraine as well.

and

which he denies, I should say.

He does deny, but I was. Reading something interesting in the key of independent about the fact that he's traveled back to Russia approximately 60 times during his supposed exile.

and he's never fallen outta a window once. No, I, rest my case, possibly

coincidentally, when he flew into France and was arrested, he flew in from Azerbaijan where he'd just been for a few days. Coincidentally, Vladimir Putin had also been in as I'm,

it's lovely this time of year. That's what they always say about as correlation,

of course, not equal and causation, but yes.

it does remind me of something of the covers a great deal, which is the. The trickiness of pinning down international and offshore money, except this is international and offshore information and country. If until all 193 countries agree to crack down on offshore money, then it's going to exist in an enormous way. And this is exactly the same thing happening all over again. And it's about which countries will and won't. Do something.

and as Matt says all over the place, but you are right, there is a form of digital nationalism that's emerging. So China has, from the start of this era, said. We're having our own social media networks. We're not letting other people's in. We want to be entirely in charge of, Baidu and WeChat and all the kind of stuff that's there. And there are certain things you can't say on those things. We are, we are not gonna pretend this is about free speech at all. No. You use our controlled apps.

But the same arguments as with banking apply with, information. And as soon as. Anybody begins to take the mildest form of action, which we're all told is hopeless and couldn't possibly work, they all start screaming, this man gets arrested. and all the Freedom Warriors are saying this is the most worrying thing that's ever happened, in the entire history of the world. Yeah. And you think, maybe it is possible to take action against these people and maybe some of these actions work? Yeah,

I think it's, important to, to make the very clear point that. It is very hard to conceive of this rationally as a freedom of speech issue. nobody is saying that you shouldn't be allowed to have encrypted messaging. That is not what the French government appears to be saying. That is not indeed what they've taken issue with. What they've taken issue with is the fact that you shouldn't, they posit be able to run a platform that serves nearly a billion people.

basically the signal is run by a bunch of woke hippies. Exactly. and therefore, and you will see all the time now, people talking about how amazing Elon Musk. Exes because now it's allowed back on all these people like Tommy Robinson who were banned before. It's the only place that freedom of speech still exists on the internet. His AI is, will allow you to do, pictures of Mickey Mouse smoking crack. there's a big kind of, we don't have to obey any rules and laws.

So can I check, does Signal comply with requests from law enforcement agencies or anything like that?

not aggressively in the sense none of these companies do. Even Facebook, which is probably, fairly well established is quite hard to extract information out of.

to give you an example, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in almost all of these platforms, in fact, apart from Telegram, there is an easy option within the app. To be able to report content that you see that is illegal, breaks, the terms and conditions, et cetera. Telegram doesn't provide you with that functionality. Which I presume is why they can get away with having a hundred staff.

Yeah, it's, philosophically opposed to any kind of government intervention, it's beyond libertarianism into the kind of amazing Wild West, but there is a big current within the online right, and within the tech sphere of that hyper libertarianism that, governments only exist to get in the way of innovation. And part of that is they also only get in the way of censoring, the real ideas that people need to hear.

ideas like globalization, taking over everything and, individuals in countries no longer having any power to change their own lives. do their heads never blow up?

once you've been to the NatCon, which is the international gathering of nationalists, like you just have to accept that. No, don't expect it to make any sense. Victor Ban has traveled over to America to tell, how terrible it is for other countries to lecture you on how to run your country. What, yeah. None of it makes sense,

but Matt, , I keep reading in your column that, Platforms and channels, and these organizations say it's absolutely impossible. we don't have the number of staff to interfere. We can't possibly moderate that stuff. And then one of their advertisers complains, and within about 38 milliseconds, all content has been removed. That defended the advertiser and the entire process seems to be incredibly possible.

what is interesting about Telegram is that it has occasionally been really good at complying with take down requests for copyrights of material. so yeah, it turns out, that paring a film terrible, posting, posting terribly offensive pictures, not terrible at all.

So if ISIS branded their material better, it would be easier to take down.

Yeah. What they, really need is a nice identifiable logo watermark in the top right hand corner of all of their stuff so we can just nix it immediately.

And that's very helpful, man.

OV has nearly enough children to fill one of his own telegram groups. he's got a hundred children, I think. Is this Helen? Is this right? You've got Chap. He claims to

be an avid, sperm donator. Yes. yeah, I'm thorough. Eni encourage you to check out his Instagram feed, which features lots of photos of him topless in the desert. He doesn't drink caffeine, he doesn't eat meat. he's one of these people who lives a very acetic lifestyle, but part of that is the intense natal wisdom that characterizes a lot of that kind of on what you call

natal.

Tech Elite? so Elon Musk resemble, has 10 children, maybe more, but that we know of. and there is, there are consistent reports that he is, he's very keen on the idea that high IQ people should be overrepresented. a lot of this is a return of a soft form of eugenics. The idea that smart people aren't having enough. Kids,

And is it true that none of Musk's children actually talk to him?

he

has a transgender daughter who's now called Vivian, and she's got a very interesting account on threads. I think this is probably the thing that's most hurtful to him, which is the platform owned by Meta, a Facebook, which she uses just to talk about what a terrible father she thinks he is, how he never accepted her. He said in his interview with Jordan Peterson, she had been captured by the woke mind virus.

it does sound like Boris Johnson and. Ruper Murdoch are both part of the tech elite, which I didn't suspect. It turns out that the great men of our time have a surprising amount in common. That's it for this episode of page 94. if you have enjoyed it, then why not buy the magazine, private-eye.co.uk, get a subscription. It's a fantastic magazine. That's all I need to say on the matter.