Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94, the UK's best Fortnightly News podcast, I think, in a crowded field. Yeah. my name's Andrew Hunter Murray. I'm here in the Private Eye offices with Helen Lewis, Jane Mackenzie, and Ian Hislop. We're here to discuss all the things that have happened since the last episode of the mag.
coming up later in the show, we'll be talking about the new biography of, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party in general, and we've got some great stuff about cross pavement charging solutions. . But first, oh no, we haven't. Gotta wait for that. Have we concentrate on anything else? But first let's go away to a lovely little archipelago of islands, the British Indian Ocean Territories. Is that what it's called?
That's right, let's hone in on in particular, Chagos Islands and one, in particular called Diego Garcia, which, Has been the subject of lots of news stories recently because it's technically and actually British owned at the moment, and Britain is proposing to amazingly pay money to give it away to someone, is a very reductive way of describing it, but that's effectively what seems to be happening. And Jane, you have been writing about this for. A while. Most of my career. Most of your career?
Yes. So should we start off with primer on these islands are, why they're important, and how, we came by them in the first place. before, they were owned by the British, they were owned by the French, and they brought a large population of African slaves there to work on the coconut farms. The British acquired them during the Napoleonic Wars. The slaves were eventually liberated 'cause Britain wasn't allowing slavery. And, many of them then stayed there. they formed their own culture.
They're a long way from anyone else. the nearest island Acapela goes, the Sey shells, the Maldives and Mauritius, are still like hundreds of miles away from them. So they were an isolated, population, but they were still a British territory. And then in 1965, Mauritius becomes independent and islands have been governed from Mauritius. So just before independence, Britain kind of hived off, the Chagas Islands and said, we think we'll just hang onto this particular bit.
they bought it for 3 million pounds at the time. and then they. Effectively handed over the largest island to the Americans. And the deal has never been made completely transparent. It's been alleged that it was in return for a cracking discount on some Polaris missiles, but that's never been confirmed. Yeah. But nonetheless, it led to, there's a big American base there. Yeah. And, in order to, make way for a big American naval base, the population were, removed.
initially, people who left the island to go do business in Mauritius or go to hospital in Sey, shell were just not allowed back. And, eventually, were forced onto boats carrying one bag and dumped in, the neighboring countries. rather, like Trump's current plan for removing the Gazans, in fact, just remove an entire population. Obviously, they were a much. Much smaller population.
Yeah. This is a bit that has confusing me about the recent stories is I was quite aware of the story about the right to return. the fact that the Ian population has been advocating to be allowed home for a really long time. But this isn't that, is it? This is not, that's not exactly what's being proposed no, the poor, IANS who, Still exist as a diaspora in the Sey shells, Mauritius.
And, largely Sussex, specifically Crawley, are not really a party to this current, deal that's being arranged with Mauritius. In fact, even those, IANS I, Mauritius really are a, minority and not a very well-treated minority in Mauritius. So why is it that, behind this deal, everyone says it's all these human rights lawyers. Who seemed to be very interested in matters of national security and not very interested in displaced persons.
Yes. this notion that it's de colonialization, we're giving it back to, Mauritius. It was never really, Mauritius is in the first place. who certainly, the courts have previously held had the strongest right to be there were the chick oceans. Way back in, in 2000. they very nearly did, get the right to resettle there. they won a court case and Robin Cook, who was then the foreign secretary, said he would not oppose their right to return.
And am I right in thinking that they nearly got the right to return to some of the smaller islands, not the one with the massive US naval base, but suddenly after nine 11 these islands be had a new geopolitical significance. Basically. They were an incredibly useful . Space for long range bombers and also rendition of Terror Suspects, which is another, shameful thing that happened there. Yes. Which, was denied for some time.
And the UK government insisted that absolutely no, no Guantanamo, like things were happening on Diego Garcia because it would be against the terms of the lease that we allow the, US to be there. And, eventually we had to admit that there had in fact been incidents of extraordinary rendition via. Garcia just incredible all the goodwill that Britain might have possibly gained by liberating a population of slaves just completely steadily, wasted and wrecked by , perhaps two centuries.
We'll drink them later. what I don't understand is if the Chagos population had been given the right to self-determination, they then, as a small country, could have done a really good deal leasing Diego Garcia to the Americans and then funded their new country for the rest of time. Absolutely. , they, they probably wouldn't have become a completely independent country. They would've remained a . Overseas territory in a kind of falkland ascension kind of way.
but they would've certainly had that same, The people of the Falklands have had to say, no, we'd like to, stay, here, or we'd like to sell out to Mauritius for all this lovely cash. Or could've stayed in the Commonwealth. Yes. Or they become Guernsey. . Yeah. if the this deal goes through, will the Chagossians get to go home? Will they have to go and the ones who are in Crawley. That is rather than the ones who are nearby necessarily.
most of those in Crawley now do have, British citizenship, properly protected. There was a long period where there was a particularly difficult situation where some Ians had become stateless effectively because, They were originally from a British overseas territory in particular. There was a generation who were born during that period where, for instance, their mothers went to another island to give birth and weren't allowed back, so they were born. In Sey shells.
but sey shells didn't give them citizenship and they'd missed out on the British citizenship. but that's been resolved fairly recently. So most of those now living in Britain have British citizenship. the most part, they would like the right of return. . Largely to visit the sort of ancestral homeland visit family graves. Just know where they came from. there's probably not that many desperate to icks and move halfway across the world.
Again, Basically Diego Gua was the only property inhabited island. I think there was a bit on some of the other, there was two other rattles that were, Had inhabitants and Okay. There's been some feasibility studies.
Okay. And in terms of whether you could build tourist facilities there, whether there's enough fresh water, there are other sort of bits of the archipelago where you could build a very, a fairly small, but practical in the same way that the Maldives is capable of hosting tourist industry. On little tiny bits of beautiful beachy, island. and it's an incredible wildlife preserve at the moment, partly because of the lack of access to anybody other than the American naval base.
Sounds could build a beautiful tourist industry around, go and dive with the, yeah. The wildlife. So clear the water there that I believe it's used as an international standard for polluted water or unpolluted water around the rest of the world. it's a very, Unspoiled it's like novel has really had a real bounce back in front. Yeah, no, it has. that's for another one, another podcast. , the humans loved it. Incredible dark skies too.
There's like a us space observation, place there as well, like you. So what is the, justification for a deal in which we pay, Mauritius 9 billion pounds? possibly, but it could be 18 billion or even 52. As Nigel Farage estimated it, , he'd done his inflation busting, calculations. Do we then charge this back from the Americans? I can't imagine Trump saying, I'd love to pay Britain to be middle person on a deal. That doesn't make a lot of sense. it will make some international criticism go away.
There's been various sort of UN reports and votes, criticizing the UK for, holding on to the Chagos Islands, which I think partly comes about because of . How they ended up depopulated in the first place. Everybody does agree. That was not good. and then also there's a sort of UN committee, which seems to largely be made up of, countries including Russia, Iran, they just wanna have a go at us, by saying, the UK should give this away. Yeah. they , but they would, say that, wouldn't they? Exactly.
Yeah. It's really tricky 'cause it's an attempt to thread the needle of what, Britain would like is to keep the US base there for several decades more to resolve the long running international dispute over these. no one, as far as I could tell, is going to do anything for the ia, the Ian Islanders. That's not on Mauritius agenda as far as I can tell. But if it's successful, then you end a dispute. You still get a base there.
and the other thing we haven't discussed is the role of China in all this, because China has, ambitions in this corner of the world as in every other corner. have been investing enormous amounts of money in Mauritius. they have paid. Loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to build Mauritius an airport they've built the state broadcasters, offices. they've, done a lot of construction. They'd clearly love a base here or on one of the other islands.
And I think the idea is Britain is hoping that it might be able to negotiate, permanence of the Earth base and, rule out any Chinese construction in the area. China does tend to just build islands. Yes, it does. Outta nothing. It does. Yes. if they wanted to build some sort of odd looking atols Yes. About 25 foot off the coast with a, I guess they might with huge radars pointing exactly at the US Naval base.
Yeah. great respect is in the case of Tibetan Taiwan of other places, territorial sovereignty.
This is the, my problem with it, I've been consciously trying to seek out news stories that rebut my knee jerk prejudice, which is that I feel and I just dunno if I've consumed too much, X content that the Mauritius is very cynically using the idea of decolonization and saying, look at you rich white people who've come over and been terribly beastly to us in the developing world in order to basically get lots of money that they would like for their government.
Which I don't, but I just feel like we're we being had, and I'm aware that is a. a Prime Telegraph columnist opinion, , and therefore I should probably probe it a little bit more deeply and see if it's true. But from everything that you've said, Jane, it seems that the two different issues, the natural justice for the displaced people is very separate to the idea of the geopolitical question of the control of the islands.
Yes. I certainly, if you ask the, people in Crawley and then the displaced Chagas population, On this side of the world, they are not in favor of the Mauritius deal at all. They've been fairly vocal about the fact that this is, not the way, they hoped to see things go. now I, don't know to what extent the sort parts of the Chagas diaspora of perhaps followed more the Mauritius government's line. But, actually the population here is, very substantial.
there have been no reports for the Mauritius government saying we would like to spend this money on a lot of, leisure centers and health facilities for the poor c Chagossians who ended up in Mauritius. No, not those news reports are very thin on the ground. And it's pretty clear what they want. And when they say, oh, by the way, we didn't mention inflation before, but we're factoring in inflation now, The price is just going up and it's the price for a military base.
And in, the, whole liquidation of the British Empire, what is left is very odd places in the middle of nowhere in which it's quite important for, national security s to have a base. and that has to be paid for somehow, but not necessarily . this way it's amazing that . We're paying 9 billion quid to effectively get rid of a Lamborghini. Like how have we done that ? And also how does it work in a world where Donald Trump is currently threatening to invade three allies, nevermind three enemies.
Like what you think it will actually happen? Because one of the things I thought was really interesting about this was that the latest, the government's latest justification was something to do with The broadband spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the control over it. And then you had lots of people, not just the usual suspects come out and say, I had that advice when I was in government too. And I thought it was bollocks.
so I just wonder whether or not at some point, given that the US are against it, and there's lots of relatively sane and sensible voices when the British establishment saying, we actually don't think this really stacks up. what might we just. Not do it. as we started this conversation, I have been writing about, the islands since 2000 when, Robin Cook made his comments. it's been at an impasse, bounced through various, courts, the House of Lords, the European courts.
Nothing's really changed there was a, US senator, addressed Keir Starmer directly over this issue and said, put the bong down, . she said, there's notoriously freewheeling Keir Starmer and I thought, gosh, somehow Keir Starmer's got a, reputation for dreaming big internationally. it is quite odd and we are just waiting for what the Americans say. Aren't we? I think so. I, don't think in the end, the UK government. It's gonna make the decision on its own piece of land.
So ultimately they'd rather upset Mauritius and the UN court than they would upset America. So eventually it might, but you are right. It just seems to me everything you've said, the most likely outcome is that people just keep arguing about it for another couple of decades and nothing happens. we'll be back in 25 years where Jane will look back on a career. We come now to Culture Corner. I think that's what we're calling this bit. It is the book section of the podcast.
Yeah. And we occasionally cover political, books. And, Helen, you've been reading one lately. I have. I've been reading, Get In by Patrick McGuire, who used to work, for me at The New Statesman and Gabriel Pogrund of the Sunday Times. And this is the follow up to their. previous book, which was about the Corbyn leadership. they've got a unholy marriage with Tim... Tim Shipman does the Tories and they do Labour. They've work it in shifts.
I dunno if someone's gonna just step up and do the Lib Dems at some point, but no one knows yet. if this one's called Get In, what, was the previous one called? Stay, out? No, don't. 'cause they're all, 'cause all the Tim Shipman's ones have all got versions of 'in', which is No Way Out. Then the last one, the fourth one is actually called Out and then the previous one on about Corbyn is called. Maggie, Maggie. Out, That's it. Yeah, It's called yeah.... Left Out. Left Out though. I, yeah.
And honestly, there is a, broad, you'll notice a theme emerging. Very good. Okay. And this is a, is it a kind of biography of or Labour in general? no, 'cause there was a very good biography of Starmer by Tom Baldwin, which was actually, I think, a lot more revealing. It was a semi authorized one, but I think was a lot more revealing than perhaps Starmer was comfortable with.
One of the things that comes out in this book, and has been a feature along is that, Starmer really is very private and doesn't want to talk. he never names his kids in public, for example. they've never been photographed publicly and he never wanted, he, before we laugh about his father, the toolmaker, they had to brutalize him, his leadership team into saying, you've got to talk about your, roots. You've gotta seem like a human being to people.
Wow. So that, the, star biography by Tom Baldwin is. He is really quite moving about the fact that he is, he never, he and his dad never said, I love you to each other. his mom was always very ill. When he was growing up. His dad was very buttoned up and in his shed the whole time. His brother had a really difficult life, the one who died recently, but Starmer is very reluctant to talk about all those things. This is a political book that takes you from Starmer, becoming an MP.
At which point, it's always thought that he really at that point wanted to be Prime Minister. But it's really, if any, it's a book about anybody. It's a book about Morgan McSweeney, who is now his chief of staff, who was his, essentially ran his campaign, who is an Irish guy who started off working on the desk at Millbank. During the New, Labour years, there's a great quote from Peter Mandelson who now loves him. Says, 'I never, I don't remember him . I didn't notice him at all.
Was he there?' It's a story about how Morgan McSweeney basically decided that the Corbynites were kind of bunch of out touch lefties who were never gonna win an election in the Britain that they exist, which they think is very socially conservative, for example, much more that Blue Labour, you know, faith, family, and the flag, and basically set about to it's almost described explicitly in this term, 'do a con job' on the Labour Party to get in.
Convince Corbyn you were on his side, convince the members that you were pro second EU referendum, and were very loyal to Corbyn. And then as we've seen with Starmer, actually achieved the leadership of the Labour Party... and do something completely different. And it's about that story, about how he remade the Labour Party, but how it's now left him slightly stranded. Because what does Keir Starmer believe about Anything? there's a kind of, there's a kind of hole at the, center of this book.
He's obviously built a machine that's brilliant for taking control of the Labour Party and then winning election in Britain. But the big question that obviously everybody and we've talked about on this podcast is... And then, what is the plan? , what is the plan now? Is there. A sense in which political journalists and commentators like to believe in a grand narrative of someone secretly making a puppet who then takes over.
Is it possible he just took over and, McSweeney's mildly talented, but the, Tory parties exploded and the British public didn't like the look of Corbyn.
I know we like a, very Machiavellian narrative, but halfway through any book like this, I start thinking, really, is always a problem as well in political books that you find out... you can work out the sourcing to some extent by, sort of 'Peter Mandleson walked handsomely into the room...' Like, 'Michael Gove was up to his usual clever machinations,' and you're like, oh, was... was he? Interesting. I wonder who told you that? So I always have that question.
There are a lot of books that mention that Dominic Cummings has a walk on roll in which he does something amazingly brilliant, counterintuitive, and you think, oh, I wonder who told you this? Something. I it, didn't end well for Cummings. Key to Dominic Cummings is he doesn't mind if you hate him or love him as long as you think he's clever.
He will take credit for anything, no matter how evil it is, as long as he, it looks like a smart thing to have done, which is very different to most people's motivation. he's the, guy who came up with the eye test alibi, . So we don't need to worry about smartness anymore, do we? Incredible. Great. But I, so I think there is a similar thing. You are right. Starmer was the beneficiary of a lot of structural forces. he was lucky.
Luckier than Ed Milliband. Ed Milliband came in as a first term opposition leader, which is just already harder. Like it's just a harder thing to do because people have just very ostentatiously rejected you and also at that stage, often in the lifecycle of opposition, the activists and the cabinet members are not ready to concede that people do hate you. They think, Come on, we could just do it slightly differently, like the one more heve kind of approach.
Whereas I think by the time that the party even had been through all of that. 14 years of Tory rule, there was a kind of slight concession of, okay. They don't like us , but I would give them enormous credit. This is the bit that is, it depends entirely on how you feel about how this is. I went to watch Starmer, during the leadership campaign. Rebecca Long Bailey was the Continuity Corbyn candidate.
You would not have thought Starmer during that election was going to do what he did, which was who out Corbyn from the party, marginalized the hard left completely. And then run on a, a, much like a Blue Labour type platform. He said basically his only points of disagreement would, with Jeremy wasn't really pro Europe enough, and he was a bit worried about the antisemitism stuff. that was a result of a tactical decision that.
When he got into Parliament that the next leader of the Labour party would not be somebody who, like a Wes Streeting, like a Rachel Reeves, who had principally sat it out. So he made a series of tactical decisions already from the start of his political career. About what would be the most thing that would end up most likely with him being LA Labour leader. And so some of the people on the left feel just completely betrayed by that. They feel they were lied to.
And this book has a scene where McSweeney goes to see, Jeremy Corbyn and says to me, look, I've got this amazing polling. I'd love to share it with you, and I want to be your friend. Whilst they're thinking, I, I hate you. You are evil . I'm just, I wanna just. destroy you. So I can see why people who aren't in favor of the project think that were duped in this really quite unpleasant way. And then I think, yes, but the question is, do you want to win or not?
And it turned out the answer to that was yes. And I'm prepared to do a lot to make that happen. So this is a record of the defeat of the left rather than, the creation of something new for the center. that's the most striking criticism that I think is valid, which is that they knew very well what they didn't want to be, but they don't really know what they do. And I think that's what's got them into trouble in, government.
Sam Freeman, who runs a very good substack, very policy wonkish, has worked in the Department of Education, did it ask us all questions and he said one consistent theme of the questions was lots of people who felt they were naturally supportive of a Labour government. They were really glad to see one, but felt like it hadn't really. It hadn't really done anything, and that's my perception about the general mood in the country.
It's not obviously they won an enormous majority, but that honeymoon has been very, brief and people feel grumpy and the latest pollings put on basically three-way tie between the Conservatives Labour and Reform. Yeah. It's not like people think that there is a project that they could name even, that they know what you're being asked to have an opinion on. I'd love a sinister project. That'd be great. Yeah. Get on it. Here's Keir Starmer, but is that, what is that what all the resets
and the growth baby growth have been leading up to . feel like they have been saying the stuff all along. Have we not been listening or have they not been doing it? I think they felt like they had to do a bit where they said everything's really miserable in the start. to, because if you think about how much juice the Conservative Coalition Government got outta Liam Byrne saying there's no money, , that note was being, brought back again, pretty afraid by the end. Yeah, Exactly.
As a justification for austerity, it was like, we had to do this. I think they really wanted to bed in the idea that they'd inherited a real mess so that anything they did that was the baseline. But I think what they mostly did, being true , it was true as it turned out, but I think it made everyone think, oh God, this is miserable, isn't it? Like what? Yeah. are, how are we gonna fix stuff?
The NHS came out of the pandemic, much less productive, we came to be able to funnel more and more money into it, and it doesn't just, nothing seems to improve. I think there's a real level of misery and he and Starmer doesn't really do lofty eyes raised to heaven, aspirational, optimism. Does he? It's not really his natural tenor. I felt that. Because McSweeney is basically a, man who wins elections and he's constantly campaigning.
Part of the chaos, since Labour got in can be explained by the fact that they panic and they think we are not popular. Let's do a stunt, let's do a campaign. And actually we don't want any campaigns. , we just voted you lot in, I feel his, brilliance as convinced by this book, is actually the problem with him in that reset reboot. Here's a new idea, here's another slogan, here's growth, baby drill, or, one of whatever it is.
Maybe Bill, I believe was the phrase used growth, baby gray sounds realizing say to Doctor Sounds Medical. It sounds medical, yeah. Yeah. . And there's a moment in the book where I read, Sue Gray, who's the, chief of staff and McSweeney. clash of Egos, only one of them had to go. Now, guess what's gonna happen when Keir Starmer reads that he's, a man on a driverless train, a useless HR manager, doesn't have any policies, and is really the puppet of his brilliant, PR man.
Guess what the next chapter is, Morgan? Yeah. Yes. do you know what I think it is? I think it's a bit Cummings , classically, the, kind of King's advisor will not last until if, Morgan's McSweeney is still there in position at the n next election. That would be historically unusual, I think. 'cause probably the way I'd phrase it. I completely agree, but it, does seem to capture something that's true. There's even descriptions in the book of.
The leadership campaign in which it described that kind of Starmer sitting, listening to everybody else, he let someone else chair it. Patrick McGuire in one of his columns wrote that he was, he was lawyerly, in the sense that... if you give him a brief to prosecute, he will go out and do it and hammer away at it. And he did that, obviously in the case of the, campaign for the second referendum on the EU. What he isn't really naturally suited to is, leading, is being the one leads the decision.
He wants to almost be told what to do and then do it. And, I think that you are right, Ian. That is the bit that kind of, because people don't want to take orders from Morgan McSweeney. No one elected him. Ultimately, there is an authority problem there. I haven't read the book yet, but for me, the biggest revelation in it, from the bits I've seen extracted, is that Keir Starmer had a voice coach. Who I think has carried out the biggest con of all here. has extracted lots of money for . What?
You don't recognize the charismatics. You honestly, if you've seen him a couple of years ago, you'd have thought he's very boring and he just uses these weird metaphors. And he's not full of charisma, but now, yeah. Now he's Gil good in his pride. . Yeah. It's, yeah. that was, it was one of the many extracts, God bless them, they've done a lot of extracts for, this book. And there was a story about, but it didn't fly that story, did it? Was it lockdown?
I read it and I still didn't really take it like she potentially breached lockdown this voice coach. Yeah. To come visit him on Christmas Eve to do a, to prepare him for a speech when London was under. Tier four restrictions. It's a bit beer gate, isn't it? It was a real problem about the fact that I think a most normal people, and now moved on like the coronavirus is something terrible that happened in the rear view mirror and they don't really wanna ever think about it again. Absolutely not.
And also, it's just very funny watching the right try and attack it. It's okay, so he might have had a session with his voice coach, which is inherently amused . What he didn't do is get 15 loggers on and a curry and a karaoke machine and get hammered and start belting it. Abba. it's, like the, de people trying to say it was the same as Party Gate was, extremely optimistic. I felt did the, press get hold of any story that really flowed?
you are obviously saying, it's a really interesting and, the details fantastic. And the these, but was there a shock revelation in it that everyone should have been excited by? I don't. star was quite boring. who knew? I think it's quite well timed that it's come out now. Exactly at the point that questions have begun to emerge about what do you know, what do you actually want to do? what is the project? But you are certainly right, Ian, about that permanent campaign strategy.
It's exactly the same problem with Trump. Which is the blizzard of executive orders. What does that Trump government exist to do? It exists to own the libs cry harder. Libs like, how do you like this? But it's, that's not the same as. Like making the trains run on time. It's just not the same thing at all. And there's, don't give them, don't give them that line because , they already know it. no. Okay. the moment of maximum effectiveness for Starmer was the riots.
Yeah. which has nothing to do with spin or being shown to do the right thing. It's, he's good at locking people up. So over that weekend, he locked them up quickly, the sentences were quite big. And then the weekend after people thought, maybe I don't want to be locked up. I, for me, obviously I'm trying to resist all, spin, but it seemed the moment of doing something was more affected than the moment of posturing, of pretending you are doing something.
But it was also, that was a very authoritarian moment, which is a very, Blair in his constant love of ID cars. there's not anything in the world that Tony Blair doesn't think that Id cards aren't a solution to it. It's one of his weird kinks for 25 years now, , and I think that was a, moment for. Starmer that that is the kind of McSweeneys in prescription, right? Like tough on crime, tough on yobo. it felt a bit like, oh, ASBOs are gonna come back soon. Didn't it? It felt blare, right?
In that sense, I think that's where that project is comfortable, which is wearing the clothes of the right. but again, that's not, again, you, there are rightwing actual right wing parties, so if we're going to have. Yvette Cooper kind of wearing a stab proof vest and going out to be filmed doing deportation reads. Theresa May tried that with the hostile environment and actually it didn't save her. It's, It might be your answer to Farage, but it's not. It's not enough, is it?
I think saying that there are terrible problems people do expect. The hard of government is they expect you to solve them. It's an answer to someone else's talking point, rather than presenting one of your own. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that has bedeviled, Labour through all the time that I've been covering politics is the feeling that they always have to play at the kind of a way end.
That Anything they do that's even very slightly left wing they kinda get shouted at for, which means the easiest thing is not to then do any those things. I think it's a, it's a criticism from the left of the late party that I have quite a lot of sympathy with that there are already right wing parties. Right. . why are you not them? tell us a bit more about why. , they said we've elected a Labour government rather than sort of a Labour government that's trying to cosplay as the conservatives.
That's, and the inconsistency is immediately obvious if, you are doing an immigration video of you storming into, people's houses and sending them home for working in a nail bar, then you are saying, yeah, but we're not gonna have any restrictions on legal, immigration in this country. Obviously. 'cause business needs these people and people aren't gonna think well. have you got, any ideas then ? Yeah. because these two things don't really match.
And if, you have legitimate concerns about one and a half million people having arrived in the last two years, is some policy not overdue. no one will ever say The bargain is that it's good for the economy, but so you're gonna have to lump it, right? There's always a pretense that you can have. You can cut immigration enormously and with no economic consequences. There's no difficult trade off to be made.
But yeah, I think they've, I think they, they are what I would say Labour currently are refusing to engage with that. And instead, let's get Yvette Cooper dressed up like she's an extra on the bill . that's what people want. And have somebody in a hard hat saying, we're gonna build, a million and a half homes, in the next 10 years. And then someone says. But we had a million and a half people came in last year.
Yeah. So what, they all get a home each, do they, I think it would be really interesting 'cause everyone's getting very ated by how well Reform are doing in the polls. And that's gonna be one, undoubtedly one of the big stories of the, if you are Labour and you now think your biggest opponent actually is Reform rather than Kemi, badnock, Torries, which I think they increasingly do. How do you fight that? Because.
My take on it is the only way that anyone really falls outta love with the Reform is they let Reform have a go at governing and they aren't very good at it. Which is exactly what happened with u Kipp running local councils as soon as they had to run anything like Thanet got to see what the reality of them look like.
Yeah. It's all very well to be doing these high flown rhetoric about whatever, but it's like actually what people care about is their bin collections at the end of the day, and they were terrible at those things. And just staying united, like just as one local council, they couldn't manage to hold it together as a party without all falling out. That has been a, consistent factor of ni. So the two things that happen in Nigel Farage's parties is one that he always wins any eternal power struggle.
And the second thing is that everyone else always leaves. That's is there going to be another book. I don't think they can be stopped in . It will kill again. Yeah. Yeah. There's, are there any more puns on the words, in or out? I think it's gonna have to be, shake it all about next time. reference to Qatari investment. Now we come to, the third section of today's show. This is about something that, that Rachel Reeves announced actually.
So the last episode was just before the Grow Baby Grow speech as it's being called, by nobody. And, as part of it, one of the tiny footnotes in it was that she gave, 50 million quid to a, company that does, electric car chargers. and they're called Connected Curb. And I think they, they provide chargers for like slightly difficult places to, to fit them to. and my contention is that this is . Exactly the wrong thing to have done.
And I think I could have saved her 50 million quid and made her life a lot easier and made everyone's lives a lot easier. Wow. Andy, thank you. So I'm, why glad you asked why used yourself? no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what, enormous length so basically as we all know, the new electric car mandate is gonna be that all new cars in 2030 have to have a plug and a battery, of some kind. They're still hing a bit over the details, but . New cars.
So not like most sales are second through to like ninth hand cars, but new cars themselves will have to do that. there are currently 8 million households in the uk which cannot, charge a car easily. So 60% of homes have their own driveway. Brilliant sticker charger on the house plug in. You are absolutely laughing.
and if you do that, I, most tariffs you can get down to charging a car for about a Fiverr, which is very Tempting Greg, when you think of pet petrol prices, yeah, do you want to, do you wanna pay a fiver, do it at home, drive off every morning with a full tank effectively, but is it like an iPhone in that you have to charge it every night? 'cause it doesn't last No unless you are driving two and like from London to Scotland and back every day. Uhhuh you, you won't have to do that effectively.
No. Am I guessing from this, that. You don't have a driveway . I dunno how you do it, Ian. I don't have a driveway. I . I, so I, so for example, I look, if you have one of these situations, you can't charge for a five, you have to use a public charger, and they're either between five and 10 times the price. And in a world where you're asking everyone to have one of these cars, eventually . That's a bit of a sticky point.
mo people are gonna be a bit miffed and most people don't want to think about charging methods. They just want something that works and preferably something that's cheap. So there are two ways of doing it, like solving the problem for most of these people. Yeah. For people in flat's gonna be tricky. And that's like half the 40%, but for about 4 million households. You can either stick a charger in every lamppost. Oh yeah, that works really well. I'm like, there's electricity there. Brilliant.
or you can do a thing where you run a little cable under the pavement, like you dig a one inch channel in the pavement. And, these are incredibly boring things. We should say. They're some, sometimes they're called gullies, sometimes they're called. Channels, like Yeah, they work. Yeah, they work. A Less dangerous version of just running lots and lots of extension leads down the street. Exactly.
Yeah. And we don't want a world where you, if you have any kind of wheel thing, whether it's a pram or a wheelchair or whatever, it's a nightmare going along the street. So quite sensibly like these, we've got line bikes for that . so that's the solution. , they take about an hour to fit these things. One hour, two at the most. This sounds amazing. Andy, what's the catch? the catch is, it is a nightmare getting one of these things.
You You wouldn't believe it at Firstly, it's the responsibility of your council, right? the process is just so byzantine, so in some places you need planning permission to put a charger on your house. if your house opens straight onto the street, you know you have to do that. And there are some places where you need planning permission from your county council for a channel and from your district council. For a charger, Try putting one on a list of building . Oh God.
secondly, five out of six councils just say, no, you can't have one of these. Just like that. There's no obligation to provide any, so there is, there was a pot of money set aside for installing these things, but it didn't come with any guidance about how you can do it, who are good operators of these ski, like that kind of thing. It didn't come with any of that. So most councils just said, oh, sorry, computer says no. Can't be having it.
and then the other weird thing is in the councils, which do it, so like lucky old me, I live in one of the place, the one in six councils, which is doing it. The process is amazingly complicated. Like it's 'cause it's highways, there's liability there. There are all sorts of questions which basically have bats. Please tell me there are not bats involved in this. Es I have counted any bats. Look, it's a one inch gully. They can't fit in the tunnel out. They're very small.
Some micro batts, I'm afraid it's a perfect nesting environment. no. What, the thing is like councils have all been doing their own individual trials of their own individual pavements to see if these things work. Pavement is not that different up and down the country. . Some places you might have cobblestone, some places you might have a flag, whatever. It's not that different basically.
the other mad thing, and this get takes us right back to Rachel Reeves, is that these things need planning permission. 'cause it's, it's a highway. It's outside your home. Okay. But they also need a thing called a section 50. Have you had the, difficulty of coming across these? No. Okay. This is the thing that you need. It's the permission you need when you want to dig up like a chunk of road. You're doing a gas main, you need a section 50 for that, right?
Yeah. But you currently need an individual section 50 for every single less than one inch wide strip between, it's amazing. So it, it is like going through the process to amputate your leg every time you wanna cut your toenails. That's basically what the situation is. and the, it costs so much as well, and it vary, like the costs vary massively from council to council, but some councils would charge nearly three grand for section 50 permission, at which point you just say. I'm not doing that.
This is the veto that I was talking about. That which is the, I think it all the people who are talking about growth. Do you have a real point that we have layered completely needless levels of computer says no, and you have to sign this off. I know, not that I'm turning into like Richard, little John in my old age, but there is a kind of like you are showing signs. I know below three pods you've made.
Surprisingly conserv, but I think this is one area in which the right is correct, is that there is a presumption about not doing things. They, what they call often they call it in central government, treasury, brain, right? The idea stuff just too hard. We can't do it, let's just keep doing what we're doing already there's down be some people who are gonna, there's some downsides, so what if we just never do anything? yeah.
like the kind of people who think you, you could run a hospital really well if there just weren't any patients that are ruining it. There's that kind of attitude I think as well. It does seem to be amazing that the. HS two. Yeah, I get there are certain problems putting it in, but a very small HS two. If we going along a piece of pavement, I would've hoped that was possible. I know if we can't do this, we're not gonna build . Another nuclear plot. It's just not gonna happen.
No. we that's not gonna happen. No. Isn't correct. And, there will be places where, different solutions are needed where you can't park in front of your house on a regular basis. You might need to do more lamppost things there. The process for, by the way, getting a lamppost charger in takes between nine and 18 months. That's the paperwork. Getting it in takes one day. we've got this really funny situation where. It's, very hard to do something that would make things very easy.
because you've got a laudable aim. Get the country onto very efficient cars, which drive much further per quid you put in. That's great. a quid in a petrol car. 25 p of it is moving the car. The rest of it is lost as inefficiency. In electric car is about 90% is moving the car.. So even if there wasn't any good green reason of doing it, it's you get much more bang for your buck. the full solution I think is the kind of lots and lots of big street furniture.
The way to make this as easy as possible is to do the nice thing is there's precedent for this excitingly. Do you remember phone boxes? Yes. Yeah, just about . Yes, I'm old. Yes, I do. Thank you. So the process for doing that was basically, there was a list of approved contractors. like big firms like BT or whoever it might be. Were pre-approved to bang a phone box in. Where they needed one. So they did not need to go through this very byzantine process. internet hubs, same thing happened.
This is also what they're trying to do with planning permission to say, here are some zones in which the presumption is in favor of consent. Yeah. Kept planning permission, which makes a lot of sense to me. Completely. And there are moves in that direction. So if you're a big CPO, which is like a ChargePoint operator, you run the big, chargers that you get a motorways. And wherever you now don't need section 50 permission anymore. Yeah, so that is a step in the right direction.
But if you, do the tiny one to tried things, you still do. So it's, evolving fast, to have a laudable aim of switching things over and then to be making this bit very hard, feels all a bit. Ass about face. I like your niche, which is basically that you talk about green issues in a way that isn't just, oh, whoa, the end is night playing my bow . But like here are some very small, practical things that we could do that would actually make life better.
I think that's a much better way of covering the subject. I isn't it interesting that people say, we need a network of charging points, and then you think we've got them, they're called houses . The network already runs into them and what you need is quite a long extension lead, do you think? that sounds good. Yeah. We have, it is exactly that. you want to make a big change. The best way to do it is in very low impact ways.
the, there isn't much that's lower impact than a, lamppost or your existing fuse board, yeah. I, in answer to what you're saying, I don't, I have no, i, have no, influence over US onshore or offshore wind policy. but you are in the pocket of big cross pavement charging anyone wants to crowdsource a driveway for Andy , which again, I, there're a worse charitable project. Absolutely. Absolutely.
But no, there are people who are like paving over their front garden so that they can just cram their car into it and, and solve this is, we're about for flooding. It's not give for flooding. yeah. So for God's sake, write to your mp. If you're listening to this, just write to your MP and demand the right. What do we want? Cross pavement. Charging solutions. Charging solutions. What do we want now? Good. Stirring. There we go. I've made this the hill I'm gonna die on and I fear I might okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94. Thank you so much, to Helen Jane and to Ian. We'll be back in two weeks with three more topics from the infinite back, the news wheel. Yeah, . Until then, why not go and buy the magazine, which has even more stories than these? It's got about 50 more stories than we've been able to cover today. It's a fantastic magazine. Go to private hyphenate. Co UK and subscribe right now.
Thanks until then for listening and as always, to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing. Bye for now.