Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the I Studio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop. Today we are asking the most important question in world politics. Who is Andy
burnham
and what does he
want? and how can
can he be stopped?
Maybe
Anything I should explain exactly why we're talking about this now. 'cause at time of writing, he's been banned by Keir Starmer and Andy and the Labour NEC from standing as an MP. He's currently Mayor of Greater Manchester, and he would've to resign from that post in order to do it.
Now, I would say we did have a number crunch in the last issue, which was the number of U-turns by Keir Starmer, until going to press, and we did have to change that several times in the course of the week as we were putting the pages together. But that's currently the situation. So yeah. Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester... i... incredible poll numbers, elected three times as mayor of Manchester. he got 63.4% in 20 17, 67 0.3% in 2021 It's going up. It's quite A rarity.
that The incumbent goes up and then 63.4% again in May, 2024, last time he stood. So you can see why people are thinking, Ooh, someone who actually the public seems to like and who might actually win some votes might be a good thing for the
Labour Party. Has he been effective? Has he done a good job in Manchester? Oh, see,
I, I tried to work out what the best measure of this was. I looked in the, Private Eye archive. He's barely appeared in Rotten Boroughs in all of his time in charge of greater Manchester. So I think that does give you a level of, yeah. Okay. Yeah. he's been
pretty good. So when this by-election was announced, he suggested he would like to stand for the seat. He has been blocked from standing by the sort of high command council, the Jedi Council of the Labour
Party, That's the one,
Yes.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. By, a thumping majority of about eight to one. So as I understand it, their reasoning, and I know there are other reasons apart from what they suggested, but their reasoning was you've just been elected or recently been elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. If we let you stand in this by-election to become an MP again. We'll have to have another election in Greater Manchester. That seems like a bad use of
party resources. And if we know there's one thing they're Not keen on, they don't like having local elections if they can possibly get away. with it,
But if, he left the greater Manchester Ty, they'd
probably lose that. Yeah. the argument that, oh no reform will win a significant victory. Will they win either way, don't they? Yeah, surely, I hate to sound as though, I think Keir Starmer might have been right. He's done two years, has he as mayor, he's got another duty to go. one. Why not finish the term? Why not indicate that Labour's there for the long term? It can stick to what it says it's gonna do, rather than a man saying, oh look, it's a chance for me to be leader.
the whole stick of the Labour party was these terrible Tories. They changed their leader every five minutes. Why can't they grow up? They all said psychodrama a lot. That was written into all Labour speeches, all to psychodrama, and what have we got? We've got a Labour psychodrama. with Burnham just turning up. I looked at a previous cover. we had Andy Burnham saying, I'd like to lead, the Labour Party in Kiss Thomas saying So would give him a chance.
Yeah, In a very, but we, have done this a lot. Haven't. we?
Yeah. In a very real sense, Andy Burnham has been running to be Labour leader since at least 2010. That was his first crack
at it, right? he, stood it officially twice. Yeah. 2010 and 2015. He ran, and lost.
Yeah. So he lost to Ed Milliband. He lost to Jeremy Corbin. I remember I went to the first Labour Party conference after the pandemic that won in, that had in person, so 2021. I was on a panel about de about devolution with him and he was late because he was being stopped for autographs and selfies Yeah. because at the time Ki Arm was in trouble and he was peacocking around guy and going, do you know who else is available? Me,
Andy Burnham.
And he'd got his little uniforms, he's got these little polo this little Fred Perry polo shirts and stuff. And then he did exactly the same at last year's party conference. He gave a big interview to the new statesman, in which he said, I don't really agree with the financial markets dictating our policy. I dunno what that's all about. Which spooked the
market.
And
then
It was quite a deal of, for all that there are some people who really, love him. There are also quite a lot of people who think. cool, Give over. Can I, what's that great line that I always think of, Mr. Bennett, let the other young ladies
have a chance
to
exhibit. You have been doing this now for 16 years.
Andy. I think there is a really strong feeling in the Labour Party and country now that sort of anyone book here would be better. and it's, there is, there's an argument possibly to be made for that.
Maybe even a
woman, Adam, Yes.
time in
something Labour have never been terribly keen on, have they? know? No. Might be better.
Didn't Keir have the choice this time of the newspapers and the media saying, oh, you're so pathetic, you're gonna let him run, or, oh, you're so pathetic. You've stopped him. Yeah, you are pathetic. here. Yeah, either way, it didn't really matter which, way he went, did it. The narrative is still, you are
useless. I think the thing it reveals to me, and this is very nerdy, I'm sorry, is that One of the key things if you wanna run the Labour Party is you've got to have control of the National Executive Committee, which sounds extraordinarily boring, but is extraordinary. True. Corbin never really got a grip on the party until he had installed Carrie Murphy, his choice, to run the party. Same thing happened with Stama. He had to get his own person in control before he could.
'cause then you get a huge amount of control over, for example, selections, Right, So there is the la the way you are right that LA to have this kind of sidal appetite, the way to win in Labour is just to seize control of the bureaucracy and just hold it in advice like grip and thereby see off all your opponents through grinding
procedural motions.
And that's what Stan has been really good at, isn't it? yeah. It's absolute control of the party And yeah. Which is it? It was what they felt they needed after the chaos of the Corbin years, I But uh,
yeah. Yeah. do you have a prediction? Will this.
Work.
I don't think he's going to be allowed to stand this time around. he's gonna be, he's the king across the water, isn't he? Whatever happens, it's, he's gonna go, this, term runs through till 2028. We'll probably have got through several other prime ministers by then, weren't we? But, he clearly is coming back from another, bar. there, there is no pretense about this. He's not pret pretending anything other than that. He wants to take over the leadership of the Labour party.
He wrote, the, week before he announced he was standing for the, for the by-election, a Piece for the Guardian about, it was basically his kind of political pot. philosophy, which turns out to be Manchester Yes. Which means not taking a coat off and going down the hacienda. No, it doesn't. sorry.
it, he made the point about, and he, the various things he has done for Manchester, he's, they, brought the bus and tram system back into public control, which is a big problem anywhere outside of London because privatization meant that, everything disconnected and, run for profit. Run down completely.
He's been brilliant on the, the Hillsborough campaigning on behalf of the Hillsborough families and pushing for the Hillsborough law, which incidentally was kissed on Uta number 14, one of the ones we had to update last week. he swerved very cleverly the Corbin years by standing as a he, he did actually serve under Corbin. He was first shadow home secretary under Corbin. And then 2017 Parliament to stand for, Manchester Mayor. But ever since then, he's defined himself against Westminster.
This is him in a 2019 interview. He said, Westminster is a bizarre place with a deeply dysfunctional atmosphere. I don't miss it in the slightest. It's just poisonous. Now try it six years on from that. And then last, this struck me la last week in The Guardian. He, kicked off by, by having a pop reform and saying, oh, all these Tories coming up. Some, it's hardly the stuff of a political insurgency. Suddenly Britain's newest political force doesn't look quite so potent or relevant.
Instead, it seems old Says Cabinet minister in 2007. So they're not, neither of these from Andy Burnham are brilliant arguments for bringing him back. into Westins for becoming leader.
I like the fact that he's named this movement, manism. as opposed to Burnham, which is
what he
means.
it's a sort of faux modesty,
isn't it? there's surely a lot of advantage to be made about being anti Westminster at the moment. the number of That's reforms whole pitch as
well, isn't it? Is there Absolutely is. But then it does get difficult when you get into Westminster. doesn't it? Yes. one reforms thing at the moment is saying, we are no good at it, so we're just gonna get in
and loads of
Torries. I mean as we write, So Gravelman has just affected to reform. She's the latest one. which Does actually now mean they've got more. Reform mps who used to be to mps, than they've got of their own now, doesn't it?
Which And it's now a party full of people who the electorate rejected, last time, which again, may not be promising. And so, Ella Bra, she hesitated for so long. I assume she thought that reform weren't right wing enough and she's just waiting. but now seems
to be the moment. It is a bit weird. Recording this podcast, two weeks after we had a big discussion about ice, having just killed a civilian with no justification and Adeem Zahar, just having defected two
reform,
It's a repeat
Yeah. Forever.
I
It's Andrew Rossendale, I feel sorry for, there's no impact whatsoever.
Two days after, I'm just gonna say on behalf of lots of listeners who,
yes. exactly. He was the one who went two days after Robert Genrich and said, by the way, I'm protecting reform as well. And Everyone did go, who?
Yeah, but he, for a long time he wasn't allowed on the commons estate while various allegations were investigated. So he may not have had the chance to
the biggest
biggest Impact. Did you watch the Robert Genrich? Nigel Raj? Press conference I
on holiday. Oh god, Ellen,
God. Oh, you know
Hannah.
have fun.
The best thing was Nigel Frost saying, if you like the, basic, the door is closing on May the fifth. You like, act now to secure your place in reform. I won't let any of you jump. You know the rats must leave the sinking
Now I get this, with Instagram adverts all the time though. we're having a last ever closing down sale of 50% off. It never is. No,
No, it never it was just a truly bizarre. con. And they sat, both of them sat there behind that little table as various journalists read out, disabling quotes they'd said about each other and they went, ha. When I said he was a tt, I meant in a sort of jokey
way. I like the sort of, shame confessional that Nigel will now make you read out. If you do defect, you have to say. Robert's very ashamed of having been in the conservatives, aren't you, Robert? Yes. Yes I am.
Nigel. Yes, And you have to say Britain is broken. It's broken, and it's broken partly 'cause I was in government and I broke it. But I have now seen the light. That's why I'm so
huge asset
Elman had to say, I now feel at home as opposed to send
everyone else
home.
I
it's just, what, are we watching? I ran a cover last time. People were worried that she was about to defect. and, it was exactly the same sentiment. She said, I'm throwing my hate into the ring, and, she's doing it again. Yeah. Presumably. Helen, does Farage think these people are a threat
or not?
I think he specifically thinks they're not a threat, which is why he's allowing them to have it. Because I think you, the bit that he lacks is any organizational infrastructure, right? Like he just, he needs that mechanics of running things and also. I think he's genuinely preparing to be Prime Minister next time round. And he might say So Ella Braman
kept
sacked from the home office. But she did, she does have cabinet level experience. That is true. And and he just, he really has never had that. as we've described on this podcast before, it'd be interesting to
see whether or not,
or not,
you know they, do they do the full stretch The bit that fascinating about that Emmerich Press conference was a bit where Robert Emmerich was forced to say, I haven't been promised any kind of job. And I thought, if that's true then you are
stupid, so I don't believe you.
You are really gonna hang around and just, having had all this ambition, you surely have gotta be thinking, Nigel smokes quite a lot. I'm quite young and on the ozempic I can wait
this one out. you.
But I think they're also gonna have a problem and the they've got so many people who are gonna want the same jobs, should they come into government. Richard Tyson has obviously always assumed he's going to be chancellor. I think Za Yusef thinks he might
be chancellor. Madam Za Howie
thinks he's
Zhi Zaha definitely thinks he could come back and do it. again. declaring All his tax
this time hopefully. no one's desperately pitching for the Dutchy of Lancaster.
Are they,
wants and what do
of jobs, but Even more to the point it's so top heavy. what they really need to have people defecting now is the kind of the practical ground level stuff. Are they getting the constituency associations and the kind of. Electoral agents and things, are they defecting from the Tories? 'cause that's where you really need the experience on the ground to get people out. It's people who are gonna, you don't need a lot of preening ex cabinet ministers.
What you need is a lot of people who are gonna go onto doorsteps in the rain and shove, in leaflets through people's letter
boxes. And That they probably do have. because they're membership, although quite opaque, I think it's now bigger than the Torries and bigger even than Labour. But you are right. that Those would be the people I, would, if I was 94, I'd be trying to bring on board is the constituency chairman and women. Who are the people who can run a selection process? Who can,
Yeah. And the most that we've heard from them is, generics, constituency, people saying, we are ab, we are outraged. He always said he wasn't gonna do this. He promised to us. So
They all, when they defect, say I've always been conservative, it's in my DNA, but as of yesterday I've noticed I'm gonna lose my seat. they all do this big loyalty number. Whereas I think from my experiences, the people in the constituencies are conservative. and that's why they've pushed leaflets through doors for years. They are more likely to be loyal. So I'll be really interested to see whether that Army of people. Actually do
defect. because the real challenge is gonna be getting the vote out in individual constituencies. They've still got in a first pass the post system a hell of a hill to, climb, 320 whatever hills to climb. and that's gonna be where the real difficulty for them lies,
I think.
Okay, Can I just give,
you my top facts about, yeah.
yeah. Andy
Burnham.
Again, he's an ex-journalist very, briefly. He worked for Trade Mags, including Tank
World,
which. Amazingly isn't as exciting
as it
sounds. Oh no. Because it is the world's premier bulk liquid transportation publication. Oh, that kind of tank. Yeah.
That sort of tank. I'm as interested, I'm
afraid.
Donald Trump has finally recommitted to the multilateral process, the rules based order. He has set up an organization called The Board of Peace. I, for one, can't wait to find out how it's gonna work, how much peace it's gonna be bringing to the world. Helen, you've been reading a bit more about it, right?
So much peace. He had the
signing, his person too.
he had the signing ceremony for it at Davos, accompanied by some of the people who have signed up. Now, he has previously said that the United Nations is useless, not least when he appeared at the United Nations. If you remembered not that escalator didn't work, which upset him an enormous amount. So he turned up at Davos and said, we might work with it, but this is the kind of new kid in town So Do you wanna hear about the rules for the board of peace?
Okay,
Anyone can join any, I'll say anyone can join. I don't think you can join personally, but any country can join for a three year term. But if you wanna be a permanent member, a billion dollars. Guess who the founding director and chair of the Board of pieces. indeed, lifetime chair of the Board de post. I think
I think I can guess his surname.
It's Donald
Trump. Yeah.
yeah, he, the, only way he can be removed is if he steps down, or is voted out by unanimous vote of the board whom he's appointed.
This is after his presidency ends.
Oh, yeah. No, he's, he gets to keep it after. he stopped being president. Yeah. Yeah. If he ever stops. being
Yeah. Yeah.
and is there any suggestion as to where this money is going?
good if unanswered question. So he said it won't be run with a huge amount of executive bloat. But given that Trump has, and the Trump family generally have a lot of crypto interests where it's not entirely clear where some of their foreign, trading and stuff like that, where that money ends up, I would love to see a paper trail for where
this,
if the, money ever gets handed. the whole thing just looked like a sort of weird, not a bit like the sort of sealed knot reenactments of battles. It was like a sort of reenactment of the un, but with, a, or like a school nativity play version of the un, I just don't know how real it actually will be. So it started off as a Gaza thing,
right?
right?
And so there's a couple of different boards. There's the executive board, there's the Gaza executive board, and then there's a board of actual Palestinians who I think are actually gonna have to do any of the
because it started, the first we heard about this was Tony Blair was gonna sit on it?
He is, And he's on,
is he on the main one or is he on the Gaza one or
he's on the executive board and there was a great moment
so is he poi up a billion. not
don't think
even,
what are they called? The company's fire rush and Windrush, his, His, sort of dictator
Bums rush being the, main one.
he's sitting on one of the boards as an individual alongside like Steve Woff, the Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, the
porcelain doll. Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
porcelain doll that is his son-in-law.
If someone needs to have a word with esthetician, I think about just dialing back the Botox a bit. Then again, not being very easily surprised is probably when you work in the Trump orbit.
you don't want to register any emotions.
Sounds like a great idea. sir. Let's get
on.
immediately.
Um.
Anyway, so that, that's the personal bit. And there was a great bit in the ceremony when, Trump was introducing people and he said, we've got people on the board, some popular, some less popular. He said, looking at Tony Blair, it was quite harsh, I felt. And then he brought them all up to sign. So Jer Malay, his big.
big
Muled friend, of
chainsaw Tina, Mr. Chainsaw,
Mr. Chainsaw's on the Victor Orban of Hungary. who's a big. Trump Lackey was obviously
he's representing the Liberal wing,
you say he brought them all up to sign. actually two of the members of the Border piece couldn't attend because they're under international arrest warrants, aren't they? In the form of Alexander Lukashenko and,
Vladimir Putin has only been invited. He's still quibbling over whether or not he will in. fact, join up or not.
but Benjamin Netanyahu as well has got a bit of bother with the, international criminal court,
Yes. Bit of a legal issue there. And also the, but one of Putin's things that he's as ever trolling about is whether or not his billion could come from seized Russian assets. So essentially money he doesn't currently have access to.
and then he could use it to pay his entry fee.
Okay. But I'm hearing a lot of skepticism frankly, guys, and I don't like it. I can we, let's focus on the piece. Yes. Because we know Trump's already ended eight wars. So are there really any more left to end?
actually a very, good point. There was a moment, a particularly haunting moment when, Jared Cushner was brought up to do what I can only describe as actually, to use your word, a sort of haunted McKinsey keynote quarter two presentation about his plan for Gaza, which was quite heavy on sort of little diagrams about arrows of stuff going to each other. And then there was a plan for what he's gonna do to wrap a City. So in Gaza, 80% of the buildings have been destroyed.
It's a huge rebuilding project. But it was here are some skyscraper, almost, you were expecting to see like little flying cars around the AI generated images, but that's, that's where some of the money could go. This is a question like, who's gonna pay to rebuild Gaza? Trump keeps saying it should be the surrounding Muslim countries. Obviously Israel not very keen to pay maybe some of this money in the best possible.
If I was gonna be able to give you the best, most generous assessment, other countries could chip in. But essentially the
But they could do that anyway. Yeah. They don't have to do it via some fatuous body that Trump has just invented.
Yes. and there I would always worry in this situation that he's going to invent like Gaza Coin and for everybody to put their money into some sort of special meme coin that for the rebuilding of Gaza money's later never to be seen again.
I, believe that the Board of Peace has been accepted or endorsed somehow by the, is it the UN Security Council?
the UN has got a resolution about the rebuilding of Gaza, which they're working in accordance with. And that's Trump's 20 point plan. But the UN has done kind of what I would expect 'em to do, which sounds is gone. Great. Get on with it lads, let's all see, when raffle, when it's rebuilt, you crack on. But it struck
But it struck me that Trump's, initiative to have an alternative un like nearly all his decisions hinges on one moment where he felt slighted. So it's the speech where Obama was mildly rude to him. This is his visit to the UN and he thinks that the UN slighted him 'cause he said, you are a collection of shithole countries that don't work. I dunno what I'm doing. here. I could do it much better. And the Teleprompt doesn't work. And he's decided to set up an alternative un.
How long this will last is anyone's guess? anyone who guess is less than five minutes. but essentially all he's doing is attempting to replace something he hates with something with him in charge. Yeah, that's, the modus operandi.
running it like Mara Larga, Right? He's running it like a golf club or a private members club, which is you have an entry fee and then you had all these fabulous benefits, which mostly are Hanging around with the president of the United States. The interesting thing is I was surprised that, maybe I wasn't surprised that Victor Orban signed up to it. I guess a lot of those leaders are thinking, we'll never have to pony up this money. This is Ill, he'll have forgotten about it.
In 10 minutes it'll be, or we'll say, it's gonna be in special bonds or something bollocks like that. But The European Union would. just Hard no, Macron, France said, we're not joining this. And then he said, I'm gonna put Trump said I'm gonna put 200% tariffs on champagne, which was just a kind of great, what's the most French thing I can think of? I'm gonna attack strikes and yellow
small mustaches
and bess.
tops,
french fries. But.
he's got a history.
And then Mark Carney of Canada gave a very good speech at Davos, which was about what he called the middle powers. He said, when we are now entering this era again of the great power rivalry, America, China, Russia, and then where does that leave the second tier countries? And he said, we, if we're not gonna be subservient. We have got to work together. And he talked about the fact that Canada has obviously got, is contributing to the war in Ukraine, for example.
And that was the kind of actually one of the most interesting things that might come out of Trump at Davos. And the border piece is a kind of. Not like a super European Union, but actually the, sort of border piece, which will be what I think of as sane countries, basically
part of the problem for Trump is that his criticism of the UN was, it's sclerotic. Nothing ever happens because you've got all these conflicting. Voices like say, having Russia on the same panel as, China or America, and he's replicated that. So how he thinks this is an alternative model in which there will be easily, arranged accords between major powers, which will sort everything out. Isn't that what he objected to in the un?
it, seems that a lot of it is government by announcement. Trump is very nervous about any kind of sustained military engagement anywhere clearly, but loves a, big raid strike on somewhere. We've gone in, we've sorted out Venezuela,
we've gone out again.
Yeah, exactly that and this, it seemed a bit like that to me.
I suspect the answer to it will be that there isn't a lot of debate and a lot of voting between different people who disagree on things. So I had a look at the opening charter of the board piece says decisions should be made by a majority of the member states present by voting. Subject to the approval of the chairman. it's not even like a deciding vote. It's actually like whether he wanted to go ahead or not. Isn't
reckon first order of business will be instituting some sort of board of peace
that they
then awarded
give to him.
maybe,
that actually may be the plan behind all of it. Yeah, I think that's why, I mean, about how, I dunno how seriously to take it. And the interesting thing is. about Something about the way that the Trump admin is currently operating is every unbelievable Lib 2004 opinion. So you know that kind of Michael Moore strand of the left that said Iraq was all about oil and you were that was supposed to be a very unsophisticated thing to think.
And then with Venezuela, they just went, it's of course, it's all about oil, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And then this presentation for the Board of Peace was essentially pitching, particularly Steve Wick coffin, Jared Kushner, pitching to a room full of businessmen. This, you're gonna make a load of money. Right. Which is always the criticism of Dick Cheney Halliburton, that the Iraq war was incredibly good for American military contractors, not so much for the people of Iraq.
And then they were just doing this. So it was basically like you lad can make a load of money running the hotel industry in the newly revitalized Gaza. And just a straightforward, like this is an investment opportunity for you
and this is meant to be a strength, this is realism. in that all government is essentially, financial transaction. Which it clearly isn't. That's one of the few things History teaches
financial transactions is The benefit of the Trump organization as well, isn't it? what struck me with this is that they're, obliged under the terms of this, charter to meet at least once a year. And on other, ad hoc meetings. those sort of things tend to take place at Mar Largo or nice Trump golf resorts where suddenly. The hotels are sold out and all of the security details have gotta be put up and things as well.
And the money goes directly back into, into the commercial interest of the president as well. That's the one thing that might keep this going, I think.
Yeah. that's why I think I, my most. Favorite option for what happens is essentially this is a once a year meeting at the Miami Doral Trump Golf course. or maybe, what's the Scottish one that he owns? We Yeah, exactly. We can have a bid for it so that we can have Vladimir Putin come and talk about peace in
having said that, this was going to be an in international body that sorted out, the problems of the world. He has previously said that there is no such thing as international law. There is only his own morality. He needs no other guide. So the entire world now, according to Donald Trump, only needs his personal set of, morals in order to sort itself out.
I for one, feel safer already.
should we just pretend it's a joke then?
if it was a joke, and I mean, if you were writing this up for the joke pages a pro I mean, you, once the members of the Board of Peace, would you go as far as Alexander Lukashenko and Malay and Benjamin Netanyahu? it's quite,
no, I'd add them in for effect afterwards
as
sort of exaggerated overstatement.
It's
Yeah, I think the thing that's interesting about that is that Trump reversed on Greenland. And as ever, it was really the financial markets just turning. He, that is still a rebuke that he, worries about, he did fold
on that.
Whereas what's very interesting that's currently also happening, we talked last episode about Minnesota and ICE and border patrol.
is slightly ironic, isn't it, establishing a border peace when you are.
are,
are. Um.
Promulgating civil war at home. you can't even keep peace in one of your own cities. Not, even trying to keep peace. You are actually destabilizing the city in order to create non peace.
Yeah.
I think that's what's happening in, Minneapolis, is that these, non-police forces that have been told by Stephen Miller, who is essentially the kind of, I guess you'd call him, Trump's prime minister. he hasn't got a very impressive title, but he's essentially running. The White House domestically has said, they've got immunity. our federal agents are doing a really important job cracking down on rapists and domestic abusers.
And actually, we shouldn't, no one should be standing in their way of them doing anything. And if they, and if people get killed, then tough luck. And what happened with the latest killing is that the White House came out immediately and just lied, just straight up, like Christy Nome of Homeland Security said this guy who was killed. was a domestic terrorist who turned up trying to kill ice
agents. Brandishing the gun. Yeah. and attempting to, take out several ice agents. Yeah. which was just so obvious from the footage that wasn't the case. And what was clear from the footage as well was the, gun that the guy was carrying had been taken off him at the point before he was shot 10 times. So even under that justification,
The press do seem to be having quite a hard time covering it. certainly in America as other than anything but a war of words. Oh. there seemed to be a lot of conflicting narratives about this shooting of a civilian who'd just been disarmed of a gun He appears to have been carrying legally,
well,
very hard to say. Who's right
here? Yeah. as opposed to saying, why do you think, he was shot then? Yeah. and does that matter? it seems to me the focus on Trump's assault on truth, which he's been doing for a long time, and it is grotesque and really offends people, but It does mask, it creates a huge amount of flack, which I'm sure is deliberate. rather than the event itself, which is American citizens being shot dead in a city for doing nothing.
One aspect, which I thought was really interesting was, the, that Trump came out himself and said on truth social, he was carrying a gun. And anyone who carries a gun to a protest can be vegetable. that is an absolute enshrined thing in the Second Amendment, isn't it? the Second, Amendment, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not brilliant on American history, but it's specifically about setting up militias to defend yourself from an overreaching government, isn't it? that, that is what is happening.
And that is, it seems to me that more and more Trump is going complete opposition to the sort of traditional Republican ideas, a lot of traditional American ideas like that. He seems to have lost as you were saying, that his appeal was supposedly that he, spoke directly to a base that, that kind of, he really got their concerns and things. He, he seems to have lost that now completely.
I think there will be still some people who are in information environments where they're just not hearing any of that. But if you look at his headline poll numbers on, this, it's clear that quite a big chunk of America actually doesn't like what the, what ICE and the border Patrol are doing. So I wouldn't, it's, I think it's, I genuinely, said this last time, I do think it is genuinely really concerning.
'cause Ian, exactly as you were saying, there is a deliberate level of provocation here, going out and getting. Never deescalating getting into these very difficult and dangerous situations. And then as soon as and in this case, it looks to be like a complete, it was just a complete cockup of miscommunication and then extremely trigger happy, badly trained, clearly panicked agents again, like Goode, just start firing and in this case firing and firing
and
but that's. That is what's gonna happen if you put people out into, do deliberately aggressive in your face immigration
enforcement and you tell them they're, they've got impunity.
Yeah. And you say it's like Trump's always going on about that film, the Purge, just about the idea that it, what if you just had a time where some like tough men were just allowed to do exactly what they wanted
and presumably at some stage this, counters any appreciation of the American military. And I think that's why he got into trouble. By saying that NATO forces had not stepped up to the mark and hadn't been on the front line and essentially said everyone else was cowardly, because that's not what the American military thought. That's not what anyone else in NATO thought.
And it suggested that that tradition of a sort of vaguely supervised and legal entity IE an Army, was better than a group of people in masks going around shooting your own citizens. And I think that, again is, somewhere where he's gone wrong. and the fact that he climbed down on that I thought was partly due to reaction in America.
But again, it's one of those things that's absolutely quintessential American value is respect for veterans, isn't it?
Yeah. But he already blew through that. Remember? He said, the people in the Cemetery at Arlington were suckers and losers. Why would anyone go and die for their country? what's in it
for you? And John McCain as well.
John McCain. I like people who
I like people who aren't, captured.
I like people who aren't captured. He said about a guy who couldn't raise his arms above his head 'cause he'd been tortured so badly in
Vietnam and this coming from a man who does the draft five times for Vietnam himself, didn't they? It's
just,
that's the thing I felt actually, one of the emotions I felt looking at the kind of maga commentators trying to defend it, was I just felt profound embarrassment on their behalf. Just the kind of They clearly can't feel shame, so it's good that someone's feeling it on their behalf, but every day they're forced into these new mad
contortions. It's very, comical alley for those with long memories,
it?
It's very comical alley. yeah. but at least he was getting paid.
the speech last week at Davos where he said Iceland three times when he was referring to Greenland. Christina,
it? was Carolyn leave at the White House.
just said, no, he didn't.
didn't. she said actually he was talking about Greenland, which is a land of ice, You like, right. Okay. Yeah,
sure. Another, the
stroke, you still have ice three times. It's right there on the video, but it's just this extraordinary thing. Now you can just say, no, it isn't. No.
No,
we'll have to wait and see how the Board of Peace plays out. Of course. Can anyone think of another wise council? Maybe a group of informed individuals who might be able to solve the world's problems better than the Board of
Peace are, are, we talking about the Jedi High Council? Yep. Yes, I noticed that as soon as I go on holiday, a lookalike appears in the magazine of this very scene. In which I appear to have been cast as Yoda.
And one of us got to be Samuel Lau Jackson, so I wonder if anyone can work out who was editing letters page last week in Ian's absence,
I have to say the letter from the supposed reader a Mr. Madam McQueen was entirely unconvincing. It
genuinely based on a comment on this very, podcast, YouTube channel.
Can I just say that Madam McQueen should be your
drag name.
That's phenomenal. Drag name,
There's been a really interesting story in the eye, this latest issue of the eye, all about the fact that times journalists are going to face some compulsory retraining, coming up very soon. They're going to be expected to attend in person, at least one, quite lengthy session about the proper use of ai. And this is off the back of some really funny things, which happened at the times last year. firstly, they, ran a, lengthy interview with a cleaner at Buckingham Palace.
a lady called Anne Simmons, who'd been there many years and had lots of interesting things to say. Who it turned out did not exist. She, she had been, I think fabricated by, a, tile company and a press release. And so she, she was a, an AI person.
and secondly, there was a, she was, I should say, photographed as well. There was a, photograph along
with the interview.
of who, of this
non-existent person
but an AI generated image of
the
AI person. Yeah, A woman who looked a bit like she might've been a cleaner at Buckingham Palace sitting on a very nice
sofa. Yeah. and the other one was slightly better known, it was the, Builder de Blassio story, which I would say is not really an AI screw up. the, there was a hack who was asked to get some quotes from the former mayor of New York builder Blassio, and wrote to the wrong builder, Blassio, got, the wrong email address and wrote to wine merchant from Long Island who then used chat GPT to come up with a load of quotes, which were sent back to the times and then printed.
I, dunno how has that ever happened to you and the other Andy
Murray.
No, it hasn't because you should pitch. you should start pitch
for more business.
I
would like that. Andy Burnham's name, his middle name is Murray. He's technically fully known as Andrew Murray Burnham.
What's going on
there? you are everywhere. Oh, yeah,
Anyway,
so the, times are doing this, they're trying to u use AI more effectively or at least not get gold by AI stories. And it's it's a very, interesting, facet of the AI story because it turns out journalists are not automatically better at spotting ai, slop and fabrications than the rest of
us. particularly if, there aren't many of them and they don't have much time. Yes. Which presumably. the answer to most of the things is hire some human
beings, isn't it? Pretty much. Pretty much. And, but this is a growing problem, and I, in preparation for this sort of discussion of like how AI is affecting the media. I listened back to the chat from a couple of years ago when we, had Matt Muir on talking then about what this amazing new thing called chat GPT was, and any risks and opportunities it might present, and basically everything's got worse since then. Is the shortcut?
Is the shortcut some of the reason why it's got worse is that it's got better. the AI is improving hugely all the time. So things are a lot more convincing. you can now generate photos of supposed Buckingham palace cleaners who don't have seven fingers on each hand,
or,
like that. So it is getting more difficult to spot this stuff. Definitely. but that is certainly being taken advantage of, isn't it? Have you seen the Press Gazette,
investigation into this? Yeah. Yeah. Go on.
No,
You say, So, pres gat. I've got, Rob War who's a longstanding, Tech journalist, does a lot of stuff for the Den, also writes a lot of their kind of like woo UFOs and, witchcraft kind of stories, for the dead, all that woo stuff. So he featured in a hack watch recently, but, but, a good journalist nonetheless, who's compiling list for Pres gat, which is a trade Mag for journalists.
he came up with, 50 apparently fake experts, who, which doesn't sound that impressive, but 50 apparently fake experts who's. comments have been quoted more than a thousand times in the media in recent years.
So these are completely people that there is no evidence that they actually exist, but who've been provided to journalists on, various kind of websites and local papers as well as national papers, with sort of case studies of, I, this, happened to me, or supposedly, their academics, nutritionists, that kind of thing, who've got ad advice for people, none of whom appear to actually exist.
and obviously if you are a massively overworked journalist on a local website and you've gotta churn out 30, 40, a hundred stories every day, and you are handed a press release, which has. A case study in it with someone remind me, even a nice photo of them that you can use. Then you you don't have, you, you're not gonna have the time to phone them up and check, yourself that I still, God, that your first question would be, do you actually exist? Yeah.
So the, what the thing I think is very worrying is that the guardrails have come off and, not just in the media, been in a number of different places. So one of the things that the West Midlands police chief had to admit was that his report on Tel Aviv Maccabee and their fans included an invented match, essentially, which they was deemed to have been hooligans. That was an AI hallucination.
The Trump administration is all the time pumping out fake AI bollocks on Twitter and X. you just cannot now trust. A government handout photo not to have been altered. Yeah. I think that, I always think the metaphor for it is a bit like, essentially like there's been pollution in the, information stream. Right. And it's very hard to get that
out once it's in there. Yes. There was a report last year about, the potential, I, I think It's a problem. It's not clear yet that it's a disastrous problem for, let's say the Russian government to, as it were, go upstream, fill the web with slop text, pushing Pravda, talking points, and then wait for those to be picked up by, AI crawlers, bots that look around the web, searching for new material to harvest. I think it's not.
Disastrous problem because they are trying to work out which sources are most trustworthy and to prioritize those. But it can still
be a problem, they, the Russian government's also just doing some really old fashioned stuff. If you remember last, the year before last, they just turned out to have been paying a load of American culture war influencers like Temple and Dave Rubin
through an
intermediary. Yes. in order, just basically, 'cause what Russia wants is just people pumping out most divisive possible cultural content in America. And they all said, oh, we had no idea that this. Extremely, attractive woman with, a very thin c again, probably AI generated CV that no, they just, they took the money and didn't look. Into, that's the problem. The cost of generating bullshit is now essentially zero.
And all that was stopping people from filling the information sphere with bullshit before was the fact it was just too much work. And now it isn't
much work at all. Whereas the cost of getting journalists to check that things aren't bullshit is now prohibitive for an awful lot of news
organizations. But this is the third phase. this is McQueen's law of journalism. He started off trying to break stories. Then he spent the second half of his career trying to say These stories aren't true. Phase three seems to be no one
cares
Adam. Yeah.
too many of them,
get a life. hit. I'll, give you some numbers 'cause I find this really interesting. So the number of adults in the UK who say they've used tools like Chat PT and Google Gemini to better understand current events. Any guesses?
30%.
47. Quite high. in terms of people in senior jobs in the uk, senior management positions, it's 81.
Wow.
So it's much higher. However, there, there are questions of trust over it still. So when, surveyed, 4% of people said that they thought AI summaries were the most trustworthy source. That compares with 44% saying a news website is the most trustworthy source. So a factor of 10 difference. And that there is still a lot more trust associated with
news websites. I went to see Jimmy Wales give a speech, the founder of Wikipedia. Who said, and he's very impressive nowadays. He said, when we started, we were a joke. now we are a standard of extraordinary, authority, in terms of fact. And his basic pitches. I have human beings still as moderators and a consensus of diligent and altruistic human beings. And he says, there still are some. They're not working obviously for the other, tech pros, but they are working for him.
create, a version of truth which is much nearer to truth than the massed forces of everyone else. So I think it is still possible and that is still part of the job is to say. this stuff is not nearly
good enough
we should
again. Put the slightly positive case. It's, AI is very useful for things like data journalism. it is very good at crunching together large amounts of information if you are well trained on it and you know what you're trying to pull out of it. there's, there are lots of positive uses and lots of media organizations are trying to use it effectively now. Now, normally private eye covers the cases where people are not using it effectively, Reach, which I dunno if it's you who've been, who's been
writing the stories about, I have quite a lot of them. yeah, yeah. that, that is the other side of it is the use of AI by the media as well. reach have been absolutely open about using this tool that they slightly presently called Guten after Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, which allows them to do a. multiple versions of what is effectively the same story, and then pump them out across their network of, websites across the uk.
The most effective journalist at this, I have to say, is a guy called James Is he really? It's my rule again that you should never trust a man. with two first names
Andrew Hunter Murray.
three first names, he's on Birmingham Live. he has been known to churn out, up to a hundred pieces under his byline every single day. I had a look this morning. As we're recording, just from today, we've got, met office names, all of the 27 areas facing 17 hours of snow on Tuesday. That was at 10 52 Met office names all the UK areas set to escape snow on Tuesday, full list 10 57. All Of the Midlands towns set for 17 hours of snow.
On Tuesday, full list, 1101 UK Snow bomb brought forward and to new date as West Weinland's. verdict confirmed. 1128 Met off his names all of the UK areas who have to pack emergency kit before Tuesday. Full list. Spoiler alert on that one. You don't have to back an emergency
kit. But the thing that's interesting when you read out all of those headlines is those headlines are written for Google, like jam
full of a hundred
engine keywords. So you've essentially got robots writing copy for
robots for other robots with a brief intermediary of a human having to human's the thin
paste in the middle of the sand. But the other thing is that most news organizations are preparing for Google search to deliver them no traffic by the end of this year. Yeah. Because Google now puts in a Google Gemini AI Things. there's always been this tension with, in Australia there's been cases about Google news paying journalists. 'cause essentially it's like using, harvesting their content and putting their headlines.
Now the thing is that Google will now just, essentially has just cut off that spigot of directing anybody to news, websites. It would rather them just see a little
at the top of their Google result. And this, is where you get the argument about what media organizations should do about that. So there is a case that I've seen made that, for example, rather than, the Guardian striking a deal with open ai. So that OpenAI can inhale all the Guardian's archive, which, good sourced stuff. Few typos, no problem. But basically, OpenAI is getting a huge new source of, decent news in exchange for a financial deal with OpenAI.
That is a way that the power is handed to open ai. the, consumer is getting their news from OpenAI. It happens to come originally from The Guardian. What if instead of that, let's say the B, B, C or whoever. Had their own AI engine, which can produce results based on everything the B, the BBC has produced over the last hundred odd years. that is a, that's a way that AI could
be used
deliver trustworthy, reliable results to people who
want to know what they're getting. I think more people are gonna do essentially a version of the like longstanding private eye gambit, right? Which is you can only consume our content on our source. Like we call it the magazine, but no, like lots of people you know, are saying that come to our app, you know, that, trying to keep you on their particular platform.
And the other thing that delivers an absolute boatload of traffic is Apple News, which is essentially what everybody's been trying to make work forever, which is the Micropayment system, right? You play a flat fee and then you get access to loads and loads of places. But I think there is a real, there's a real divergence between people who've decided to go, we are worth paying for and you're gonna have to pay for us. And Like you say, the reaches of the world who've gone pile 'em
high, sell 'em cheap, let's not make
anything worth paying for. Yeah. And let's run this business down until, until it goes under. 'cause there's just not enough
money left in anymore. But I did read a, very good analysis, of the trajectory of, nearly all organizations and AI is following. them, in that it's not making any money. No one's making any money. It costs far too much money, to do videos. There aren't enough deserts full of data centers, being sprayed by empty reservoirs to actually finance this. So what do they do? There are two ways out. The first way is advertising, which they said they wouldn't do, which they're now considering.
And the second way is porn. which again, this was meant to be ai. It was meant to be. for, the good of humankind and all those really reliable tech bros sitting around telling each other, they were doing this for the public good. the public good seems to be taking money from other commercial enterprises and, running porn. So that's, a positive future.
Progress. Yep.
It's
But for Elon
Mask,
That's a suitably depressing note to end on. Yeah. Sorry.
No, You tried to be upbeat for a
brief flicker of time.
I know.
that's it for this episode of page 94. thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get hold of proper human produced journalism, it's available in the magazine. It's available on Newstands, and it's available@privatehypheni.co uk. There are subscriptions available for very reasonable prices. We'll be back again in a fortnight with another of these. until then, there's any time to say thank you once again for listening. And thank you to Matt Hill. Of Rethink audio
for
producing.
Bye for
now.