Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Ice studio with Helen Lewis, Ian Hislop and Richard Brooks. So we have just had, uh, an American import to the UK in the form of Saturday Night Live uk. It's a big American show that's come here after kind of 50 years, but we have just announced a really successful new export to America, which is the idea of having a mad king. Uh, America's taken that on and they've been running with it.
And Helen, I believe you've been following how, just how well it's been going. Yeah, I mean, so much, so much winning. So obviously Donald Trump, uh, I mean, I'm hesitant to say anything about the Iran War because it's, it's existing in this sort of quantum super position of whatever Donald Trump says is currently happening with it. He currently says. It's, he's negotiating with Iranians. Iranians say, we dunno what talking about.
He did announce that just after the markets had opened after a pretty grizzly couple of days. So who knows where we'll be by the time this goes out. But essentially what we now know after four weeks of war is that they didn't have any contingency planning about what would happen if the straight of formers got closed. Mm-hmm.
They assumed per report in the New York Times that based on Israeli intelligence it looks like that Iranian protestors would rise up and overthrow the regime, which is so far not happened. Yeah. and that they wouldn't at any point have to put kind of boot. on the ground. Boots are now kind of sailing over boots are hovering over the ground. I would say at the moment.
So you know that, and that is an incredibly symbolic thing for America to do, but the main thing about it is the fact that it has really revealed is no one in this White House who can say no to Donald Trump. And why is that? Because they were all hand selected to be people who wouldn't say no to Donald Trump. Such a que question on application. That's reason. reasonable answer. Well, but in one way. Look at it.
One, one of the qualifications to work in that White House is you have to believe that Donald Trump was grievously robbed of the election. Right. You have to be a kind of reality denier in favor of the cult of, you know, um, presidente. So by saying that you have to say, you know, you've accepted this one thing, your loyalty to Trump matters more than the facts. You can kind of see everything else flows from that. But
fact is quite important in the run up to a war. I mean, the failures of intelligence you've described could be applied to Iraq or
some of
the other, um, adventures or picnics or whatever. What is the definition for the war at the moment? Um,
I believe it's a Shara Bank tour.
a Shara bank to, but again, none of this was, um, unforeseeable. Why did no one mention any of it?
Did he even know about things like, you know, oil going through the straightforward boots
you know, did he think about that? He's making these decisions, isn't he, without talking about anybody? Does it occur to him that, hang on, there's gonna be
a Yeah, we don't, A consequence like that. We don't, I they do seem to have been completely caught on the hop by that. I think the way that their intelligence was was essentially, we'll go in, you know, take out the io toler and the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards. we'll be home and sort of teeing medals. And that is obviously not what has happened. The regime has basically said, well, hang on a minute, what, like, what's the point of negotiating? Right.
that's the fascinating thing, is that Donald Trump has been hopping from foot to foot for days now, obviously desperate to negotiate an end to the war that he can claim as a another great Donald Trump victory. And the Iranians are the ones who really don't see what's in that for them. What we have at the moment, as as you said, um, Donald Trump has just declared that he spoke to Iran and he now graciously won't bomb energy infrastructure for five days.
Whereas previously it was a 48 hour deadline and the Iranians have said, well, we haven't, we haven't had that chat. Uh, so we dunno who you were talking to. Uh, I mean, things are probably quite chaotic at the top of the regime at the moment, obviously. well, everyone's got Donald Trump's phone number, so it's quite possible that someone with been what an Iranian accent has phoned him up claiming to be the Iranian foreign And they had a very good chat.
But the last time Donald Trump said things were going well in negotiations, I, I had a little check. It was the 6th of February, if you can remember all the way back then. He said the talks they were having had been very good and it looks like they want to make a deal very badly. but it was about three weeks before he unleashed Armageddon. So maybe his word on the how the talk's going is not, not gospel. I have this vision of,
of Donald Trump inventing. A talk at one end and the other end there's a, an Ayatollah who may or may not be alive. We don't know. Yeah. There's a series of men who you see grainy footage of in bunkers who may or may not be talking to each other or to anyone else who's actually in charge of a missile. I'm, I'm not quite sure how these
talks are happening. they're clearly not. That's the problem. just, there's been so much chat wasted on
Trump's
reasons for doing things as though there are reasons, but you're right. I mean, it's a crisis for international depro diplomacy if you end up with a leader that nobody believes a word that they say and they go back on themselves all the time. Yeah. That's the thing. If, even if America was sending out very strong signals of being utterly bonkers, consistently. That would be something that people could work with.
But the problem is that everybody, and you know, I do feel a great deal of sympathy for Ki Stama and Rachel Reeves in this because all of their fiscal plans for the entire year Yeah. Are resting on what Mad King Donald Rampaging down the haha in his white night shirt flapping behind him, decides to do
next. Although it does give them a bit of a
a let out, doesn't it?
Because, you know, global turmoil is a bit like COVID and
so on.
Um, if I were Rachel Reeves, I'd be thinking few, you know, at least I'm not gonna be held to those plans. You know,
the thing you said about, The purity test of, of saying that, you know, Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that's,
the sort of threshing machine
you have to pass your brain through in order to be accepted into Donald Trump's inner circle.
It's weirdly reminiscent of
what happened to the conservative party after Brexit, where you had the Boris Johnson cabinet, which was only loyalists, you know, all of the, anyone who disagreed was cleared out. You know, they, they kind of left of the Tory party and the centrist and the people who thought Brexit looks like a might be not a brilliant idea.
They were all cleared out, I think even before then When, but what, so for a long time, if you wanted to get selected as a tour p during the 2010s or the late two thousands, the question that came up in selection meetings was well, you think about leaving the European Union. And, you know, it was a very popular thing to say, so you had a lot of people who had never looked into it. Or didn't think it was a great idea, but also thought it was never gonna happen, just going, going along with it.
Mm-hmm. And I think that's, that is exactly the problem we're seeing repeated is that people who just think, well, it doesn't matter if I just make this one compromise. Right. Actually know sometimes that bill does come to you.
And how does it happen that the head of counter-terrorism, who from what I dread I assumed, was pretty much full on Trump loon, um, has declared that trump's a loon.
Um,
uh, what on
earth are we
here? What, why is this man suddenly, um, the
new bellwether? Well, a new type of loon is rising in the east. No, hang minute in the west. Um, actually, is, he is Joe Ket. We're talking about resigned and he made a fair point in the resignation letter, which was a bit about this kind of idea that the US has embarked on a joint war here with Israel. And actually that maybe this might be suiting the Israelis rather than more than the Americans. But he then brought in this other stuff how his wife was killed in Syria by, by bombing.
About how that was another Israel led, uh, foreign war. And that shades into lots of things he said in the past that shade into the idea that actually maybe the Jewish state and then maybe by extension Jews are maybe controlling America's foreign policy. In the kind of way that if you saw somebody saying it online, your eyes would, would go up and go, is this going to just stay as a strictly clear critique of foreign policy
or is this is it gonna end
is it gonna end up where I think it is in a little bit puppet master hands in the cartoon. Right. Um, and I think that's, that is. an emerging strain of maga. So there are people who are both anti-Israel for very principled reasons in the sense that they think it is a foreign war adventurism and that America's foreign policy should be dictated by America's interest first, and that those don't lie in wars in the Middle East.
But there are also some flat out white supremacists who have glommed on to Maga, who are anti-Jewish Holocaust deniers. Um, people like Nick Fuentes, who I've mentioned before. Yeah. But this has caused, this, going into a war with Israel has caused a split in the, what you might call the kind of MAGA elite. So I looked at the polling and actually voters who self identify as maga, 90% of them backed strikes on Iran at the start of the war. That may have softened up since then. Only 70%.
Only 77% of those who define as Republican back it. Right. So being MAGA is being, you know, Donald Trump, right or wrong to some extent. But within the elite people like Tucker Carlson, Meghan Kelly, have. Started to, and the kind of podcast comedian class. So Theo Vaughn, Joe Rogan, you can't
you can't lose the
podcast comedians, they're,
they're a
core demographic, right? But they, they're a core demographic, right? Because they all swung behind Trump in 2024. Right? But they have been, to their credit, Joe Rogan is, is not a big fan of foreign wars in the way that Donald Trump wants wasn't right. And so they being a little bit more of a distance removed, um, have been, uh, have been quite critical. I'm just gonna read you out something 'cause just to give you a sense of the level of debate is currently happening.
Right. So Mark Levin very pro-Israel taught radio host Versus Meghan Kelly X. Fox News. She'll remember her.
Is anyone involved Not
in broadcast? No. That's the wi, right? Okay. everyone is 12 and everyone is a chat show host. Those are the only things
you need to know that explains so much about
war, the war, everything about what? American politics. Okay. So me, Kelly, first of all, attacks Mark Levin saying, calling him MicroPen Mark Levin. Right. and Saying that's why he's in favor of this war. He then says, busy Sunday morning for me, Kelly, she wakes up and has micro penis on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlet and posts like a harlet, it's, well, you know the rest shalom. At which point Donald Trump thinks, here's a beef I should get involved with.
Oh God. And on truth social defending Levin is a truly great American patriot who is far smarter than those who criticize him.
the resident of the United States has got nothing better
to do.
do. No. Just Weigh in on the great MicroPen controversy of 2026. But this is what's happening is you've basically got load of, yeah, like cable news hosts. I mean, Pete Hegseth of Secretary of War is a former Fox News host. This is basically a load of preening pre bad Donna, who have somehow accidentally been in, put in charge of the world's only superpower and it's enormous arsenal. And of course, they're all fighting with each other.
So the base is still very with Trump, but he has lost significant portions of the kind of MAGA
over this. Can I, can I ask what happened
to the Army? Are, Are,
are
are there any generals left? Is there anyone left in command in America
who says,
I'm not sure about this,
yeah,
or, well, someone's, someone's
Someone's launching these missiles,
are they? Yeah. Well, I mean, Pete Hegseth has been pretty explicit about clearing people out. You know, he gave, went and summoned them all, if you remember, of that lecture about how they weren't allowed to have beards. Um, and, you know, he's been very clear that He wants a, you know, he wants a stereotypically masculine military, and he wants one that is not going to gain say anything that they're ordered to do. So you are right.
The big figures of Trump won, like, um, general Mark Kelly, like HR McMaster gone. He wasn't gonna make the mistake of appointing anybody like that again. And the two things they used to do was, one, they used to tell him to his face, were a bad idea, and two, I think they used to quietly hide his briefing papers and hope he'd forget about it.
Also, it turned out a great tactic, but now he's got Marco Rubio, who he used to attack all the time as little Marco and just, you know, once so said, you know, if you locked him in a room, you know, he could slide under the door. Right. That, that, that's, he would just all his principles. JD Vance, who's been stuffed in a cupboard, um, and knows that his only lane for 2028 is as you know, continuity Trump. So he can't break from him.
Susie Wiles is the chief of staff was picked because she was just there to enable whatever he wants to do. Mm-hmm. and who in the whole of the Republican party is, is a counterweight to him. You know, like Mitt Romney's out of the Senate, you know, there are a couple of senators like Thomas Tillis, who's on his way, out, who will vote against his nominees, stand up to him, make criticisms, right.
Um, but, none of this matters. The great vaunted American system of, of checks
and balances.
It, it doesn't seem to
work at does it? No, Congress, you know, at the moment, if you look online, you will see that are two or three hour long queues at security at American airports. And that's just because of essentially a partial government shutdown in funding. They have this mad idea that you can, like fund agencies and, and you keep voting, you know, Congress needs to reapprove funding.
And what's happened with that is that the Republicans have attached a load of ICE funding, immigration enforcement funding to it, which the Democrats don't wanna vote through. So while they continue to have this stalemate, people have now to get to the airport 15 hours early and stand in the car park. Like there was this line, I think it was PJ R always used to have about, you know, Republicans say. Government doesn't work and then they set out to prove it.
And there is a lot of that in American politics, right? It's just that we just, you know, don't really care that much about government working, is it? Just that
it takes so long for these checks
balances for
the
courts to act, and,
you know, so there's just not effective. 'cause that
was always
the the lime, wasn't
it? Oh, don't worry too
much about Trump because
the checks and balances would kick. in a lot better this time though. So without getting too conspiratorial. No, I mean, all agree to disagree. No, I mean, he's not Better Okay. getting what he, he wants or the people who work for him. So in, um, Steven Miller, who's effectively his minister, you know, he has got a doctrinaire anti-immigration idea. Ideolog, who is crucially quite well liked by his staff and really good at bureaucracy, right?
He, he's not a, although his wife a podcaster, inevitably. 'cause that's the law, someone in his family's got a podcast and it's gonna have to be you. Um, so, you know, he's got these kind of dry bureaucrats essentially in now. And thanks to things Project 2025, which was the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a second Trump government, he's got a kind of tick list of stuff that he can do often using executive orders. You saw the big barrage of them at start.
Lots of those, when they eventually up at the Supreme Court will get overturned. But it takes months and the Supreme Court gets to pick its docket to some extent. So it can pick and choose what it wants to look at. I mean, the midterms are, coming up and that really might be when it changes everything. and also at that point, lots of Republicans start thinking about their positioning 2028. Do they want to be left holding this? on?
Probably by that point, unpopular failed war And that might encourage a few of them grow tiny whisper of a vertebrae. Just to
yeah.
I'm interested you say that,
there's no one pointing these things out and. until The head of counter-terrorism says, do you think Israel's leading this war? I mean, last week on
our
page, uh,
one of our readers,
know, and this is a full
two weeks
ahead, said, I think we should call this the
Israel, US Iran
And I thought, well, that's quite good. That's from one of our readers is is there no one of
that level
competence
operating in the House? I mean, as I say, most of the people I think are really competent are on the domestic side of policy. And you know, the thing is, I mentioned this before in my that um, you've got Jared Kushner, for example, one of the envoys and, uh, Woff, they're also supposed to be doing Ukraine. You know, you've got a situation now in which the US is also blockading Cuba. Right. Cuba's had power cuts intermittently, and they're all kind of going, well.
we should, there was a report in Atlantic, my other organization saying that they're casting round for a Republican donor with family links to Cuba who might fancy going over and having a, having a crack at being in
of q
to being the governor. I mean, there's lots, there's a big Republican Florida community of of of expats who'd love to have a crack at being head of Cuba. They give you your own cigar. Absolutely. Your life expectancy is
six to eight
months. It sounds to be like reform taking over councils
here, doesn't it? So warmer. A lot
warmer. Yeah. So Trump's cut off
the oil
Cuba and opened it again. So
Iran can
sell. Yes.
I want, can you explain this. So yes, I,
this is exactly what I to ask. So, so far as far as I can tell, there are
three beneficiaries of the war. One is a big American oil exporters of visa. Mm-hmm. The price has gone up enormously.
Uh,
one is Russia.
Uh, they'll, they'll
get a lot more and they've just had their sanctions lifted. And the third is Iran. The USA seems to have allied with Iran to lift its sanctions to ensure that the prices
don't go
completely outta control.
well this is
is what's going on there?
You know, like we were talking about earlier, just not understanding the consequences of reaction of your actions. You know, this is gonna hit the oil price that's gonna hit inflation. Um, oh, we didn't really think about that. You know, you go to war in the Middle East and don't think about the effect on the
oil
oil price until, until a bit later. Um, so yeah, I mean, it is must
be the most, perhaps the only example of,
one power funding its enemy during a war
It reminded me a bit of the Russian invasion
Ukraine, where Europe is
still using a a, Yeah, a
of, I
mean, they've
to diversify
a lot away
Russian
gas and
and they've, I think they'll have completed the job next
year, but
Well, I think, I think they just haven't understood that, you know, the markets are all interconnected. Uh, it's not, you know, we don't get
our oil from,
you know, friendly countries and domestically and, and, and, you know, Iran just sends it to China and
Yeah, whoever,
that it all goes on the same market and therefore you get this terrible effect on prices and not really understood that, and
not understood
the way that we
actually help.
break any kind of ring fence that you might wanna set up by using places like Dubai where, Iran and root oil pretty much to wherever it wants through centers like that.
but he doesn't understand tariffs, so it's possible he just also willfully Yeah. international markets.
Yeah. And there's a
similar sort of,
uh, you know, this
negotiating tactic
with ta with tariffs where we're gonna, you know, if you don't come to the
table, we're putting a
massive tariff on you, and then
the time comes and you
sort of, like,
oh no, we'll give you another
of months. You know,
this is the guy who's supposedly, uh, you know, the great negotiator. But what you've learned is that
you can't believe any, any threat he
he says
doesn't really stand up.
The trouble is that, If he did go
with those threats, they're so catastrophic
but it seems like a lot of these red lines have already been crossed. I mean, they were in the middle of a negotiation when the
war was launched.
So why would Iran come to the table to negotiate and enter the war,
given that,
yeah. Trump has shown that his word is not to
be relied on. I, don't, I don't think theirs is either. To be quite honest. I'm not,
Like, I'm not entirely sure that
be uh, assembled, uh, revolutionary guard would be that
worried about,
sticking
their negotiating positions either.
now I, I'm sure that isn't
what you meant, but I mean,
the problem seems to be that
we're in a phony war
where
if we are a war
Iran, why are
we
them to sell their oil, freely and make
more money and
themselves?
Why are we encouraging our
allies And Richard's written about this to carry on selling Iranian oil. Um, but just doing it slightly
under the radar.
none of this makes a great deal of sense if
we were genuinely at
No. Right. But, but we, we have, you know, we have allowed them to become so
embedded that's
issue, you know, yes, it would be great if you could say around, you're not selling any oil. Um, and, and they're, you know, and they
suffer the consequences.
But, you know, it, it's in the system. We've, we've
created that system, Is it international capitalism? Richard? Yeah, it was
scourge of,
Just
checking. Okay. I mean, this is, if anything, a resounding sort of cheer international capitalism because that's appears me the only thing that has any restraining value on Donald Trump. Right. He obviously made the announcement that he did because he's very about inflation and the economy, and particularly American gas prices, which are like kind of holy
value.
I know they've gone from American petro prices have gone from insanely
cheap to criminally cheap, and the American
people will not put up with those Extraordinary prices. They
have to,
honestly, as a Brit looking at those prices, you think, come on. I know I quite regularly fill up like a big SUV Sorry, close your is, you don't wanna hear sorry. When I'm across America and I go and I'm like, and I, and I consistently, because my, you've charged me for the chocolate bar. here, right? because my car doesn't work. Like you have have the special mag, stripe card, whatever in America. I often have to go in and prepay for the pump.
And I always, I go, well, that's a, I'm essentially driving a tank. It's probably gonna cost what, like $50 to fill that up. And then every time I've massively overestimated.
Mm-hmm.
Did you, um, talk about Saturday Live, did you see that Donald Trump reposted the Saturday Night Live sketch, taking the piss out of ki Yeah. For, For
afraid of him. The un
Kind of cut of off. I know. But I, but that also kind of reflects that other thing that we've been talking about, about the Trump's belief that his allies are really stepped up for him. And he was sort of like, why haven't you not guys not open the strait of s s You
won't eat a bunch of ingrates.
but petrol prices will go
as you say,
and Americans do drive twice as far with
less efficient cars.
So it will, it will
people
that won't it? Or certain people will feel it in their pockets. Oh, I mean, it's, it's just an unfathomably vast country. So even just like the logistics of getting food and things around the country have a huge knock on effect, even if people weren't driving pickup trucks where the wheels are like that high. Right,
right, right. You, but yeah.
But America is more insulated than lots of
other places. Is
is another element of this whole thing, is this because of the shale gas?
They're fracking?
Yeah. Well, since the,
the 1973
oil crisis, the oil Shock America was a
big net importer at
the time, and now they're a big net
exporter. I
that will affect their their
to it.
All the Asian
are having a driver
time. they've already gone to four day weeks in various places because they're trying to preserve the
they've got, um,
they've set limits on what you can set the air conditioning to because the, the electricity
gas based. So there are plenty of
countries that are in a mad scramble at the moment
try and
deal with
and
not knowing when full supplies
will be resumed. But,
And there is a feeling that,
And old Sparky was writing it for us, is that, um, it's a big crisis, but it's particularly a crisis if you are a poor country. because the remaining
stocks
be, you'll be outbid. Sorry.
Yeah. other
countries will buy the liquified gas. They'll buy whatever there is, and if you are Bangladesh it's gonna be a bit grim. Yeah.
we have a war in
the richest western country America is saying, well, we can keep this war going. You're thinking, Yeah.
what
what about the rest of the world? Yeah. So we spoke last time on the show about what
in Pakistan after
Russia invaded Ukraine, uh, in relation to their energy system. Pakistan
then
had a bit of a Soler revolution where they've
I mean, huge numbers
like gigawatts and gigawatts of Soler that has changed Pakistan's
to, to
a greater extent than Bangladesh
where Bangladesh is still very reliant.
we have can I float a new conspiracy though? Yeah. Which is that Trump is actually being
controlled by Greta Thunberg
because this war just a giant advert for like de fossilizing your economy. I like, I like that theory. He's actually all this time he's been a mole, He's been run incredibly deep cover. deep. you know, just putting
the, uh, you know, reforming alternative, uh, perhaps
it's an A
for having, you know,
emergency supplies of your own,
maybe we should drill
the North Sea. I'm just gonna float the idea. it, first, but it is about
about energy
security. I mean, it does show, you know,
importance of security.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um,
but it's, it's funny 'cause
time these.
Crises happen and they do keep
happening.
The alternatives are looking better economically.
You know, things like battery storage, which is probably
down by about half since 2022.
I mean,
the cost of the alternatives
on changing.
China is the fourth beneficiary of this war, really,
because I think
a lot of countries will be
looking at their
plans for big expansions of natural gas and thinking,
Hmm, maybe we
could just do a bit of
and storage
quite sunny here.
is quite cheap now,
But we'll drill the North Sea and
be all right. Uh,
Yeah,
That, that's the default opposition position at
moment, isn't it?
Yeah. Why don't we just
the Northeast and
yeah. it's kept happening since we, thought we this since podcast when you
how that wouldn't work. Put this to bed
two weeks ago. Yeah. Um, now you,
you keep putting it to bed
and it keeps on getting up again. Yeah, yeah.
It's almost as though, can we Batter not,
wasn't listening to you. Andy, I
believe that.
I've spoken
this morning to more people involved
in the I thought you gonna say Kemi B? no, she's not picking up. it is
an interesting
one 'cause
of people are putting
the case that we need everything all at once. You know, we need to do everything to ensure stability and security. but a lot
of the sides
of the debate will say, well, we need to do everything except the thing
chosen we shouldn't do. So if
you Kimmy Bock or, or Richard Tyson Nigel Forgi say, well, we need to do everything,
but let's not do the renewables. Which
is basically an argument for doing
the North Sea. You know, and again,
there's a case for doing it. If you
to maybe nationalize
the industry, that would be, that would be an option. What about a lovely
nuclear power?
plant? Yeah. 10 years from now. Terrific. Yeah, absolutely. would be.
When 10,
sorry.
20. How long? Any The advance
that
Yeah. Yeah,
yeah.
it's so ' Andy: cause governments keep on having these shocks and, that, you know, we had the shock in 2022. Richie soak,
Saks, one of his next moves was to say,
well, let's roll back the, the electric car mandate. Let's go
Let's, let's
keep our reliance on this stuff for longer. the government's
package has been pretty decent.
What they've said is very short term. If you're
with heating oil,
but lots of
use heating oil, still, we're gonna
support you, but in a
way because
they're not yet
countenance in the idea of supporting everyone's bills again.
Um, I'm not sure we can
that, can we?
It doesn't seem like it Borrowing is quite, quite difficult, at the moment,
it, Richard? the trouble is that yeah, it's very difficult to get back
to normal in the meantime.
Um, you know, and often sort of counterproductive. cause you're saying, well, we really gotta reign in now. We've gotta cut that debt to get
that interest down and
on. then
you end up not putting money into various
like, you know, and now we're talking about
not enough burning to defend,
example. Um, yeah. You
know, you don't
address the problems. you know, like COVID, we weren't prepared in the health service.
This
has come along.
You
we've got a couple of dinghies we can send
over. You know, we're not prepared
this one, Yeah. Um, well,
let's say the next crisis is in the arts.
Sure.
It's a, unfortunately the
arts we're always in crisis. There's
solution there. Um,
can I say one more quick thing
energy? Just that
no matter who you talk to, all over,
everyone's solution is the
same, which is lower
price of electricity
for people who
want bills to be lower,
uh, like the
or the conservative.
Removing levies
electricity bills
and maybe putting them into general taxation, maybe it's scraping,
whatever. They have different proposals,
but that cheapens
bills for people who actually want the transition to
happen. When I
myself in that camp, that
making the electricity price lower encourages people to adopt these solutions,
know, it's, and
we've already largely made the, the
grid green, but
there's so
elsewhere.
Mostly the cars we drive and how
heat our homes, that is remaining to
be greened. It is, it is security. I knew I, We start off with the wrong one. I knew we'd up at cross pavement charging
system.
No, no, no, Heat. Heat pumps and electric cars are the electric. They are stability. They are, they're basically Did I follow security? You were saying
that essentially the populous view of get, get the
bills down 'cause we want to
less is actually a positive green,
incitement. I think getting the bills down means more people will
encouraged to adopt these solutions.
Yep. I think reform of the conservatives have said various things like, we're gonna scrap net zero targets, we're going to
scrap heat pump incentives. I it would not be
good for the climate in
long run or emissions,
but getting the electricity price down seems
be the thing everyone can agree on. Because you make these solutions even
more economically compelling, more people will adopt it, You know, car, if you can fill up an electric car for seven quid and your, your diesel's just
up to a hundred quid. It
becomes, it becomes more So yeah,
that seems to be
the thing we should bear in mind for next
this happens, which
will be in about two years, apparently. Yeah. so now we come to
the exciting world of finance. Richard, you
write the in the money column. And there
been a few
stories recently, both in your column
across, across,
the rest of the press about, um, a little
party
called reform
and the
very innovative things that they're
with money, Things like them receiving
donations in the form of crypto. it seems to be, it seems to be a
vibrant area.
And um, they're at the
at the cutting edge of this. Yeah, definitely.
Um, can you tell us
what what
gives
Yeah. Well,
they've said they, well, who
gives? Yes. Well, that's the point. We can't,
right. Um, or
not sure.
they've said that, um, they've started taking
crypto donations,
but none are actually recorded
yet. If they are, they're getting washed through the
crypto system and turned into real money. and
process, doesn't
give you
great confidence
in where the money originally
from
now there's no,
we haven't got a case
where we can say, ah,
money you said came from
This direct actually
came from Mrs. Y, but that's what it potentially allows you
to do. And that's why there
people arguing for banning crypto
donations
or donations
that originate with crypto. government shows no
of doing that. It's,
it's quite procr as well. God, I thought we weren't so procr. I mean, obviously the, the Trump family is massively procr. Um, they, you know, had this big stake in World Liberty They sold the Qatar just before Inauguration Day.
Donald Trump Junior Is every shady crypto conference in the Middle Well, actually that's probably really neck of their business model shady looking crypto conferences in the Middle East, but I, I, I I sort of thought we were maintaining what I'd like to think of as a kind slightly more useful reserve. But that not true? Britain is,
is Gungho crypto as well? Well, we,
we are saying that we want to regulate it properly mm-hmm. in order
have a, you know, a
you know,
healthy, responsible crypto industry.
the question is
you know, there really is such a thing,
you know, if you look at who uses this
stuff
for real
as opposed to just
kind of
it and hoping it goes up in value. pornography, uh, you know, drugs, anything,
uh,
laundering. it's,
hard to find. And you know, you even find, it, we wrote a
uh, a couple of issues ago about the guy who runs the
payment
company that Reform are using,
and he was at
conference saying,
oh, you know, we, you know, we've
pornography covered, we've got, um, you know, we've got the drugs covered. Um,
we, we are looking
some decent purposes to, for people to use our product. You know, they just haven't really got it.
is if you, if you
do something legitimate with
money, why don't
you
just use ordinary money, Right? You use a bank as as you like to call them, and you get that, you get deposit insurance, right? As a consumer, you get up to something like 85,000 pounds. you have in a bank account, The, the, like the government will back if the bank goes
under, Yeah. If you lose the keys to your, like
your crypto wallet or someone steals it. no one is coming to you. Like, I just, I'm
extreme caution is how I,
word crypto. No, I mean, there was
famous case,
guy who's
laptop
his laptop in the,
out and he, he, You know, the Bitcoin or whatever had gone up in
value so much.
tried to buy the whole,
Yeah, it was a council waste disposal dump. Yeah. Dump from the council, said, I'll give you millions
this so
but Nitro forage can't use banks, can't he?
Well, I,
I, Yeah, he got he, he was de he by Coutts. But I, I think that was an interesting one that, that, I'm not saying he, he it, but it came at a very useful time for him to use it as a, and is why Oh, right. You know, because he was also very into gold. Right. Like he gold through his newsletter. So the part of the Yeah. Right. The part of the political that he's appealing to is very low trust in institutions. Yeah. And then, so the message to sell crypto has always been don't trust the banks.
You know, have your crypto keep, them like it's, it's money
can't be regulated, can't be overseen.
I have to say turning, I was
de banked by
Kouts into, pitch to people to not trust
is quite. Fuck. It's
quite good politics, I've gotta say. It's quite cleverly done.
and he's certainly
going going strong on both gold
and crypto. he's got
this big, gig with the gold company,
direct bullion company
who are paying him, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds.
not that he's necessarily
used that money, but he's put a very similar amount
money
into,
A crypto company whose largest
shareholder is the guy
paid him all that money for the, for endorsing
gold.
This is this separate to
quasi Quaye? Well, the,
no it's not. This
is the quasi
Quaye
Bitcoin Company, which is Discre. Is
Is it called that? Because I
would suggest that's not
a very good name To market. Why Is it not called
Paul? It's, it's,
crazy. it's allied with the, with the trust, uh, investment management, uh, company.
Uh, no. It's CROs
car. and
chap
Paul with us, have joined up to create this company
called Stack Bitcoin, which is a
bitcoin
company,
which means
they'll look after your
Bitcoin. but
nothing to do with the treasury.
No,
don't, just checking.
No, aren't
know the debt quite arrived by, Aren't there rules about what you, there are rules
you can't just say, this is the King's
crypto company
whatever. You're allowed to
stick treasury
it. You can
use the
treasury. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean,
up questionable whether
Party Quaye should ever use the word treasury again,
but, um, I
I think that's a
a good question.
so Ferra gets the money
from the gold company.
He puts it into,
the crypto company that
the gold guy involved
and this crypto
company shares leaps up, So it was all, you know, very convenient.
That's what I'm really interested in, because exactly as you say, when he announced, I
think it was 215,000 pounds he'd invested in this
stack company.
the value then leaps.
he's got various options, which
mean that if the value of this company goes above a certain
he will make a huge amount of money.
But obviously he's using his status as a
figure to
drive up the value of the coin. I mean
very, this
is
thing about crypto.
You're looking
an adjective. And
and Richard has
said convenient.
Sorry. So if you don't want the lawyers
have to
spend the next
35 minutes convenience, Can we just say convenient? Yeah.
As in
As in public convenience. that's the kind of point of crypto though, right? Is in respects, it's trading on reputation and trading speculation. Nobody buys crypto really as a safe haven. buy it because they think they're going to the moon. And
like the, thing that
the thing that annoys people, I wish I wish they would. Well, no, but The thing that annoys people like me, I I made a podcast about this once, was the fact that it has delivered a huge amount of returns for pe like, for everybody who was the early investors. Uh, I mean, and there's a weird analogy, analogy to some of the other stuff, like when they took the post office public and they sold off the early things and then immediate it spiked up. So everybody who got in the early
Yeah. made absolute bank.
Well, it's like any
bubble, yes. A lot of people make money on it,
and a lot of people
money knowing
that it's a bubble, knowing that there's no
to it. Yeah. But
they just
hope they get out
before they think the other people, the
else realizes that, you know?
So, and this
could go on ages, where
the public figure's politician, you'd think, well, that's a bit
really using
your,
uh, you know, political profile to boost a company. But, you know, in this, case, they're, they're boasting of that. Mm. Yeah. Quasi Quaye saying, oh, it's
saying, oh, it's wonderful to have a frontline politician,
as he described Farage combining this, this sort of
financial bubble with political
and saying, yeah, come on, let's froth it all up.
It's, it's a bit like
Trump really on a
slightly smaller scale.
but not in the billions yet. But
Farage has said he wants the Bank of England to have a Bitcoin reserve, and he wants
slash the tax on Bitcoin
transactions or cryptocurrency deals
by more
than half. is there an intellectual
underpinning to
this or is there, yeah, I thought you were about to suggest, is the fact that he's advocating a policy that will benefit both him and all
his friends,
is that in some way convenient? And I
think the answer is yes. I think
is very convenient. and the
You have to ring underpinning is that people
Christopher Harboe like it his
biggest donor
and therefore he
gives him millions. This is
is the Thailand based, this is Thailand based, Yeah.
who's given
reform party
than 20
million pounds. coincidentally,
um, Farage, you know, favors tax breaks and so on for crypto
It is an enormous amount as a donor, isn't it?
I know you frequently catalog who gives
money?
Nick Kante. he's the treasurer, isn't he? he? is.
famous former
tax Exxon, making a lot of
while he was, uh, offshore
through cashing in on one Hyde Park
and so on. we
report a couple of others in the
issue. Um. Using companies in the UK that
are owned by
British Virgin Island companies. So again, we're not quite sure where The money's coming from. The
companies in the UK are losing money, so it can't
be coming
entirely from them.
Um,
Yeah, and, and there's various
other offshore donors. There's another chap called Besim Haar,
and Nigerian Lebanese
businessman who's very vocal in, uh, wanting
non dom tax breaks to come back in.
and he has become
one of Nigel's
close friends accompanying him to Mar-a-Lago and so on.
I
I just think the reform, that's
so public spirited of these
businessmen who don't live here. They don't,
know, they, they, they could just not get involved if they, they wanted to have an easy life. I
think
amazing that they're doing this for our politics. And,
I it all just makes, I just, it makes me feel so moist. I'm sorry. It really does. I just really, really, seriously object to it and having it yoked to this party so Matt Goodwin, a candidate of reform, you know, he's been in a bit of a hot water over book and people check questioning the sourcing of that, and he's gone instantly to you. snooty libs are trying to take me down. Right, right.
And to have a group of people who's, who are a kind of affront to some extent for offshore money, and there's a of tax reforms that would extremely wealthy people saying that the only people who oppose me must be this of metropolitan elite just gets on my nerve,
Such chronic. Really He does.
I, I found the fact that.
Richard Tyson
avoids
a lot of tax. Quite convenient.
How, how how does he do that, Richard?
Well, he did, he's, he's
been stopped from doing it now, but he
did.
Uh, he can't do anything nowadays.
Exactly. Was it
six, let's just say it was 600,000
he managed to avoid in tax.
wasn't that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's, he's a property
man
and he decides to do a
more tax efficiently.
labor government
2007 had introduced a new. type of property
investment company
called a real estate investment trust.
And The idea behind it
that, lots of
different types of investors
come
together, pull their money
and invest in property, and we wanted to encourage that. the,
the vehicle, they pulled their money in
be taxable.
so it was intended for like big pool
investments,
like, you
like, like fund managers look after and so on. not for small family property companies based in Mayfair. Um, but
Richard Tys found a way looking at the rules of saying we are a, re you know, so can we have a
tax break?
happy days.
Um, and,
and, and the revenue
did allow them that status for a
while. Okay.
I think because they must
have, or they claim they
looking for other investors, which funnily enough didn't
come off
Right. Uh, and then that
was it. So the revenue has now stopped this? Yes. They've
lost that status,
it's 600,000 pounds is quite a lot of money.
Yes. And you pointed
in the last issue that, it's quite
a lot
than
many of
the
shirkers yeah.
That Mr. Thais, his party have been, um, pointing at. but that's the
towards that's the
I mean the, the, you know, this crowd
spec, if they specialize in anything, it's gaming
system. yet the things they're probably most exercised about among other people
He is
with less money
system, less money's gaming
the system. You
know, they, they hate the idea of people
on benefits and
on. Or making a couple a hundred
qui more than they should, yeah, Benefits are okay if sort of six figures, I, I think I find it quite worrying. 'cause I think, say what I've got, as you'll have heard on this podcast, quite a few criticisms of, Stan. I think he would front a crypto company. I don't think Theresa May would've done, I don't think Jeremy Corbin done, I don't think Gordon Brown certainly would've done Tony Blair. Let's put a question mark mark for that one. Maybe I would've waited until he left office. Yeah, right.
And, and I'd say the populous drift of that I think really bothers me that the erosion of the idea of conflicts of interest and the that you are in public life, because as you say, the whole value that crypto company is about, as, um, it was said he's frontline politician. It's, it's it's a version of what Mandelson selling as you know, is it's context. Yeah. That doesn't work unless you are in politics. So it to me, a conflict, an
conflict of interest. And as you say, very, very convenient,
Well, uh, I'm gonna find the OED first
after this recording's over and ask
them to add a new definition for the
convenient. Um, thank
you so much for watching.
This
podcast or listening to it. If you would
to find out many
more of the brilliant
we've been running from Richard's,
in the money column to Old Sparky's Reflections on the world of
and gas and the, the
the energy system and so much more. Besides you can get a copy
of Private I
by going into
shop
and buying one, or by going to private for
uk,
uh, and subscribing,
which is very reasonably priced. I mean,
Richard Ty could buy
several thousand subscriptions to the magazine with
the money he's saved. to Richard, if you're watching,
we know You Do, Yeah.
uh, why not do that until they go
up in value as well as down your
your old private eyes will never
down in value and we guarantee that.
Uh, thanks to Helen, Ian, and Richard, and as always, to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing. Bye for now.
for now.