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In the old Basil Rathbone films, Watson was a lot fatter than Holmes. Four. I've never known what sex you are. It's just, you know, it's quite hard to tell. Three. And even Rachel from Accounts now is starting to see the light on this issue. I don't think Trump is a Russian agent. I think that's completely childish and stupid. Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson. Hello. And me, Liam Halligan.
It's local election day with 1,641 council seats across 24 English local authorities up for grabs. Most of them were contested during local elections in 2021, and these are the first national elections since last July's general election. There are also six mayoral contests taking place, including the inaugural elections for mayors in Greater Lincolnshire and also Hull and East Yorkshire. Plus, we've got the Runcorn and Hellsby by-election.
So that constituency on the banks of the Mersey in Cheshire will be getting a new MP. We will discuss what happened in Spain and Portugal around midday local time on Monday, the biggest power cut in recent European history, impacting some 60 million people. With power supplies now mostly back to normal, attention's laser-focused on what caused the incident, with many blaming the intermittency of renewable energy, which of course accounts for a large share of both countries' energy mixes.
In other news, the number of people who have illegally crossed the English Channel in small boats so far this year exceeded 10,000 on Monday. So unlawful migration via that route is already 40% higher than the same period last year. And across the big pond in Canada, Former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has been elected Prime Minister, his previously unpopular Liberal Party having enjoyed a surge in support off the back of tough talk against Canada by US President Donald Trump.
Lots to talk about, Alison. But before we start, you may soon have some news about yourself. Well, co-pilot, I think we should say that you are broadcasting from foreign parts before we get into that, aren't you? Tell us where you are. I'm in Tbilisi in Georgia, where my... lovely eldest daughter Ailish lives she's also a journalist and I'm visiting her for my birthday yes 21 again and it's a very nice place great place to visit there's a new direct flight
from Heathrow to Tbilisi, which I took. Other flights are available. And yeah, Tbilisi is a fantastic place, very historic, a kind of interesting mix of... Pre-revolutionary, neoclassical and Soviet architecture. Loads of amazing food, of course. Georgia's rightly famous for it. cuisine, great museums, markets. A really nice place to visit. I've been here quite a few times in the past. Of course, I've been a foreign correspondent in this part of the world over the years.
But it's really nice to be here and I can thoroughly recommend it. Well, just closer to home, I'm in a slightly odd position this morning when the podcast goes out because there is some news on Pearson versus the police. It's embargoed, ladies and gentlemen. So if you keep your eyes and ears peeled today, you'll be able to hear about One Small Step for Pearson Kind and we will be able to discuss it next week.
On Planet Normal. It's been quite a dramatic week, Copilot, hasn't it? With the events in Spain and indeed the whole Iberian Peninsula. And I did see someone online joke. that Spain has managed to achieve net zero 20 years ahead of schedule, but only by terrible accident. I think it really brings home something that we've been saying for many, many, many months on Planet Normal. countries that have high renewable mixes in their electricity profile.
are susceptible to outages if there is intermittency in renewables. And some people will contest that. They'll say it's not about renewables. There's, of course, a whole... Effort now being made to not blame renewables because the renewable lobby is profoundly powerful. Lots and lots of vested interest. Lots of people fully invested in that net zero all cost project across our political and our media class, of course.
And yet, you know, even the head of Britain's own national grid has been making speeches in recent months and years warning about the prospect of outages for all kinds of reasons. So I do think this is a moment, as we've been saying on Planet Normal for a long time, the consensus, the impossibility of ever questioning. net zero goals, the social pariah status of anyone who did so has been cracking over recent months. We praised, didn't we, rightly, I think.
the Tory leader, Kemi Badenow, when she gave a speech about six weeks ago now, which looks suddenly extremely prescient, in which she horrified lots of members. of the political and media class including some in the left of our own party by saying that net zero 2050 is quote simply impossible And we need to level with the public and we need a better plan for tackling global warming, for tackling issues relating to the climate.
And that now seems really prescient. And in the aftermath of this power cut in Spain and Portugal... Sir Tony Blair no less has really stirred the political pot. by basically telling his own party to get real itself on net zero. And of course, these issues have been feeding into a pretty febrile political atmosphere ahead of these historic by-elections.
You know what occurs to me, Liam, and obviously you've highlighted recently, it's really starting to tell now, isn't it? This fantastical net zero project. perfectly fine as long as it was in the realms of magical thinking. But now it's actually having real world impacts on our car industry. You've spoken to car distributors and manufacturers and so on.
really costing people now we've seen poor talbot steelworks dear to my heart closing down scunthorpe under threat you know why i thought this was something that's really intriguing me liam is there are moments in history where you think, This is unbudgeable. This door will never open. I mean, we saw that, didn't we, most notably with the Iron Curtain. People couldn't imagine that that would ever happen, that communism would fall. But, you know, one glorious week.
It absolutely did. And if you look back over the last fortnight, we are seeing, I think, now the collapse of these great liberal pieties, these ideologies, these quasi-religious. totemic issues, which were very, very hard for people to speak out against. So we had the Supreme Court ruling that a woman is someone who is born female. Would you, Adam and Eve, it?
And this week... Surely not. Surely not. Yeah, I've never known what sex you are. It's just, you know, it's quite hard to tell. Since you've lost weight, who knows what you are. But this week... Not after a week in Georgia, let me tell you. The central Georgian cuisine, I mean, it's wonderful. Shashlik and beautiful use of aubergine and pomegranate. Wonderful. salads. But the real jewel in the crown of Georgian cuisine is absolutely deadly.
form of pizza called hajapuri which is just a load of it's it's it's blended melted cheese on incredibly beautiful dough. It's just impossible not to eat it excessively. That's half a stone back on already, isn't it, really? I know. Good job our weight loss competition, to be renewed, is currently suspended. Suspended. Currently suspended. I think birthdays, you can have a birthday off. But yeah, just to say about these collapsing leftist pieties, really.
This week it is, as you say, it's this other token of green religious faith, net zero. And let's not underestimate what that... mass blackout in Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France did on Monday, Liam, because... You suddenly get this wake up call, which is how fragile civilization is. how quickly things will fall apart if you don't have the energy security that's necessary to power and advance.
industrial nation and as you say the authorities the spanish portuguese government media everywhere the first reaction point the finger of blame at anything so long as it wasn't renewables. And here in the UK, I'm sure Planet Normal listeners who are still watching the BBC with their heart attack medication in one hand, the BBC swung into full denial mode. Six o'clock news on Tuesday said there could be two causes of the Iberian blackout cyber attack.
or extreme weather, even though the weather in Spain was perfectly normal. Now, by the 10 o'clock news, those two potential causes had expanded. After 15 meetings, each of which included 30 useless journalists. Yes. We had potential cause number three. You'll like this. New ways of delivering electricity. What could they possibly be?
So that was BBC euphemism for green renewables. It's just pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic. Yeah. And they bet the farm. Basically, they've got their... climate change editor everyone's fully signed up to this and they have demonized for years those of us who have tentatively suggested that getting rid of fossil fuels from an advanced industrial economy would be. Total madness. So they were all really hoping, the broadcasters and the net zero zealots, that the blackout could be blamed.
on these extreme weather fluctuations arising. from climate change, even though there hadn't been any extreme weather fluctuations. But, Liam, this is where Sherlock Holmes comes in, the key piece of evidence. I hope you're not saying I'm Watson. Yeah, no, actually, you're more homes. I'm Watson. I'm Watson, aren't I?
Certainly in the old Basil Rathbone films, Watson was a lot fatter than Holmes. I always think of Holmes as being sort of Benedict Cumberbatch emaciated, but maybe that's not right. So just to finish this, on the 16th of April, Spain actually boasted. ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time. Wind, solar and hydro were meeting all the country's electricity demands during a weekday. So you didn't have to be homes.
to deduce that it was this sudden extraordinary dependence on renewables which had caused this danger and planet normal listeners always can rely on velma to come up with the science here she comes Can I just say to listeners and to you? What? Now, look, you know, I'm already highly fluent in economics and epidemiology, if I can actually say it. But this electricity stuff, it's hard, right? So I'm trying to get my head around it. I have been consulting Planet Normal's friend.
Professor Peter Edwards at Oxford. Pete is the professor of chemistry. So he's been explaining to me that, as you've indicated, Liam, it's the lack of inertia. in these renewables which makes it very hard. to control the grid at moments when there are sudden extreme supply and demand variations, which is what they think happened in Spain on Monday morning when all those...
Solar farms kicked in and inertia, which I didn't know before. It's another word for stability. And all those conventional energy sources like gas, coal power stations, nuclear, they've got. a lot of inertia, which basically means this thing, this is my fact of the week. dispatchable generation dispatchable means sources of electricity that can be programmed on demand at the request of the grid operators and i think you're going to like this
So because I can't really understand it on a scientific level, I came up with a metaphor, which, as you know, is my stock in trade. So I said that gas, coal and nuclear are like a steady, reliable husband. Who could be left to his own devices until suddenly you need him, Liam, to spring into action? Open a jam jar, Brian. Take the bins out, Brian. That sort of thing. Whereas solar and wind are like flighty Latin lovers. Great.
but never answering the phone when you've got a crisis and need them right away. So Spain had too many hot ones. and not enough Bryans. And just to finish that thought, Professor Peter Edwards says the inescapable truth is that intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar can never compete. on level terms with hydrocarbon fuels.
because renewable energy is... naturally unreliable so let's just think Liam that our country successive governments have basically put nearly all their eggs into that particular unreliable basket They have indeed, and they've done so long before the storage technology is available. which could feasibly make a reliance on renewable power viable for an advanced industrial society. It could. We don't yet know. And yet we're rushing headlong.
towards a net zero destination with virtue signaling, consultancy grabbing, politicians leading the way. The vast majority of whom have very little practical knowledge, in my experience, of the physics and the maths and the mechanics and the realities of these issues. And of course, when you're using steam-powered turbines in gas-fired power stations... There is momentum. There are moving parts. Part of inertia is the fact that they keep pumping out power, even if power to them is turned off.
which of course doesn't apply with renewables. And even Rachel from accounts now is starting to see the light on this issue because she's faced with the realities of... spreadsheets add up of having to face The reality that there is a trade-off between economic growth and net zero, at the very least. during the transition to net zero. Of course, as recently as January, as I wrote in my Sunday Telegraph column, link in the show notes to this episode.
Back in January, she gave a speech at Siemens in Oxford. Remember, it was her renewal growth speech saying there is no tradeoff between economic growth and net zero. And yet in Washington at the World Bank IMF meeting. She referred to absolutely insane, quote, environmental regulations that have become a serious barrier to
essential infrastructure investments and have gone too far in one direction. So she's starting to get it. Has she got the guts, the courage to face down her many opponents across politics? who will say that net zero at all costs. is the only thing that matters. And meanwhile, you know, the trade unions are looking on absolutely bewildered that the Labour Party is sacrificing so much of our industrial capacity on the altar of.
And this is now, I think, a turning point. What we're doing, to talk to your earlier theme, Alison, is as the economy gets... Tougher to manage as the rubber hits the road. Western arrogant progressives who think they are always right and everyone. who, you know, hasn't got a 2-1 in languages from a half-decent university, should never be listened to, and is thick, they are now having to shed their luxury belief.
include on trans with the Supreme Court verdict. The luxury beliefs include net zero. And of course, I think the number one luxury belief that all immigration everywhere and always is always a good thing. And that also is a progressive shibboleth. that is not just being challenged, it's being torn down by an increasingly angry electorate, as indeed you wrote again in your Telegraph column on Wednesday, link in the show notes to this episode.
I do think that this combination of the Iberian blackout and then this really very, very... strong intervention by Tony Blair, which is basically a direct attack on the Labour government's net zero plans and essentially calling for a radical reset. of the green agenda and if you look at some of the language which people like us have been using for years, but which would have been absolutely forbidden in those circles.
It's wrong that people are being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Politicians must face... inconvenient facts that any strategy based on phasing out fossil fuels is doomed to fail. He talks about hysteria, talks about absolutely astonishing admission, I thought. that many of the European leaders know full well that the current approach
isn't working and that the debate has become irrational, he says, but they are terrified of saying so for fear of being accused of being climate deniers. I mean, this is the Western world or certainly Western Europe. is being run by people who Sir Tony Blair says are reluctant. to take the hysteria out of the climate debate because they don't want to be the first ones. To say so. Do you think that's amazing?
Blair knows exactly what he's doing. He's a supreme political operator. You know, just his use of language, inconvenient facts, is a direct challenge to Al Gore endlessly going on about inconvenient truth. that turned out to be untruths in many cases about net zero and climate change. And I did enjoy our great friend Alistair Campbell, Blair's former spin doctor, of course.
who had a right go at The Telegraph. I thought The Telegraph had a very well-judged front page on Tuesday. It didn't say for one second that... NetZero caused the Spanish-Portuguese blackout. It didn't say that. It said that NetZero was being blamed for that blackout, which it was. I thought that was an extremely well-judged front page. Alistair Campbell, in his infinite wisdom, tweeted our front page saying this used to want to be a newspaper. Right. And loads of, you know.
superannuated state-funded journalists piled in to have a go at the Telegraph. And then, hey-ho, 24 hours later, Tony Blair himself pops up and says, net zero, doomed to fail. That's one bit of political advice he didn't get from Alistair Campbell. Look at that. Look again. Campbell, of course, absolutely embodying this progressive liberal class, which is always right. And all of the rest of us are sort of...
deluded, climate denying, racist, you know, fill in sort of unpleasant adjective. But Blair's right, isn't he? The rest of the world is going to carry on not phasing out fossil fuels or limiting consumption.
So the strategy that we're pursuing is, well, doomed to fail is a polite way of saying it. It's absolutely... catastrophic and he also says something we've talked about Liam on Planet Normal the need to intensify work on small modular reactors I mean we've heard from Planet Normal older listeners who've said to us that back in the 60s and 70s, Britain was a world leader in nuclear engineering. Britain invented civilian nuclear power.
Britain invented civilian nuclear power. And now our half dozen still functioning nuclear facilities are all managed by the French government. Because they're all managed by EDF, which is an insane situation. And we've got this incredible technology that our very own Rolls-Royce has been at the heart of developing of small modular reactors.
And idiots in Whitehall, many of them, I would say, compromised by vested interests from the renewable lobby, will not give the green light to these small modular reactors. We've heard on Planet Normal from Karl McCartney, former... Tory MP for Lincoln, who was notably sane. And Carl was very responsible for putting pressure on the previous government to wind in some of its madder targets for vehicles. electric vehicles. And Carl has said to me that people in Whitehall, in the cabinet itself,
live in fear of the Climate Change Committee. These are our elected representatives. They live in fear of getting a name for speaking out on this issue and then they won't be allowed. to take their place at the renewable lobby trough once they've left politics. A lot of it is about raw lobbying power, given the amount of state money that's being funneled into this cod.
Look, there is, I am intensely interested in energy. And when I was an equity analyst, I partly specialized in energy companies and oil and gas and all the rest of it. There is a very, very respectable case. gradually weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and using more advanced forms of technology, which include nuclear power, also include the use of hydrogen, in my view, though that's quite a controversial fuel source.
not least because it's constantly being denigrated by many people in the renewable lobby. There's a very, very small landmark on the route to hydrogen happened this week, almost entirely unnoticed. And that is that JCB, as you know, one of our leading manufacturing companies with genuinely world class research facilities, they have developed, and I've seen it working, an internal combustion engine. that runs on hydrogen and emits only water.
And they've got their famous diggers with these hydrogen engines in. And you can use hydrogen engines to run, you know. Container ships are very powerful. And there's a lot of work to be done. But JCB and others. the technology to do so and then if we can get hold of hydrogen in industrial quantities maybe by using electrolysis which could itself be powered by excess renewable power so you could you know when
You have lots of wind and sun and you don't need all that renewable power on that day. You can use it to do electrolysis to create and then store hydrogen, which then run internal combustion engines. And you've then got perpetual power. So a lot of people would lose out if that. Technology came to the fore, but there's a very small landmark this week because finally, finally, finally, finally. Whitehall has allowed JCB to run its hydrogen powered diggers, which it's now selling on the road.
That tiny, tiny little bit of red tape, which they have been doggedly refusing to give the company, they have now given the company. And that's a small speck of sanity from Whitehall when it comes to these issues.
But that's fantastic news, Liam. And doesn't that show, you know, our... proud history of being a small country that always punched above its weight in these astonishing developments which have driven the history of progress i mean and on the other end of the scale of human ingenuity we've got idiots going around blowing up our last coal-fired power stations
down gas wells gas wells when even the climate change committee itself acknowledges that even if we hit net zero in 2050 we're still going to need oil and gas for about 30 odd percent of our energy Oil and gas is currently about 70% of our energy, right? It's very important that listeners understand this. It's a lot less of our electricity. All the numbers you see in politicians and journalists almost always confuse our electricity mix with our energy mix.
is 40% to 50% renewable. It's very high by international standards. And also our electricity prices are very high by international standards. So the idea that renewables bring you cheap energy is just absolute nonsense, at least for many, many years to come, whatever Ed Miliband may say. But our overall... energy mix is very different from our electricity mix because our overall energy mix, of course, includes all kinds of energy sources that aren't electricity, not least transport.
And we're still using oil and gas for about 70 percent of our energy needs at the moment. And even the Climate Change Committee says even by 2050, if all the targets are met and all this magical fantasy thinking turns out to be true. We'll still be using oil and gas for about 30% of our energy needs. So why are we not using our own oil and gas? Why are we closing down the North Sea, which employs hundreds of thousands of people up and down our energy complex?
Generates a load of tax, is a seedbed for technology, is an incredibly important part of our energy security. We're closing it down so Ed Miliband can feel good about himself. natural gas increasingly from the U.S. And when you import natural gas, you have to liquefy it and then regasify it. When it arrives, it has to go across the Atlantic in a diesel-powered cargo ship.
Five times the carbon emissions connected with liquefied natural gas that you import from the States than using our own natural gas. This is utterly mad, what we're doing. Just so we can then say, oh, we're not using natural gas. You know what unites all these themes we've touched on so far is how far the so-called clever establishment is behind the British people, right? The British people by and large have not bought any of the trans rubbish. They've seen through the net zero.
stuff and as you alluded to at the top Liam with that 10,000th illegal small boat person of 2025 arriving on our shores and being waved in. And I would suggest now that immigration is... for the vast majority of people, by far. by far and even taking into account how much people are fearing the effects of the Reeves session and the cost of the economy. I just want to mention a story that really upset me this week. We've heard before.
about this company, Serco, making millions of pounds, working for the Home Office. finding accommodation for asylum seekers now. They obviously want to empty the migrant hotels because they're a national embarrassment, aren't they? But Telegraph had a story this week. that Serco is offering astonishing deals to private landlords to host. those same thousands of mainly young male migrants from backward cultures.
Very, very dangerous, I think. And these five-year guaranteed rent deals, Liam, with the taxpayer, British taxpayer, picking up the bill. so that British ordinary families who want to try and rent a place are undercut by Serco, who are using our people's money. to make it harder and harder for ordinary British taxpayers to rent a place. And this is part of this dreadful, I'm sure we're going to be hearing more of this, Operation Scatter.
which is seeing tens of thousands of illegal migrants with God knows what. whether a criminal history or sexual violence history, being put up in social housing and private housing in scores. of locations across the country. And I honestly, I cannot express my real rage about... It's utterly wrong. It's how dreadful to use people's hard-earned money given in taxes in good faith to be used for the benefit of British people is actually being used. to undercut the private rental market.
where there's already housing shortages. I mean, I just, anyway, words aren't supposed to fail me on a podcast, are they? But really, really, and mark my words, co-pilot, this is going to end very badly. Your business is going places with three business. Enjoy business class roaming in EU destinations, whether you're video calling from Vienna, networking in Naples, or closing sales from Stockholm. Upgrade to business class roaming in the EU from £2.50 extra a month. Search 3Business today.
Additional £2.50 per sim when you buy 20-plus sims on a 24-month plan, excluding 20% VAT. Fair use policy applies in GoRome destinations. Terms apply. This week we welcome back to Planet Normal the Doyen Russia Specialist, Owen Matthews. I first met Owen in the mid-90s when we were both journalists based in Moscow. Owen though, while UK born and bred, has a mother born in East Ukraine and he speaks Russian like a native.
A prolific author, his books have been translated into more than 20 languages and his latest, Overreach, the inside story of Putin and Russia's war against Ukraine, won the highly prestigious Pushkin House Book Prize in 2023. A former Moscow and Istanbul correspondent for Newsweek, Owens now an associate editor of The Spectator and also, of course, writes regularly for The Telegraph.
It's more than three years since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died. But amid growing speculation that Kiev and Moscow could soon agree a US brokered ceasefire, I started by asking Owen Matthews to update Planet Normal listeners on these potentially historic peace talks. Yeah that's true, lots of big things have been happening Liam, but we don't know what they are.
because it's the dogs fighting under the carpet, as Winston Churchill memorably described Soviet politics. What we know is, you know, we see this all through in little flashes through a glass. Darkly. We have a process of negotiations between Donald Trump's golfing buddy, Steve Witkoff. He's a real estate investor and has no discernible former experience with diplomacy, but that hasn't stopped him from...
a series of very high level talks with Putin himself and with Putin's representatives, both in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and in Washington over the last couple of weeks. So you've got the US-Russia talks, and then in parallel, you've got, you know, the... Episode three of the sort of snuff movie that is Trump and Zelensky and the sort of ongoing abuse story. And Zelensky is trying to continue.
quite diplomatically to claim that things are going well and it's constructive. We don't know what Trump and Zelensky said to each other. when they met in St Peter's Basilica for the Pope's funeral a couple of days ago. So you have another track, which is the US Zelensky talk. And then you have a third sort of wheel of this process, and that is the Europeans. And the Europeans, it's not really clear what role they are.
in fact going to be playing in the ultimate end game because unlike the Americans they're not talking to Russia but they are talking to each other and they're talking to Zelensky and they're talking to the Americans so you have you have this sort of complicated sort of you know three wheels machine sort of diplomacy trundling on and we're not exactly sure where it's going to arrive at it's more than three years of course since
Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Would it be fair to call this war a kind of a stalemate? taking some territory? Or would it be fair to say that Russia have actually won this war? I think it's a stalemate, definitely. And no, I don't think Russia has won this war. Neither do I think that if Ukraine is forced to at least de facto recognize the loss of its territory, I don't think that means that Russia has won the war either, because I'm concerning stalemate first.
For some time now, it's been the case that there is essentially already a de facto buffer zone between the two sites in the field. There's basically a sort of a dead zone, a kill zone. of between 5 and 10 kilometers between the actual positions, the infantry positions on both sides. And that kill zone is dominated by drones. The Russians have reported that up to 75% of their casualties. on the Russian side are caused by Ukrainian drones.
So clearly, we're talking about a whole different sort of kind of warfare, kind of war that's never been fought. But the front lines have essentially changed very, very little. since the last major breakthrough which was a Ukrainian advance back in October of 2022 so since then there have been sort of various titanic struggles a few more towns have been taken by the Russians but they haven't really made very much progress. They got very little to show for absolutely horrific casualties.
So in terms of winning, I mean, The Russians have taken different estimates, depending on how you count it, but let's say roughly 22% of Ukrainian territory. That's true. But what they haven't done is succeeded in any of their actual stated war aims, which were at the beginning of the war. Putin essentially wanted to denazify Ukraine. What that means, translated from Putinese, is that he wanted to install a new, more pro-Kremlin regime in Kiev.
And he wanted to essentially demilitarize Ukraine and prevent it from joining NATO and prevent it from having a serious army that could challenge. Russia. And basically the bottom line of Putin's demands is that he wanted dominion over Ukraine. and while he's got a little bit of ukraine physically he does not have dominion over ukraine and that is why he has not won the war so obviously the territories in east ukraine have been very much the epicenter of the war
de facto control of some of those but also Crimea in the south of Ukraine just tell planet normal listeners who maybe haven't followed this conflict very closely why Crimea is so important and something of the history of Crimea has been part of the Russian Empire since the end of the 18th century. Today, primarily inhabited by Russian speakers, and it was occupied or annexed.
basically bloodlessly occupied by Vladimir Putin back in February of 2014, in the immediate aftermath of violent protests against the pro-Moscow president, called Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine. which culminated in Yanukovych's fleeing. And Putin decided to take that opportunity of that sort of power vacuum that pertained in Kiev in the aftermath of those disturbances, in the aftermath of the president fleeing. Putin decides to seize Crimea.
Now, why was that so easy for him to do? Because the population, I think, were broadly sympathetic to being part of Russia. They are linguistically and culturally. Crimea is very Russian. It's definitely not Ukrainian speaking. strong pro-independence or pro-secession movement in Crimea before Putin seized it
It was not really a thing. That was not really a political issue. There was a little independence party in Crimea before 2014 that would poll like 2%. It was a completely marginal issue. Nonetheless, Putin went in.
There are all kinds of reasons why that referendum was flawed, but the referendum that Putin held showed an overwhelming amount of support for Crimeans, ordinary Crimeans joining Russia. And now if you see Vox Pops and even social media... from Crimea, it's actually pretty hard to find Crimean voices in Crimea who actually are not happy about being part of Russia.
So if you ask the Crimeans, then I think the vast majority of them are really genuinely happy to be in Russia. The issue and the reason why we're talking about this and why Zelensky... is conflicted about this and why the Western world is conflicted about it is that Trump is apparently asking Zelensky to recognize that Crimea is legally now part of Russia in effect.
to legitimize that illegal annexation back in 2014. And that's a point of principle that I think is stuck in many people's craw. But for the Russians, it's a point of principle. Crimea is historically where the Black Sea Fleet is based on an exquisitely strategic warm water port for Moscow. That's correct. And there's also Crimea is like the Russian Riviera. It's a place where all the Russian people would go.
you know, from the Soviet times to for their seaside holidays. The vast majority of Russians also don't consider Crimea to be Ukrainian. There's a legal technicality concerned about this, which is that, in fact, Crimea was part of Russia, the Russian Federation or the Soviet Russian Federation. until the mid-1950s when Nikita Khrushchev basically gifted it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Now, back in the 50s, that didn't really matter who administered Ukraine, Crimea, whether it was Soviet Ukraine or Soviet Russia, because they were all part of the Soviet Union. It became an issue because in the aftermath of independence, the Crimeans found themselves part of independent Ukraine. And it has to be noted that...
Back in those days, which Putin refers to very often, and is clearly a really serious historical trauma for Putin, back in those days when the Soviet empire was falling apart. and in all parts of Soviet Crimea about whether they wanted independence. And back then, the... Crimeans voted for independence from the Soviet Union. However... They also voted in a separate vote for independence.
from ukraine a very little remembered moment but the crimeans in 1994 actually didn't want to be independent not only the soviet union but of uh independent ukraine too they wanted to be their own thing the the issue is Today, who gets to make international law? That's what we're talking about, because I think there's not really any doubt about whether Ukraine is going to ever recapture or regain Crimea. The answer is...
Definitely no. That's absolutely not going to happen unless they are willing to go to war against the people of Crimea in order to force them to be Ukrainians. So never going to happen. The question is a legal one. Who can legitimately make or break new nations? And that is a really profound question that goes far deeper and far beyond, you know, all the nitty gritty in the back and forth of, you know, is Crimea Russian or is Crimea Ukrainian? What's really at stake here is
whether Putin gets to redraw international boundaries and borders. And the shocking part of what's happened over the last couple of weeks is that apparently Trump and Washington are willing to sign off on essentially redrawing international borders at the demands of Vladimir Putin. And I think people find that very shocking because it's a very, very different world order to one that we thought we'd been living in.
Pretty much within a year of Putin's invasion, you produced Overreach, the inside story of Putin's war against Ukraine. And we talked to you on Planet Normal as that book was published. Given how closely you've been following this war, Owen, since the beginning and before, of course, for many years, how surprised are you at that, well, what many are calling a complete capitulation by the US?
We always knew, didn't we, that Donald Trump was keen to broker some kind of ceasefire slash peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. But are you shocked how he's gone about it? i i'm shocked put it this way i i was i was shocked in a kind of positive way at the beginning because i i consider myself at the start a kind of trump optimist you know for all my personal misgivings about lots of things about donald trump Concerning the Ukraine peace process.
The main obstacle, I think, at the beginning of Trump's presidency, which seems like a million years ago, but actually it's only been a couple of months. But the main obstacle over this winter to peace talks was a lot of magical thinking on the part of the Europeans and on the part of the Ukrainians. And right at the beginning of the process, when Donald Trump sort of charged in and did his bull in China shop thing, he basically sort of knocked a lot of heads.
shook out a lot of unrealistic expectations. So I think the Ukrainians have been lied to. It's one of the things that makes me angriest, to be honest, about this whole war and the end game of this war is that the Europeans... have been lying to themselves, lying to the Ukrainians, by encouraging them to believe that the Europeans could actually
support them for you know with whatever it takes for as long as it takes that's actually just not true it's a lie and i think the ukrainians have been led to believe that the european support is much greater and deeper than it is simply because the europeans are unwilling or unable to name to call things what they are and actually
tell the Ukrainians some hard truths. And there's a lot of European politicians To this day, Kayakalas being one of them, who continues with this fantasy that European support can somehow help Ukraine achieve a military victory on the ground. There's a large contingent of people, including at the Daily Telegraph, I may say, who are willing to fight this war to the last drop of someone else's blood.
But unfortunately, and I think the Ukrainians I kind of believed that because it was a necessary myth, because... confronting the reality of compromise and partial defeat. partial defeat is a bitter one. So I think to answer your question about Trump, at the beginning, he knocked a lot of heads. I think he sort of shook out a lot of inertia from the system, which would otherwise have just made these talks.
grind on for a long time. And what Trump and his team recognized right from the beginning was that it's been devastatingly obvious for years how this war is going to end. And that is with a de facto partition of Ukraine and with Ukraine not joining NATO. Those are sort of absolute bottom lines of any deal. And that's been Trump's starting position. And I think that's just acknowledgement of reality. What's surprising and what has started to shake my Trump optimism.
was the extraordinary amateurishness of Trump's diplomatic effort. The fact that he's sent apparent complete chumps to field the talks. whom the Russians appear to have played like a bell. And in his haste to get to a deal, Trump has basically pushed the weaker party, i.e. Ukraine and Zelensky, very hard and has not been able to push. Putin basically anywhere I mean as far as I can I find it very hard to point to a single concession, a real concession that Trump has forced Putin to make.
So in that sense, I don't think it's ideological. I don't think Trump is a Russian agent. I think that's completely childish and stupid. Trump has in the past been very tough on Russia. He was far tougher on Russia in his first term than Obama ever was, by the way. But in this case, I think Trump is so keen to get to a deal that he's been willing to throw not just Ukrainian interests, but some very fundamental principles under the bus.
You mentioned Kai Callas there. She's been on the airwaves a lot as a kind of telegenic English speaking. Vice President of the European Commission who is an Estonian you know as you and I both know a lot of people from the Baltic states for good reason have been
historically very suspicious of Russia for many, many generations, as it were. So maybe she has her motives. But why do you think it is that the Europeans have... you know, quotes strung the Ukrainians along for so long with such horrific loss of life. What's the animus? Is it just European politicians wanting to act tough, wanting to pose in military fatigue? uh partly but i i and i think i mean let's just like walk that back a couple of steps
I think it's very clear that Europe should have stood with Ukraine. I think that was completely right for them to do so. And I think it was It was a remarkable achievement, actually, of both Europeans and the Americans to actually give the... ukrainians an enormous amount of of of military capability in a very short time i mean that the what happened in the first months of the war was absolutely miraculous and it was
Far in excess of anyone's expectations of what the Europeans and Americans could do. And it played a gigantically important role in pushing back Russia and allowing the Ukrainians to fight the far, far, far superior military force to a standstill. What happened thereafter, the magical thinking sort of began a little bit later, particularly in the summer of the now sort of legendarily disastrous and ineffective counterattack of 2023.
which didn't happen, and there was I think already by the beginning of 2023, or by the summer of 2023, it was clear that, in fact, there was really no serious way that the Ukrainian army could ever...
push back and regain significant chunks of territory. And the only way forward was some kind of diplomatic compromise. But Europe you know was not you know i think for ideological reasons there are many countries in the baltic that have convinced themselves that the ukraine war is a sort of a battle for us a battle for our own freedom
which I understand that, I mean, the Telegraph itself has actually put up posters around London saying, have you ever heard of Riga and Vilnius? Well, if Kiev falls, then you will. I mean, I think that's just alarmish and, frankly, infantile, idiotic logic.
I think that Putin, having failed to take pokrovsk for instance for a year despite the loss of tens of thousands of casualties why we think that that army is somehow going to the next move march into Helsinki or Thailand I think that's crazy there's no possible reason for him to do that I think his beef is with Ukraine, I think he sees strongly pro-Western and NATO member Ukraine as a serious national security threat, whereas
NATO is NATO. It's not something that is on Putin's agenda. But more importantly, I think it's not something that's on Putin's capabilities. But the question is why the Europeans... continue to press for Ukraine to be armed and play on Ukraine's hopes. I think it just became a mantra and it was just not very well considered. And it became a mantra that weaker and smaller countries like Estonia and the Baltics could make because it was not them that was writing the checks and delivering the way.
In other words, to put that thought more bluntly, the Europeans were writing verbal checks that the Americans were then cashing. And that, for many Republicans, has been the origin of... their resentment against the whole sort of Zelensky aid issue is that the Europeans have been talking big talk, but actually it's the Americans that have been footing the bill. And finally, Owen, do you think we will see some kind of at least... ceasefire in the coming weeks? I think actually, yes.
to be honest. Given what we know, it's very hard to predict. I'm very wary of predictions after what happened right at the beginning of the war because i just before the invasion said it makes no sense for putin to invade in february of 2022 this makes no sense putin has got tremendously far with his heavy metal diplomacy to convene an international conference to redraw the security architecture of Europe. That's what Putin had in his hand.
on the eve of his invasion why would you then invade that's crazy but he invaded so i think the danger of predicting putin or attempting to predict putin's moves is that we don't know what he knows We don't know what information is penetrating that bubble in which he lived. So I don't think he's a stupid man. I don't think he's an irrational man.
But he, like every other leader and like every other human being, makes decisions based on the information that he receives. And that is clearly, as we see, as we saw back at the beginning of the war, that information is really skewed. That's why my book was called Overreach. Putin thought that this is going to be over in three days.
He conceived this attack on Ukraine at the beginning as a sort of essentially as a massively aggravated military takeover, you know, as a putsch, a regime change operation. And instead got a bloody three, three and a half year war. So does it make sense for him to stop? Has he got a great deal? Yes and yes.
It's an extraordinary sort of piece of geopolitical luck, one of many in Putin's career that suddenly, for internal American reasons, the U.S. administration suddenly sort of landed in his lap. It's turned his way. The world has turned his way. That's absolutely brilliant.
Problem is that I fear that he's just going to continue to sort of chisel and push and wheedle and try and get more and more and more and more. And at a certain point, Trump is going to say, like, you know, well, screw you guys. Like, and there's, you know.
like a sort of orange version of the Incredible Hulk. You know, you don't want to see him when he's angry. And I think that that may be the point to which Putin will, in his arrogance and stupidity, may push Trump into like a massive... massive huff which is going to be extremely damaging to Russia and will blow up the peace process that's the that's the danger Owen Matthews thanks so much for appearing on Planet Normal great to hear your insights
There you go, Alison. Owen Matthews. I don't think there are any British correspondents who can shake a stick at him when it comes to Russia-Ukraine. I mean, he is so experienced. He's written. So many books, he's travelled so deeply and widely in the region. You know, he literally lives and breathes that region, not least because of his own family link.
I was really grateful for that interview, Liam. Sometimes you hear someone whose explanation is so compelling and so vivid. And I thought Owen Matthews was absolutely excellent. And it filled in a lot of the gaps for me, I guess, like lots of listeners I've been. tuning in and out of what's happening in Ukraine. And that really, that explained a lot to me. And I thought he was extremely fair as well, you know, on the fact that Putin so far is basically being offered his heart's desire, which is
clearly wrong, but also I thought really interesting on the wishful thinking of the European governments who have, as he said, been signing checks with America's money. So I thought a very, very... strong account of what's going on. It strikes me, Alison, now that Trump... really wants to do a deal. He wants to be the person brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine. This time last year, I thought the Chinese would be much more involved in trying to broker a deal.
between russia and ukraine but america's certainly leading the line there i think it's worth saying on trump as he enters you know we've just had 100 days of trump and there's been a lot of commentary about that The guy wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think a lot of people, even though they kind of want the war to end, they're really not going to like the fact if Trump gets any credit for at least achieving a ceasefire.
I also think it's worth saying that on these tariffs, which we haven't talked about much in the last couple of weeks. It is now the case, obviously, in the aftermath of him talking about tarot. And shocking the world, you know, financial markets across the world went bananas.
And since then, of course, Trump has slightly watered down his threatened tariffs and he's delayed the introduction of the so-called reciprocal tariffs, the ones going beyond, in most cases, the 10% sort of flat tariff on all imports into the US. But it's worth saying that financial markets have been up now for...
seven or eight or nine days in a row. And a lot of people in financial markets, though their quotes aren't getting into breathless newspaper reports, are saying actually this so-called tariff tantrum might be over. And if Trump, as some of us suggested a couple of weeks ago, just saying, if Trump can actually pull off a couple of big bilateral trade deals, then the whole mood could shift. And the kind of madness of his approach
to Tariff, rhetorically beating up the Canadians and really squaring off against Beijing. If you can get a couple of big trade deals, with the likes of, say, Japan or South Korea or even the UK, as long as Labour... Don't mess it up by allowing the EU to mess up UK-US trade deal, which, of course, would send the EU around the bend. If he can get a number of big trade deals with big economies, the mood music could shift. And his tariff policy could start to look a lot less.
out to lunch, if you know what I mean. He's got these two really big things going on, isn't he? The potential ceasefire in Russia, Ukraine, and tariff. going on. And he's only 100 days in. It has to be said that on his 100th day, his poll ratings have absolutely tanked. Absolutely. I think a lot of people thought, well, we wanted you to do something, but we weren't sure. Hang on a moment. We weren't sure you wanted to do that. So, you know, he has come out of the traps. I mean, he has had.
this really strong impact on the canadian election so hasn't he liam because it looked a few months ago as if i'm going to mispronounce this guy's name that the conservative pierre was really a pretty much a shoo-in to succeed Justin Trudeau. But with Trump... in his sort of braggart way, going on about Canada, offering them the opportunity to become the 51st state of America, which strangely Canadians were.
Not at all impressed by. And that has seen Mark Carney, not by a huge margin. It's probably not even going to be able to form a majority government. But Mark Carney, former governor of our own Bank of England, has. snuck in into the role of Canada's prime minister. And a Canadian friend said to me that Trump had helped. to convince the Quebecois
to vote liberal and had managed to unite the Anglos and the French against a common enemy, which is Donald Trump. So it has had that effect. I don't know about you. I've never rated Mark Carney. I think he's one of these. dreadful globalists. And he was certainly one of the prime movers in trying to undo Brexit, wasn't he? It's a real turnaround, largely driven by Trump, as you say. The Liberal Party really was very unpopular. Justin Trudeau's sort of nepo baby.
Prime Minister turned Canada into a sort of wormhole of woke and it wound up a lot of traditional Canadian voters. even though a lot of the sort of urban voters like that kind of progressive stuff. But the Liberals were languishing in third place. And even now, even though they've been turbocharged by Trump's rhetoric.
And as you say, previous political adversaries have been united against Trump. The liberals, they can't form a majority. They're three seats short of a majority. So they're going to form a minority government. And yet all the issues that Canada... has in terms of drug problems and so on.
real concern among quite a lot of the population about all the urban-based wokery, they're still going to be there. And I think Mark Carney's going to have a really hard time. And he is, as you say, very much a kind of global technocrat. I studied with him. I've known him for many, many years. He is not... a politician. He does not really know that much about politics when it comes down to it. And I do think with the best will in the world, he's going to struggle in office.
And I think that if Trump managed some trade deals, it's going to be very, very hard for Canada not to fall in line with that. And so, so much now depends on these tariffs. Trump can demonstrate he hopes there will be some order emerging from this chaos. And that in turn depends on financial markets and how much turmoil they create. And I say again, because you're not going to read it in many mainstream publications, there are signs, just signs. that financial markets are saying hang about.
There may be something here. There may be something interesting. That will lead to an outcome where tariff... are lower across the board than they were before Trump basically set fire to the existing trading regime, a trading regime in which it can't be said often enough.
In general, the tariffs that America charged the rest of the world were much lower than the tariffs the rest of the world charged America. And that is not only China, which did it to an outrageous degree, but the European Union. So I do think Trump is a man in a hurry. And the reason is, Alison, because the congressional midterms are coming down the track, right? In American politics, it's so relentless. As soon as the first hundred days is over, people are thinking about the midterms.
So we've got these elections in November 26. And if he loses the House in those midterms, which he may, he's got a wafer thin majority in the House, then the Democrats will be able to initiate and renew their efforts on the kind of lawfare front. by trying to lawyer him out of office, which of course they will, because that's the way politics work.
So, of course, it's been incredibly tumultuous and irresponsibly so, I would say. And some of the things and some of his rhetoric has been completely off the chart. But I'm not surprised that he's in a hurry. I'm not surprised he's in a hurry, given the US electoral timetable. Now on to our listener emails. Your message is sent to planetnormal at telegraph.co.uk. Please keep them coming. We love to hear from you, the citizens of Planet Normal.
We've had lots of reaction to those blackouts in Spain and Portugal. Jonathan says, this is truly bananas. All of Europe appears to have been seconds away from a continent wide blackout. The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz, just a hair above the red line collapse threshold. The normal operating frequency for Europe's power grid is 50 hertz. kept with an extremely tight margin of 0.1 hertz. Anything outside triggers major emergency actions.
If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3, Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout. At that threshold, automatic protective relays disconnect major power plants and the collapse accelerates. And it's disturbingly easy, says Jonathan, to imagine multiple scenarios where that could have occurred. Good heavens. And Stephen says renewables will always need backup. from, for the foreseeable future, which is what co-pilot Halligan's been telling us, coal, gas or nuclear.
The largest elephant in the room is that the backup turbines can't come online from zero. They have to be running at 60% capacity in order to jump in to maintain baseload. This means we will still need to burn a lot of fossil fuels and that we can never achieve net zero, even with 100% renewable capacity. I doubt the continuing backup fuel costs. is included in the calculations of the price to the consumer.
My wife and I, being frequent flyers aboard the rocket, our weekly ride that restores hope and optimism for the future, I find myself passing a note once again to our esteemed co-piloting commanders. Having now also become an avid follower of Pearsonomics, this must clearly be directed not to economics Professor Halligan, but to the brilliant student, St. Joan of Arkston herself, to verify that we're now on the downhill slope of the Laffer curve, causing tax receipts to fall.
Sure enough, UK income tax receipts in 23 to 24 were 1.1 billion less than the previous year. That's 273.3 billion versus 284.8 billion. And that's before the damage that our present Chancellor's policies will heap upon us. Time surely for a simpler, less onerous and, dare I say it, fairer system. And for me to ask, could we not make a flat rate tax system work? Roughly speaking.
The income tax receipts divided by the number of taxpayers suggests that the percentage as low as 21% would suffice, depending on what allowances, preferably none, says Mark, are retained. Without drastic change and applying radical thought, we will surely continue the spiral of doom we are now locked into. Simplicity and transparency must now become vital ingredients of our tax system.
Canning allowances could also provide an opportunity to completely revise the nation's pensions. Start afresh with a superannuation or common provident fund. The state would, say, match each pound saved with a further pound. Close all schemes retain existing benefits accrued, but thereafter, everyone will be invested in a fund which will also provide the capital the country needs for the growth we need to secure our economic future.
Should there be any mileage in such a plan? Who knows? That nice Mr. Melia of Argentina might lend his chainsaw, starting with HMRC, of course. Whilst I accept there are flaws in my suggestion, we desperately need something to reassure that a return to Earth and not a continued search to planet normal might be possible. I look forward to your thoughts, Mark.
Well, Mark, I couldn't agree with you more. And a lot of the ideas you put forward there were indeed the ideas of the late, great Frank Field, who was drummed out of office. within months of proposing these ideas by Chancellor Gordon Brown, while Tony Blair stood and let it happen. I think flat taxes are great. I think they could work. I doubt that, though, in about 30 odd years of following.
British politics at the highest level, meeting many of the major players. I doubt I've met anyone with the intellectual grit and determination to actually do it. Just to lower the tone, co-pilot, do you think we could have a Planet Normal outing to meet Mr. Millier and his chainsaw in Argentina? I'm sure the Telegraph would pay for that. I mean, how much could it cost?
It'd be good, wouldn't it? How's your Spanish? Is it Spanish or is it Portuguese? It's Spanish. Are you sure? Portuguese is Brazilian. Yes, you can tell I'm not very well travelled. You can take the girl out of the valleys, but you can't take the valleys out of the girl. Dan says, I keep hearing the same phrase over and over again when I talk to people.
I fear for the future of my grandchildren. That isn't a sign of a healthy society, says Dan. Could the political class become any more disconnected from the ordinary man or woman? It's just bizarre. It certainly is, Dan. When our 24-year-old daughter told us she was moving to Australia a few months ago rather than her original plan of moving to London, I was relieved.
My overriding emotion was not excitement that she was doing what she loves, travelling, but utter relief that she was getting out of Britain. Thank you, Alison and Liam, for all you do. I do and say what I can and have been called all manner of things for my trouble, says Peter. Something, no, lots of things have got to change and soon, before all our children feel safer and better off. And finally, Alison, we've got another Peter.
Here he is. Dear Alison and Liam, I've been married to the same person for 42 years. And from the first time we met, I suspected she was a woman. Can you imagine my relief when this was confirmed by the Supreme Court? After all, she might have been an alien from planet Zog in human form.
These days, we're told repeatedly that women can have penises. Does that mean that some have more than one? If so, what do they do with the spare one? We have a swathe of Labour backbenchers who make strange noises and weird gestures during PMQs.
I fear that they too might be aliens. Perhaps they're trying to communicate with us, but their brains haven't been wired properly. Nevertheless, it's still the best comedy show on the telly, even if it is pointless, given that all important decisions are made by Quangos and The Blob. As always, looking forward to hearing the next launch of your rockets. Yours sincerely, Peter. Brilliant. And Claire says to finish, populism is just a term for voters the left don't like.
And on that bombshell from Claire, that's it from Planet Normal for another week. We leave our sanctuary of sweet reason, our flying refuge of reason views. Email of the week. It's my turn. And I think it has to go to Planet Zog Peter. Peter, send us an email.
to planetnormaltelegraph.co.uk put mug winner in the subject heading give us your postal address and a rare as rocking horse poo planet normal mug will be winging its way to you if you enjoy planet normal please subscribe to this podcast and leave us a rating and a review on Spotify, the podcast app or wherever you listen. It does help people to find us and it don't half cheer me and the co-pilot up when we're feeling down to see all those lovely remarks.
And as we speed away from our beloved planet normal, the madness of planet Earth comes back into view. Thanks as ever to our producers, Cass Ho and Louisa Wells. Stay safe and in touch with us and with each other. Until next week, it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him. Your business is going places with three business. Enjoy business class roaming in EU destinations, whether you're video calling from Vienna, networking in Naples, or closing sales from Stockholm.
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