Is Iran beating Trump in his own war?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast. If they do anything to stop the flow of oil or goods within the Strait of Hormuz They will be hit by the world's most powerful military twenty times harder than they have been hit thus far. That is Caroline Levitt, Donald Trump's spokesperson in the White House. Yesterday, that's all well and good.

But why has the world's most powerful military shown itself to be singularly incapable of stopping attacks in the Straits of Hormuz? The bigger question is, who now controls this war? Donald Trump wants it to be over. But is Iran now pulling all the strings? Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And uh as we were saying there. uh so much of the focus on the war is now about who controls and whether anyone can control against Ira Iran.

The highly strategic strait of Humuz, as we've been uh talking about for the last two weeks, where so much of the world's oil and gas flows. Three ships. in the last twenty four hours by unknown projectiles in the straits abutting Iran. Two of those ships have sustained damage. Another, which the Thai Navy has identified as a Thai bulk carrier, has caught fire, forcing the crew to evacuate. Meanwhile

The US Department of War has said that it has eliminated sixteen Iranian mine laying vessels near the straits. That's despite the fact that Donald Trump had initially said there had been no reports of Iran placing mines and meanwhile the Israeli military is saying it is bi has begun a wide scale wave, whatever that means,

Off strikes on targets in Iran and Lebanon, as at a time when Iran is itself launching missiles and drones across the Gulf, including towards Israel. It is a funny way of showing, as Donald Trump said, what just yesterday or the day before, that this war was very nearly complete. Yes. And what you've got at the moment is Donald Trump trying to lower the oil price by saying this war is very nearly complete and almost as if in a pantomime you've got Iran saying, Oh no it's not.

And Iran has launched its most intensive bombardment since the beginning and has shown just how easy it is To close the Straits of Hormuz. And just how difficult it is for America to defend it. And there was a really interest I was listening to the news yesterday, late afternoon, I hear a breaking news snap, and it is that the US energy secretary has said that a US warship has successfully kind of escorted uh an oil tanker through the Straits of Hormuz. Only to delete the

that tweet about ten or fifteen minutes later. And so you can see oil price goes down on news that m American military is escorting goes up again once that tweet is deleted. And I think the fact of the matter is that they may have sunk these sixteen mine laying vessels, but you could have a rickety old Dow

with a couple of mines on board and you throw them over the side. I'm calling you a rickety old Dow. You can have a rickety old Dow, throw a couple of mines over the side and you have mined the Straits of Hormuz. Yeah, I think Iran is playing with Trump now. Because they've realized that the thing he cares most about is the price of oil, that all the stuff that was talked about before, whether it was regime change, helping protesters, liberating the Iranian people, was complete bullshit.

And actually the thing that will motivate him one way or another is the price of oil. And now we've heard from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in other words the kind of body of police that control the whole regime, uh, that it will determine the end of the war. And they are talking about pushing up the price of a barrel of oil to two hundred dollars. So all they have to do, frankly, is not bomb other countries in the Middle East, which you could argue

didn't particularly work out in their favour. It created a lot more enmity without actually hurting America or particularly Israel who has the Island Dome defence system. But all they actually have to do is disrupt what is coming through the Hormouth Strait. To push Trump into the arms of Putin, great, so we get our oil from Russia now, or to make people at home see just how little respect they have.

For what Trump is trying to achieve in in Iran and America? Just a brief addition to that. I mean you know, Donald Trump's the art of the deal is you don't show weakness and vulnerability because that's where you pounce. And Donald and Donald Trump has shown weakness and vulnerability over his concern about the oil price and the Iranians have passed.

embarrassing episode now sort of really changes the the character of this war because obviously what we've seen over the course of the year so far is Trump revelling in the sheer muscularity of his power. And we saw that in Venezuela and we saw that at the start of this war.

This could now actually become there th there is a there is a risk, I think, that not only is um nothing really achieved by the war, which is kind of I think where we thought it was going, but actually that America becomes highly embarrassed by the war, that it becomes a a point of foreign policy embarrassment for the United States. Not least because I mean one way of literally measuring

who the superpower is in the world is basically at any given moment in kind of modern global history, is who controls and regulates and controls sort of access to the seas. Who keeps trade around the world flowing. That used to be the British Empire and then after the Second World War it became the United States. They basically made sure that they kept sea and shipping lanes open. If the US can't do that

If it can't is shown that it can't do that. And not only can it not do that because Iran is, you know, deeply, deeply powerful, but it can't do it because it can't even stop the Iranians basically firing off a few drones and a few missiles, which leaves this crucial sip shipping lane exposed, then I think it does become a real question and a real question around actually American power in the world and a proper im a proper sort of expose

of its hollowness as a superpower. Yeah, and an addendum to that, this Pincer movement, as reported in the last few minutes by CNN, is that Russia is actually giving Iran specific advice about drone warfare. to help it in its war against Israel and the US. In other words, Russia helps Iran with drone warfare, Iran then closes the Homer Strait. It pushes up the price of oil, the

Then America turns to Russia to get the oil. You've got this perfect economic and physical warfare sort of the you know, vicious circle, which is that Russia ends up being the biggest benefactor in all this because suddenly America's turning to Russia for its oil as Russia is helping Iran.

You see, what we are seeing at the moment is the enormous power of the US military to bomb from the skies. And you go back to the Keir Starmer kind of quote from the very beginning of this when he says you can't exercise regime change from the sky. Yeah, you can do all that bombing and they've got freedom. Uh the air defence systems of Iran have been shot to pieces. America controls the skies. It does not control the Strait of Hormuz, which is the key battleground in this, and it cannot

Control the straight of hormost. It just takes one irradian speedboat to go out and cause absolute pandemonium. And if people fear that their ships are going to be attacked, as three have been this morning, then that is why so much is at stake on this particular thing. Forget Tehran, forget Isfahan, forget all the other places that have been bombed. The Straits of Hormuz is the Trump card that Iran has. Listen to Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter, talking on Fox News.

challenges that this administration has tackled. The first is that and they should have frankly moved on this on day one, they have to keep the Strait of Hormos open. Yes. I don't care what it costs. If they can't keep it open Uh this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long,'cause the entire world, including the American people, will react to the price of oil if the straits stays closed right long.

So that was Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House. Just as kind of an aside, the person he was talking to, the presenter of the show, uh Larry Cudlow, who was going yes, yes. was the director of Trump's National Economic Council uh in the first term. So there you have two people who are pretty solid with Trump saying

You've kind of what on earth's going on. This is what I mean. I mean, you know, there's there's just such a paradox or sort of disconnect here, right, between as ever between Trump's rhetoric and the reality on the ground. Trump has launched a war He's killed the supreme leader, been replaced by his a younger version of himself. He's declared victory

while simultaneously allowing what is at best a regional power to close the most strategically important waterway in the world. Right? And so and and as is as you say, John, not um with sort of great military might. Not with a superb kind of world class military arsenal at its disposal, but using drones, which which probably cost like a fraction of one percent.

of an American Navy warship, right? So the US is basically what it's showing at the moment is, and I think this is why Trump's really got to get control of is that right now what it looks like is that it can destroy things all day long, can do that endlessly. But it cannot guarantee the flow of oil. The flow of oil and American power guaranteeing the flow of oil is literally the thing that the post war order and American power

is based upon. And look, i if this goes on, I mean he wouldn't be the first American president to be humbled In Iran, right? Jimmy Carter's presidency never recovered as a result of the Iranian hostage crisis, right? He wouldn't be the first. president, it wasn't Carter's fault in that in that case, but it wouldn't be the first president to launch a foreign military adventure and for his presidency to founder upon it. Yeah, I mean the Carter thing is really interesting because

That goes back not just to the hostage taking, but to the fact that he didn't realise how unstable the Shah of Iran was. You know, in seventy eight, the year before he was actually turfed off, he talked about Iran and America being the closest of allies. They celebrated together, he was invited over, they thought that he had Decades to go. You know, this was a regime he he couldn't see being undermined. And I think it's a very similar thing that America, maybe the West,

quite often undermines what's actually going on in Iran because we don't go further than the surface and understanding it. I mean, to the point about oil. Um, we're now hearing G seven nations saying, Yep, we need to have a sort of collective release of oil from reserves. This is what we're gonna do now. We're gonna go

uh to to to sort of try and and sort of dig out from behind the radiator as it were to to cope with the soaring oil prices. They haven't got very much in reserves. The place that's got all the reserves China. Right? So once it's on top, aren't they? Uh well, they think about these things. You know, there is there is something and and I hope this doesn't come across as as, you know, a sort of celebration of

you know, e enemies here. It is not that we think China's doing great. It's not that we think Iran's doing great. It is just that they tend to think about things in a more strategic way, clearly than the Trump administration has, right? And and when China tells you that they can keep going for months and months and months on their oil reserves

and the G seven is looking round, sort of desperately trying to put another five P in the gas meter. It it tells you where we are. So all the Iranians have to do. I mean th the there's the the the objectives are so different, right? I mean Trump set profound objectives for all of this. He set the bar so high. He basically said not just the Ayatollah, but the whole regime has to go and change. He said that at the very start. All the Iranians have to do is survive.

All they have to do is survive and expose, at least for their own propaganda and rhetorical purposes, the emptiness of American power. And that will just be a massive win for them because they can then probably use this to fortify themselves in place for longer. To that point, uh i you know, it does strike me that obviously when we talk about the Iranians, we're talking the RGC, the regime, the poor Iranian people,

who we spent so much time thinking about at the beginning of this year who Trump indeed encouraged to rise up. You know, we've had this story that's been taking place in Australia, I just left in the sort of middle of it all, with the Iranian women's soccer team Sort of basically sending out SOS hand signals saying we don't want to return back to Iran and Albanese, the PM, has just stepped in and said.

we will offer sanctuary. We'll offer sanctuary to any of the women who don't want to go back. I mean, just a microcosm of the kind of the awfulness of what is going on right now that these women are having to choose between their own safety and possibly their family's safety, if they don't return. It doesn't even scratch the surface of how impossible the situation is for normal Iranians, you know, who would like to be on the streets protesting, who would like to see America coming to their aid.

who frankly is looking up and saying, Great, you bombed a s a hundred and sixty of our little girls to death on day one and what have you done since then? Nothing. I I I think if you take a long view of America's military entanglements, you know, since the Second World War.

That for every lifting of Nicolas Maduro, which was a brilliant, brilliant operation where they kind of no American casualties or one that kind of slightly injured. Although even then they've basically done it around which is it's just the his deputies taken over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. But it was a very impressive it was a very impressive military operation the way they were able to get Maduro Get him out, take him to New York. You look at the blunder.

You look at what happened, you know, when America, the most powerful armed forces in the world, was in Vietnam. And they couldn't fight against the tactics of the Viet Cong with their guerrilla warfare and hiding underground and in tunnels and popping up and attacking American bases. And Trump knew all that. And so I mean Trump literally stood

For twenty years, long before actually twenty fifteen, he was talking about these kinds of wars and how much it had been, you know, the administrations of past governments that had pulled American people into these terrible entanglements. And and now here are yeah. Without clear strategic aid, we have without having thought through what the likely consequences would be.

And it may well be it's looking like the re regime in Iran will survive, that it looks like it still can has the power to close the Straits of Hormoon like that. And it's shown the world that power. And what is Donald Trump going to do? We seem a very, very long way. from Saturday's demand from Donald Trump of wanting unconditional surrender. And meanwhile as well, the reputation of a of America um

Yeah, continues to take a battering. I mean Emily just mentioned and I think we should talk about it a bit more because I think it probably hasn't received as much attention as it should. The bombing of that girl's primary school. in the southern Iranian city of Minab. I mean that was on the first day of the war and there's been lots of kind of fog of war claim and counterclaim stuff stuff about it. But let's just like rewind and think about where we are. We've got an American president.

Being asked whether he is responsible for the for the the murder, the the bombing and murder of a hundred and sixty five people in a school, most of them girls, aged between seven and twelve. Iran said it was the Americans. Trump said it was Iran, that their missiles were inaccurate and a preliminary US assessment though, leaked to CBS News, has concluded that the US was likely responsible for this bombing and Trump has been asked about it in the last twenty four hours.

You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday.

Why are you the only person saying this? Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation. But tomahawks are are used by others, as you know. Uh numerous other nations have tomahawks. They buy'em from us. Uh but I will certainly whatever the uh report shows, uh I'm willing to live with that report. So the Pentagon says that it's uh investigating. Um democratic senators have called it appalling, demanded answers.

Um but you know, some of those senators talking about war crimes being involved of their own government. It is amazing, isn't it? Because uh you would think I mean it's Donald Trump well I'm just expressing an opinion. You're the president of the country. If your opinion is based on zero evidence that you think it was Iran who blew up this school because one of its missiles misfired, um

Really? What are you saying? Why aren't you waiting for the inquiry and then you get Caroline Levitt defending him? Well, it's just the president expressing his viewpoint. He's entitled to do that. Well, all the evidence is pointing in one direction and that it was

an American Tomahawk cruise missile that slammed into that school, killing over a hundred. It looks like it was out the the assessment or the analysis has been done that suggests that it's probably if anything outdated intelligence that the building the schools sat

adjacent to a former IRGC base, but one that the local officials say has been abandoned for over a decade. So it's one of those mistakes that happens in war but at the most appalling cost and those mistakes are always appalling and terrible. and can never can never be worth it. But in these circumstances where the aims remain so opaque it feels even more tragic. I'm so surprised that a former weekend Fox News host with a alleged

drinking problem made a mistake like that. Who could have guessed? But it is to the bigger question, which is You know, the world rushes to believe so much of what Trump says because of his position, without ever sort of stopping to think about whether A, he makes most of it up. B he ever checks the intelligence he's got.

see he has a plan. I mean, it is a real lesson, isn't it? And I know we're gonna talk about this more with our own Prime Minister and the state of UK politics vis vis Trump right now. But it's a real lesson, isn't it, in how Quickly so many people of kind of great intellectual heft Russian to the sort of language of war, the militarization of war, the idea of strategy just because it comes from a US president. Nobody steps back to think

Has anything that he's done in the past eight years made any sense? Look, you talk about Hegsef being the former Fox News host and all the rest of it. And I really think there is a serious element to this. We covered on the US edition uh of the news agents uh Hegseth's address. to the most senior commanders in the US military. They'd all been brought in from around the world. They turn up at Quantico, uh the the US Marine headquarters.

And Hegseth stands on stage and says, you know, and it's all testosterone. It's you've got to do more press ups. You've got to be fitter. You've got to shave off your beards. You've got to look like men. Yeah, and by the way, by the way I'm gonna fire all the black ones. Yeah, and by the way, I'll fire all the black ones and anyone who's woke you're out.

And you can't fight a war on testosterone. Wars are bloody awful things and you need to work out what you're doing. Well as Iran is kind of showing, right? With the minimum as you say, the minimum amount of hardware, you've completely crippled America. Exactly. And so I just think that this kind of The macho nature of what we have heard from Trump and what we have heard from Hegseth may look great.

In the first twenty four hours or the first forty eight hours, when you are doing all that you want to do, but then Iran fires back and you think, Oh shit. What, they're gonna fire back? They're gonna close the streets of almost? Bloody hell, I didn't know that was going to happen. Why was nobody nobody in your war cabinet thinking about that?

Right, we will be back just after this talking about how all of this is impacting our own politics and how quite a few of those who em as Emily was saying, who were cheering for war loudest ten days ago are much quieter now. Stay with us. From a range of trusted voices and award-winning journals.

Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. It's time to get to your calls. Find out the latest news and hear every side of the story. They have no navy, they have no air force, and they have no leadership. We could call it a tremendous success right now, or we could go further, and we're gonna go further. There is Absolutely no pleasure to be derived from predicting almost to the letter how this sorry saga would unfold. Conflict in the Middle East. Follow it Listen on our Player app or the LBC app.

The news agents of petrol. We're absolutely clear in taking the measures that are necessary ymwneud â llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer Is to work with others to de-escalate the situation. And Mr. Speaker, as I said to the House last week, I took the decision. attacked me for that decision relentlessly. She said that the UK should have joined the US and Israel in the initial offensive strike.

Mr Speaker, then yesterday, in the wake of the economic consequences, The Leader of the Opposition totally abandoned her position. She told the BB safe. I never said we should join. She she told the BBC. I haven't said we should have gone in with the United States. That is the mother of all U turns. On the single most important decision a Prime Minister ever has to take, whether to commit the United Kingdom to war or not. For the last few weeks, maybe even months.

Kemi Badenok's been on something of a role at PMQs, but today The Prime Minister kind of crushed it, actually, by simply reminding the country, or at least Parliament. of her U turn. that she had been the one urging him, demanding him, to be at Trump's side.

And suddenly it wasn't looking like such a great idea. I think what's so interesting about this is that, you know, we talked in the first half that it looked like You know, Donald Trump had launched this attack, hadn't thought through the risks, the consequences, what it might do to public opinion, what it might do to oil prices. And here we have opposition politicians.

So keen to score that a kind of win over Starmer for his kind of rather nuanced position and not backing America, that they go all in and say, We've got to back America, we've got to be right behind them and then they see gradually over the course of the last ten days that, uh, maybe Starmer has a point. Maybe we should be worried about oil prices. Maybe the Americans haven't got a clear plan and are now trying to get back on board with Starmer.

And not surprisingly, the Prime Minister I think in what was his most self confident performance Kevin Badenok around the park a bit. The thing is, I mean it's not just Badenoch, I mean Baynock uh did say at the start, I mean people remember last week Prime Minister's question, she was very bellicose, she was accusing the the Prime Minister of weakness and and so on.

She s uh told L B C that we're in this war whether Keir Starmer likes it or not, before telling the B B C I think yesterday, I haven't said that we should have gone in with the US and with Iran. There has been a clear shift in position. But she Is not alone. I mean, so many of of so much of the right wing press and commentators in particular were slamming Starmer left.

They were saying he had consigned us to complete irrelevance. He was saying they were saying that he had destroyed the relationship with Washington. These people, by the way, who are constantly telling us How important it is that we exercise our sovereignty with regards to the European Union and Brussels. The moment that a Prime Minister, British Prime Minister, even puts the the the most slender of distances between himself

on Washington apparently is just a sign of complete supine weakness. Nigel Farage is actually the clearest case, the Prime Minister referred to to him in one of his answers later on as well. On the tw twenty eighth of February Farage posted on X that Starmer needs to change his mind on the use of our military bases and back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran. Days later he was saying the gloves need to come off.

We need to accept we're part of this with the Americans and the Israelis. We have to get rid of this regime, but as we were saying yesterday, by the tenth of March, at a petrol station in Derbyshire, He reversed his position entirely, saying Britain should not get involved with the conflict, and stated

that we don't have the military capacity for it. So that is a hell of a key the key phrase being at a petrol station in Darwin. Well quite so and you know what though? And the thing is is that Starmer, as we've been saying for the last ten days The consequence of this was so predictable. In two regards. One, it was so predictable that Trump would have no clue what happened next, as you were saying, Emily, that like, you know it

E most American presidents don't really have a clue what happens next when they just start these things, let alone Trump. But also The economic consequences were so inevitable and clear. As soon as the chaos started, all of these people mysteriously have gone back to their bunkers with their hard hats on.

Yeah, I mean I think y you were talking about Blair as well, uh earlier this week, and I think he inadvertently did Starmer a real solid, you know? He didn't mean that stuff to come out, but once There is Blair telling you to go to war, Farage telling you to go to war, Baidnaught telling you to go to war, it's pretty damn obvious what you shouldn't do, and that is go to war, right? And so Starmer has now been, I think

even cannier. And and I'm I don't know how comfortable I am with this, but he's also trying to attach Kemi Baidnock to sort of ship hosting the military, you know, the armed forces as well. Kemi Badnock made this comment about HMS Dragon taking so long to arrive, the obviously the carrier that's meant to be in Cyprus. About which there are clear questions to be fair. Of course, you know. And this is why I say it's it shows that Starmer's on something of a role.

The way Starmer picked that up in PMQs today was just to thank the Navy, right? In other words, he wants to be Prime Ministerial Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. I'm not going to be the person that slags off the armed forces even if she does it. And she is now grappling around in the sand, kind of going, uh I didn't say that, I didn't mean that. I wasn't slagging them off. I was just saying it took a long time. We were unprepared.

I think it's one thing to be unprepared, it's another thing if you're painted as the opposition leader who doesn't think they're good enough. I I think it was very telling how comfortable Starmer felt in leaning into his opposition.

to the war in that PMQs and I think it was very telling what he did, which is that he not only lent into it just for its own sake, but he did so by using it to suggest that the Tories and Reform would be willing to accept a far greater cost of living crisis, i.e. through the effect on petrol and other inflationary problems,

as a result of their basically being warmongering, right? So it was sort of tying two things together. And the sort of funny thing about all of this is of course, and it's a it's a political thing really, is that Like, you know, you can make an argument to say that Starmer, you know, has gone along with the Americans on quite a lot of stuff. I mean actually, you know, the distinction between offensive and defensive

operations that the Americans are launching for our bases is not entirely clear every single time. But as a result of the fact that he has been rhetorically clear that he thinks the whole thing has been a bad idea from the start. It basically gives him more political credit, even if the policy actions between himself and another Prime Minister who had backed the war more publicly, like I think someone like Blair might have done.

aren't that great or the gulf between those two things isn't that big. It's an interesting sort of bit of politics. Yeah, and I think what's also interesting is that you haven't heard much more from the Americans. I mean there was that kind of soundbite last week from Trump which really felt as though whoa that would win

Keir Starmer in Downing Street when he says it's not Winston Churchill we're dealing with. That's kind of sly aside from Trump and everyone who gasped at kind of how painful that must have been for Starmer. I don't understand why that was painful. Sure, but it was but he's revered as the great hero and all the rest of it and therefore the rest of it. Yeah, and the rest of it. I know.

And the fact of the matter is that actually I think Sama and Trump have spoke over the weekend. There's been no more from Trump and I think maybe Trump reluctantly has probably respects Starmer's position. The other thing that Trump doesn't want to jeopardise is the state visit of the King.

In a coup month or two's time. When the king is going over to uh America for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary and all of that. And it's perfectly possible that if it got really ugly between the UK and US A state visit could get called off. So maybe Starmer is showing actually I've got a bit of toughness here and I'm not just going to be pushed around. Yeah, and I'll tell you th the one place that Starmer and Labour have to show their workings better, actually, is on the amount

of public spending that they have put back into the country. Because there's some really interesting um work by the data analyst commentator Sam Friedman who says public spending has increased by fifty billion in real terms. Yet there's no recognition of any of this in polling data or focus group transcripts. In fact, you know, most people now think that there is less money going into public spending than before Labour came to power. They don't understand the vastness of that sum of money.

So if anything, this is helping Starmer tell that story, i.e. We didn't want to drag you into a war. We didn't want to push up oil prices. We didn't want your pockets to be hit. We didn't want this to be an affordability crisis that's any worse than it currently is. And in a weird way, Kemi Badenot gave him that opening today when he was talking about then freezing fuel duty, carrying on the freeze on on on energy costs and all the rest of it.

to say, look, this is actually what we've done. I don't know why, you know, that that figure came as a surprise to me. And and we follow these things quite closely. I don't know why we haven't heard that enough from a Labour government that has, you know, put a lot more money into the public purse. But

That seems to me somewhere that they do need to do more work, right? But this is what I mean. Starmer has been in a sense lucky with his enemies here because the way in which both Reform and the Tories and so many of the most kind of

kind of fevered sort of commentators and all of those in in the right wing press who I say are now a lot quieter today. Because they they cannot deny that as Starmer was saying there, if They had been in charge of the I think it is not just a case of allowing the Americans

to use our bases offensively. I think there is every possibility we would have been an active participant in the war. That's certainly what Blair seemed to have been saying. I think that the point is there are lots of people on the left going

Look, Starmer is allowing the use of these bases. So actually, you know, it's all just sort of smoke and mirrors. And as I say, I do think they've been quite clever with the politics in this. I think they've given the Americans enough, not for the relationship to be irreparably damaged. But you can't deny I think Starmer I think he's has had a genuine point of distinction because when I think of other prime ministers, I think at the very least

they wouldn't have been so clear as Star was in the House of Commons last week, to his credit, wouldn't have been so clear that he thought it was a bad idea. I can imagine a a Cameron or someone like that or other you know Conservative Prime Minister, other Labour Prime Minister.

Maybe not joining, but not making a point of departure with the Americans in the way that Starmer did when he made it clear that he thought it was illegal and a bad idea. Tony Blair certainly wouldn't have done that. So I think Starmer's

Position has been distinctive vis a vis some of his presentations. And and Carney, who we talked about last week, rode back. I mean Carney actually faced difficult questions about the whole legality question. I mean I think Starmer also owes his cabinet big time. Yes, that's true. And he listened to them, right?

Yeah, I know some of that commentary on all of that was sort of weird. It was like the cabinet having a discussion about this. The Prime Minister is gonna be a good thing. Is then Miliband in charge? Well actually

Yeah, this is not not a bad place to end up. Yeah, and I think that doubtless Miliband as energy secretary would have been thinking about the cost which has already happened on energy prices. And him probably saying, Look, if we back this We're gonna own this and where will we be then? You know what? I mean the the next I can just see over the horizon, to your point about uh UK air bases, we're probably only that far away. from whatever American B one bombers do, w whoever they target next.

From you know, Fairford and Gloucestershire coming back to haunt us. Absolutely. I do think there is still I mean it's I think the Prime Minister is in a strong position at the moment. It doesn't mean there aren't serious questions left unaddressed. I think the dragon stuff does continue to be embarrassing. It's still possible we get drawn in precisely as you say, I mean, either because Some of our military assets are yeah, our military assets are hit and then we e get drawn in or

Yeah, it becomes clear that they've us a UK military base clearly in an offensive capacity that can't be denied. And then suddenly Starmer looks inconsistent and then he you know, his position is is left in bits. But as of right now, it's probably been despite all of the chaos, probably his best week for some time. We'll be back in just a moment. The news agent. And before we go, it's quarter to two in the afternoon.

And in the next You're so good at telling the time. I've always said that. I well, the little hand is on the two and the big hand is on the nine. Thank you. The third stroke. Anyway, look.

The Mandelson files and the government's kind of interaction with Mandelson around the time of his appointment and his departure from uh ambassador in Washington is going to be released in the next kind of hour, two hours, which is annoying for us. But we're getting some kind of indication that a lot of the substance will be around the payoff that Mandelson got.

when he left the post of our ambassador in D C and some suggestion that he got a seventy thousand pound payoff and was asking for more. I would just gently say if that is the strongest line And all this.

Then Mandelson probably thinking, Well, that's not too bad. Yeah, we think we're about two hours away from the Mandelson drop of, you know, the sort of the latest incarnation of the Epstein files, which is gonna be text messages, WhatsApp messages before messages could be sort of disappeared as it were, emails, these could go

between Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, they could go between Mandelson and Keir Starmer, they could go between Mandelson, presumably and anyone else in Parliament or anyone else in government. that the Cabinet Office has

demanded the the sort of receipts of of conversation of conversations with. Um there is one thing that's coming out today which is sort of familiar enough, I think that we did know some of the ruins of this, which is that Mandelson was urging John Swinney SMP leader to charm Trump, to help with sort of whiskey tariffs by saying nice things about the golf course.

Um his request was made just before Trump arrived at the golf resort near Aberdeen last summer and before relations between the S P and Labour ministers. soured. Well that's you see that's good operating, isn't it, by Mandelson as our ambassador. If he's trying to try and get the whiskey tariffs down. I mean So does that make him look bad? Not particularly. I mean th the weirdest thing about this whole release I think is going to be that it had to

It has only come from people. Nobody's been subpoenaed. In other words, you only see the messages that people were willing to relinquish. So you have to see it through the lens of what people didn't mind coming out. For the most part. I mean I think Keir Starmer's messages will all come out, more Wit Sweeney's messages will all come out. But the rest of the communication will be voluntary, isn't it? And and of course, um as a result of the police investigation, as I'm saying that that

That is ongoing. Some of the bits which could be most politically problematic for the Prime Minister, the stuff around vetting, for example, which was uh at the centre of so many of the questions. Around Mannelson, perhaps not likely to be seen. No we're we're saying all this without knowing what's in them. So it will be a bumper pack for you tomorrow. Our blindfolds will be off, but at the moment we're blindfolded. What's the time, John?

Uh I can't'cause I've got my blindfold on I can't see. Like a little horse. Bye bye. Bye. This has been a Global Player original production.