Is Trump getting away with murder in the Caribbean?

This is a Global Player original podcast. In the past few moments, there's been breaking news that four more boats. have been struck by the US military, fourteen killed, adding to the dozens who've already been taken out by American strikes on alleged drug runners. What the hell is going on off the coast of Venezuela? Administration insists these strikes are consistent with international law. Do you agree with that? No, it's murder.

It's very simple. If this president feels that they're doing something illegally, then he should be using the Coast Guard. If this is an act of war, then you use our military and then you come and talk to us first. But this is murder. It's sanctioned murder that he is doing that. That was Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, who's clear that this is sanctioned murder. Is Trump really fighting a war on drugs or trying to get rid of Venezuela's president? Welcome to the newsagents.

The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. And there are two major events happening off the coast of Latin America right now. One is a hurricane barreling towards Jamaica. The other is man made, and that is the mass of forces that have gathered US forces off the coast of Venezuela. It all started with the Americans taking out firing on boats that the Americans alleged were full of drugs and drug runners. No proof has been extended to confirm that, but the Americans have carried on their exercise.

Meanwhile, the biggest aircraft carrier that the US has is now in position off Venezuela, is the real game the overthrow of President Maduro. Donald Trump says it's a stupid question. But we'll have a listen. Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro? Oh I don't wanna answer a question like that. That's a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn't it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?

But I think Venezuela is feeling heat, but I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat too. We're not gonna let this country, our country, be ruined. So behind this idea is that Donald Trump and his administration are fighting a war on drugs.

Something you have to know about this is the drug that they are talking about, fentanyl, is not made in Venezuela, it's not exported from Venezuela, there is virtually no fentanyl coming from Venezuela into the United States. In other words, the first excuse doesn't stand up to scrutiny, which is why people have gone a bit darker and people have gone a bit closer into Donald Trump's own motivation on this. Maduro, who is the Venezuelan kind of hard left dictator.

has got a fifty million dollar bounty on his head. Sounds like a lot of money until you realise how much more money there probably is to be made from you know from Venezuelan oil supply. From Venezuelan oil or being a dictator of Venezuela, in which case it doesn't actually amount to as much as you think. But Trump, nine months before he even got into power, was talking about the importance of removing Maduro from power and seizing Venezuelan oil.

Perhaps we should just replay you something he said himself long before the twenty twenty four election. How about we're buying oil from Venezuela? When I left Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door. The elections were stolen by Maduro, every election observer says he lost the presidential election.

And the woman who's just won the Nobel Peace Prize Maria Machado Exactly is the person who should be the president of Venezuela now. And into this Donald Trump started. With what even some of his allies are calling extrajudicial executions, extrajudicial killings. Where for no reason appear Is that murder? Yes. It's murder. Yeah. You are you are saying I have got the right

To fire on a boat, you don't know. Apparently the intelligence is that they are carrying drugs, but if they are carrying drugs Isn't that a criminal offence? And therefore you arrest them? and put them on trial for having committed a crime. But this is not what they are doing. They are shooting first and asking questions later. And there have been some instances where not everyone on these boats have been killed.

And what's happened to the survivors is they've been returned to their country. So hang on, if you're saying that these people are terrorists, Why are you letting them go free to strike again? None of this makes any sense until you look at the much bigger picture of this massing of American forces. Off the coast of Venezuela and saying, Okay, we're coming to destabilize you, and there's all sorts of weird and dark stuff.

Going on now. Apparently there was a an American boat that was in a harbor in Tobago and the Venezuelans. are saying they've arrested four people who were going to attack the US boat, US Navy vessel, and pass it off as a false flag instance so that this ship would have been attacked and America would have blamed the Venezuelans when it was actually CIA operatives who had attacked their own boat. I mean it gets kind of

This is back to the sixties. This is back to Bay of Pigs and all the rest of it.

when you're trying to kind of unsettle anyone who is not US friendly in your own backyard. So if this was just a war on drugs, you would not need to deploy troops, not on the scale that they are talking about. This is not about conducting occasional strikes on vessels that might be smuggling drugs. This now looks like a gunboat policy to put pressure on Maduro, to force him to step down, and to get him out of the way. There is a weird phrase that people have started to use.

And it all goes back to the Monroe Doctrine of um the sort of last century, mm the previous century, which was this idea of sort of breaking up the world into different spheres of power. And th the word that is now being used is re-hemisphering. In other words Does America, does Trump start to think, Oh well, I'm not sure the border has to end with Florida, I'm not sure the border has to end with the Southern American states?

Is there a world in which it stretches up into Canada, we've talked about this before, over into Greenland, we've talked about that before, or down into Venezuela? This is all part of a much bigger question, I think, which is Where Trump sees American interventionalism going. We talked yesterday on the podcast about him giving money, forty billion dollars to uh to Argentina to keep uh Millet, uh the President Inch in power there.

And this is another I mean completely opposite end of the scale. The flip side is if I don't like somebody Well, we might have to act. You would you were talking about the sort of nineteen sixties and also m I mean much more recently, Noriego, Panama, what happened in Nicaragua. This is all Salvador Andy in Chile. Right. We remove people we don't like. For a man who came into power saying America first, I'm not interested in other people's backyards. I I just want my own. This is a major shift.

Because we thought that, you know, one of the reasons why Trump won't get involved in Russia Ukraine is he says, Well, you know, broadly speaking Russia is the superpower in that region, so you Not my fucking problem. Yeah, if they want Ukraine they can have it. I'm I'm not too bothered about it, but don't get upset. Yeah. If I want areas in my backyard

to be singing my tune. And at the moment we've got Nicolas Maduro who is not and he's a pain in the backside. He's a communist. He's sending drugs from Venezuela to America. And as you've said, Emily, there's a kind of you know, you can take that with a bit of a pinch of salt. But he does look like this is an interventionist president who is much more interested. Now, if you're Maduro, the one thing I would feel pretty confident of is Donald Trump is not going to put US troops on the ground.

to fight a war in Venezuela because that is completely contrary to the MAGA doctrine, the forever wars, American intervention, nation building here and I don't think that that is what Donald Trump will do. But I think he's trying to destabilise it enough.

that the opposition rise up and people rise up and think for the good of our own lives we need to get rid of Madura. Yeah, and it's not about sorry, just to clarify, it's not about sort of invasion. He's not going to invade Canada, he's not going to invade Venezuela. It's about capturing supply chains. In other words, making sure that the sort of political entities that were running the country are no longer in charge and that America has first dibs on whatever

Product oil. Yeah. Once again, which is a policy that we saw through the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis was over the positioning of Russian missiles i i in Cuba and you know, John F. Kennedy saying no This is the this is the line, we will go to war over this and you know Chris Church

backs down. And again and again the history of Latin America, of America, the big brother intervening and telling Latin America who you have to have as your president. And we haven't seen that.

For two or three decades now. Yeah. And suddenly it's back. Yeah, I mean if you just leave the geopolitics to one side and get back to the words of Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Senator that we started with. I mean he called it murder. And I do think that there is a real moment actually for America here because if you are one of those troops, if you are the family of one of those troops, Y you haven't really had this war, this military activity explained to you?

It has all been done under the cover of something else. Oh, we're taking out a we're taking out a boat. It's got, you know, illegals in or it's got drugs in or it's got mules in, whatever. We don't know that that was true. And now you are talking about deploying American troops down to fight for Donald Trump.

for something that they that they don't understand. This hasn't gone through Congress, this hasn't gone through legislators, this hasn't gone through the American public. This is this is there's been no declaration of war and On top of this, there have been changes to the Pentagon under Pete Hegsath, which means that American reporters.

have had to sign a pledge of allegiance, essentially, to the Pentagon before they're allowed to know anything, and many of them have refused to do that en masse. Well done then. They have not signed up to the Heggseth doctrine, and they've said no, no, we'll we'll go and report on what we like. and so It is the cloak of secrecy that surrounds so much of this. Whether you are a reporter, whether you are a member of the armed forces.

Or whether you're just an ordinary American citizen who doesn't know what the hell is going on that suddenly puts your own country on the brink of war with another major country? Look, it is absolutely true that in the US Constitution The the commander in chief of the armed forces is the President, Donald Trump. But that doesn't mean that military commanders can ignore what is the law of the land and their first

Oath of loyalty is to the Constitution, not Donald Trump. And there is a lot of unease, and the head of southern command of US Armed Forces. has mysteriously stood down, presumably because he didn't like the idea that we are just committing murder on the high seas of people that we think might have drugs in their boats.

And this is a really big question for military commanders of whether they go along with something now that might have repercussions later because what they're doing is broadly unconstitutional and is at the president's whim. not following the Constitution of the United States of America. We'll be back in a moment talking about the latest UK polling and where it leaves many of the major parties. Journalists. James O'Brien on LBC. This is Andrew Mark. Leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. And Lewis joins us now, or should I say Doctor Lewis. Doctor Goodall, please. Doctor Goodall. I don't think we're on first name terms. Did you have a nice day in Birmingham? I had a lovely day, thank you, yes. With your honorary degree. Ah yes, I did have I got to wear a lovely gown.

Very good. And that's all I want. Unfortunately didn't let me keep it, otherwise I'll be wearing it right now. Look, I think we should have more gowns on this podcast. Do you think so? Wear academic groves or shiny satinated gowns. Well, seeing as you ask, uh yeah. School of life?

School of life, you know. Okay, school of half knocks Pennsylvania Avenue. Yeah, exactly Massachusetts Avenue. Massachusetts Avenue. Both of them. Connecticut Avenue. Are we going to talk about polling or are we just going to go who's got an honorary doctor? Doctorate or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's very news agents content. Yes, this is um the latest poll from UGAB.

Which shows I think it is crystallizing the extraordinary sort of transformation in our politics which has taken place since the general election. Complete multiparty picture. Labour now just seventeen percent, which pretty much I think as far as anyone can tell is the lowest level that has ever been with recorded with UGAV.

And it also found that the Green Party at their highest level of support, winning the backing of sixteen percent of all voters. So basically what you've got is reform with a sort of ten point lead about twenty seven points or so. And then Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Greens all clustered nip and tuck at around sixteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen points. The sort of thing that you might see.

It's commonplace in certain kind of proportional representation multi-party systems in continental Europe. It is not something that we have typically you know indeed really ever seen in Britain. And all this comes three days after that win for Plied Cumbrian Care Philly on Thursday night. Which was seismic actually. I mean all the polling before that had put reform and plied neck and neck, and when the results came it showed that the

Two dominant parties, I should say, formerly dominant parties, Labour and Conservatives, had a tally total of 13%. I mean... Yn-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y And I was sort of tweeting, as one does, in the middle of the night. You know, this is what I'm saying. Put it down, does she? Put it down. But the interesting thing was I was saying this is an extraordinary moment when the combined

dominant parties are on thirteen percent implied as the sort of the runaway winner. People say, Oh, don't you understand how voting what what's it called when you lending your vote? What's it called? Yeah. Don't you understand how tactical voting works? I was like, yes I do. But the interesting thing about this was that people were going from Labour too plied to vote tactically. They weren't trying to keep reform out by backing the main candidate.

they were going to the edges. They were going to the Welsh Nationalist Party, who'd run a very strong campaign, a very I have to say, a very pro Europe campaign, still talking about the single market. I think they're the only party now who regularly talks about sort of rejoining or re-entering the single market, uh the SNP. Okay, so the nationalist parties in both s Wales and Scotland are doing that work. But isn't it interesting that what that election result told us?

is that everyone is is leaving the centre to go round to the edge.

Yes, but applied. That is where the sort of popular populist vote is now. And just for a moment on the Kerfilli context of it all. I mean Cafilli is not just one of these bellwether seats that changes from one party to another, to another, to another. It is Labour. It has always been Labour. Ever since the seat was created, it is Labour and no one else has ever won there. at all. And so for Labour to come in so poorly I think that it would be hard for

sort of Labour Party headquarters or in Downing Street to say, Oh yeah, well I mean it's just a bit of unpopularity we've got at the moment. This does look something more profound and and the poll that we're talking about now, which has the green surging and Labour at seventeen percent. Is sort of if not dead, it's very close to dead. So here's my question, which is is it that Labour is boring and doing things badly and led by somebody who is fundamentally not exciting the voters?

Or would that be the case? Whoever, whatever shape Labour was now. Do you see what I mean? Like this is my question now. People keep saying, Oh, Keir Starmer doesn't really inspire or he's not you know, he's not politically political, he's not very exciting and we've all gone, yeah, we've had enough of exciting politicians, thanks very much. But is it about the party itself and its place in the middle?

that is just destined to have a pretty low time at the moment, or is it something that a change in the leadership could shift? I think what there is in politics right now, and you're seeing this sort of manifest itself in all sorts of different ways, not just in Britain either. There is such an anti system feeling, right? There is just such

an anti establishment and n and not just I mean we've had times and moments in our politics when there has been great dissatisfaction with the two main parties and occasionally, as we saw with the SDP in the eighties or, you know, the Brexit party arguably in the sort of latter part of the last decade. you see a new force breakthrough. At least for a time. What I don't think though happened in in those moments as there is now, was there was not such a deeply

Corrosive feeling and caustic feeling about the system itself rather than just the main two parties. At those particular moments there was just dissatisfaction that that that the two parties weren't doing their job properly or maybe they'd gone off to particular extremes or and so on. Whereas now it feels and this is what the both in their own ways, the Green Party and Reform are both exploiting.

successfully is there is such a feeling of dissatisfaction with the system. And this is why I'm really intrigued that people say it's a kind of um received wisdom right now and I think it's a kind of comforting truth that is often said that what Keirstarmer needs to do is just deliver.

And you know, I was thinking the other day, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to think through this sort of thought experiment of like, let's imagine Keir Starmer was to get sort of economic growth up to two or three percent. Let's say he was able to stop small boats, let's say that he was able to show sort of meaningful progress on say NHS waiting list. I think that would help.

But I don't think it would go anywhere near so far as to extinguish the threats from the anti system parties. And I think that is because there is something that has just shifted in our politics. which is that and I think you're you're starting to see Starmer recognize this in the way that he's talking about reforms racism and you're starting to see people like Wes Streeting come forward and sort of start to articulate in deep terms a kind of values, moral-based sort of version.

of kind of labour politics. Because I think as we've discussed before, you need to have the deepest clarity you have about your message and what you're for and just delivering in and of itself I don't think actually would make would at least make the whole difference in this political situation. So my answer to your question no, not my answer. This is what Downing Street would say

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd This wasn't ninety seven, when we came in and there was a booming economy and there was largesse to be had and we could throw money around. This has been a pretty grim inheritance and yeah, we've made mistakes along the way that have made things worse in terms of winter fuel payments and welfare reform measures, etcetera, etc etc.

But we're very early on in a parliament. It would be absolutely crazy to start thinking that if you just change the leader, then you erase your problems. Have we learnt nothing from what the Conservatives did? And that we've just got to keep on with the course in the hope that it to Lewis's point that we do deliver on small boats.

That we do get two percent growth, that people feel they've got more money in their pockets and that they can afford a better holiday or whatever it is in the summer. I get it, but I think that there is something else going on here, which is we often talk about the amplification on social media of the more extreme voices. In other words, so if you want to monetize on something like X, you know, you grab the I'm a complete racist with, you know, Nazi memorabilia in my cupboard.

site and you'll you'll get loads of people following you right now. There is there is a massive bias towards saying outrageous things and getting well paid for it. You know, somebody like Alex Jones has made an entire career out of it in the US. And presumably the same is true on the other side, that you get the energy, you get the excitement. from saying the things on the left, on on both fringes, that will get much more traction. So is politics just imitating social media?

This is my question. So when you talk about the the message, Lewis, and obviously I totally get that. I'm saying, yeah, we understand the importance of driving home a message, telling a message, all the rest of it. But if the message is now more important than the policies involved, because we've learnt the arc of social media, we've learnt the art of amplification through what our social media sites do.

Then actually there is no way back for the middle. No, I think that's basically correct. And I think that that is the problem. I think this is ultimately and this is kind of what I'm sort try trying to get at with the sort of delivery idea, which I can understand will be comforting for Starmer and those around Starmer. I think what I would worry about if I were them is that

Starmer precisely because of this deep anti-system feeling. Starmer, I think in lots of ways quite unfairly, but nonetheless Starmer, I think, one of the reasons he's become so disliked so quickly is that so many voters believe that in many so many senses he embodies the system. He is almost to them, and again I think it's quite unfair, but to them he almost is a sort of AI generated version of kind of what a politician looks and sounds like. And I'm not sure that he will ever be able to channel

Some of that anti system feeling which you're seeing successful left of centre kind of political actors around the world. Yeah. So everyone's gotta go round the system. That's the point. Whatever side you you are, you have to go round what

You know, what Dominic Cummings originally called the blob, right? Un you know, unfairly. But this idea that the thing in the middle is stopping normal people's lives functioning properly. Or you've got to be a politician I think who is able to, with absolute clarity and ferocity Attack those forces. Take those forces and so it is no surprise I think that you are seeing I mentioned him again, just because you are seeing Westreating coming out in the most ferocious terms on this.

And also very intriguingly in the Sunday Times, you know, telling his constituency party on Friday that Kerfilly is a Hartlepool moment. People remember that Hartlepool and by election. Because how bad the defeat in the Hartlepool by election was in twenty twenty one.

An intriguing, and you know, when I put that to him on Sunday on the RBC show, he was like, you know, we've just got to take that on the chin, take it out. I'm not sure if you can do those two things at once. But he was basically he was.

Laying down a bit of a gauntlet, right? He was basically saying there has to be some sort of gear shift change in either what we're doing or how we're approaching the politics. I mean just going back to your question though, Emily, about is our politics today imitating social media and what you have to do. I think and this is probably quaint and nostalgic and ridiculous and rose tinted of me to think like this, but when we get to a general election campaign.

And you have got say things are roughly where they are now that you've got Reform on the right, we're gonna deport people who've got indefinite leave to remain. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, and you've got Zach Polanski On the other side being the kind of you know, the figure of the left with his policy measures of what you still like might leave NATO. Might leave NATO, all the rest of it.

You're gonna have an awful lot of people who think, I'm not on social media. I'm not that person. I don't want either that or I don't want the other. But even if I'm not on social media Their impressions of politics will be shaped by the Where you know w we've just been discussing on the US edition of the news agent

You know, Zora Mandani in New York, whereas this charismatic guy. If you ask Wes if something was racist or not, he would have an answer for you in five seconds. He wouldn't have to go away and think about it for twenty four hours, which I think is is interesting. I mean, there are some very instinctive centrist politicians, like Mark Carney.

But arguably Mark Carney would not have got elected in Canada. I mean not even arguably if it hadn't been that he'd he'd taken the fight to Trump. You know, you can look at, you know, the the Scandinavian countries where there is a strong centrist you know, socialist centrist sort of power base. But honestly There are fewer nowadays, there are fewer of the kind of Obama type characters who will take on

you know, who will respond charismatically from the centre. There aren't that many. Look, I think if you're looking for some glimmers of hope in in either this poll or carefully, you could say, well look, on the poll, reform have obviously led in like well over a hundred polls now for quite a long time. It's also intriguing that there does seem to be a bit of a ceiling to their support. You know, like I remember at the start of the year

talking to reform people and they were talking about this being a year of consolidation and expansion, a year that, you know, they've got this kind of base of twenty points or so. We're gonna get up to thirty, we're gonna get up to thirty five. And if they were on thirty five consistently, you could see That's kind of like wipe out territory, right, in our bizarre system. But they're not really uh they're never really gracing thirty points or getting that close to it. Very very seldom anyway.

There does seem to be a bit of a ceiling to their support, and that might give you hope, if you're in number ten, and looking at what happened carefully, that their strategy really for six months now, and we've talked about it a lot, has been to Try and make the political contest about Farage and about reform and say basically

This the next election is gonna be a choice of whether you want Farage in pr as Prime Minister or not, right? And okay, that might have some unfortunate echoes of the Biden kind of, you know, don't compare me to the um almighty me almighty compare me to the alternative. But it worked for him, let's be honest. No, and it didn't work for him. But you can see in Cairphilly there was, you know, big tactical voting clearly.

To keep Farage out. Now, the unfortunate part of that for Labour, obviously, is it wasn't towards them, it was toward Ply. But they might hope that in enough constituencies, certainly in England and elsewhere, where Clearly Labour will still hopefully for them remain the main alternative that they can frame politics as basically an alternative between a government led by Keir Starmer or whoever is Labour leader

And one head but led by reform. And maybe I mean maybe that will work. Look, let's let our imaginations run free for a second, because the interesting thing about this poll that you mentioned at the beginning, the UGOF one, is just how close Four of those parties are to each other, right? Conservative, Labour, Greens, and the Lib Dems, three of those are on the progressive left.

So there is a world in which, you know, Labour is lending other parties their vote, but there is some kind of progressive sort of co government between the Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour. Isn't it unimaginable anymore, that scenario. I mean no, it's not unimaginable. And and but what's sort of mad of course is that, you know, if if we had anything like this

You know, going into a general election. I can feel the PR No, I know. Yeah, but like, you know not so much that we get PR, I'm just saying that like, you know I mean you know, people will be saying to us, What do you think's gonna happen? I mean, Christ knows. Trying to put that into the input machine a first pastor post. Well, in bed and wine, obviously in England it could be like five parties or so.

Scotland and Wales would be like six, seven parts like you know, sort of crazy. So it would be a complete, complete roulette wheel, spinning every kind of every kind of every every seat. We used to wait for the exit poll on election night and think, Okay, well this is gonna tell us pretty much w you know In recent in the last five or six elections it has told us pretty accurately what is going to happen. I think next time round.

If we are talking as you say in Scotland and Wales of seven party politics, I mean Good you know. The only thing I'd say is that if the Greens are on is it sixteen percent now? Sixteen percent and Zach Polansky has only been leader of the party for two months. That is an astonishing rise. If that is the beginning of his rise and yeah, they all might ceiling, there might be a a limit to that as well. But if he goes at this rate, if he carries on growing at this rate, a lot of lifting there.

Well no, I'm just saying he's only been leader of the party. He's already on the same membership as the Tories and he's one point below Labour in okay, one poll. But if he carries on for six months, he's overtaken Labour and he's overtaken the Conservatives. And then you're dealing with something that looks like reform with the Greens in second place. And that and then like yes, and then that Basically Polansky then tries to do the trick, which is a very important thing.

Farage is done to the Conservatives, which is you go round constituency after constituency and say a vote for Labour is wasted a vote for Conservatives. We've heard that so many times before it's always getting 2%. I mean, it's not their natural heartline by any stretch of the imagination, but my word, you know, 2% for this party, the sort of natural party of government.

in Britain is crazy. I mean I just think that if we're if we're heading into this world, w we're gonna have to and the media this is also a challenge for the media of how the media recalibrate. around this stuff in terms of like covering these parties and covering this different kind of tha are covering some of the different world that we're that we're heading into. I I think though, John, I think that like to take Emily's point up, it is I do think that

ultimately is that old idea, right, which is the medium is the message. And I think that any party which is going into any kind of political contest at the moment, without tailoring itself or without a leader who can be tailored in this new political world I think is gonna struggle and I think that's basically what we're seeing with Labour right now. We thought we would do that. You can't have a TikTok of somebody moving a mouse

on a mouse mat anymore. It just it's just not exciting enough. I know. I mean we thought we wanted a little less excitement after the craziness Of uh the conservative years at the end of the you know, Tory government, and yet it feels like at the moment that you've just got to be able to master the communication and be communicating nonstop about what you're doing, why you're doing it, why you're right, why the others are idiots.

And we haven't got that. I think the um worry for number ten going into the end of the year and a start of next year and there is all of this very you know, very febrile talk about, you know, whether Starmer will get even get to May. Ac yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw

is that, you know, this is probably gonna get worse before the end of the year'cause it's gonna be the budget. And the budget is gonna be a nightmare, it's clear. I mean obviously they're doing lot flying lots of kites at the moment suggesting oh it might be a two P increase in tax

It's probably just so when it doesn't happen they could say it's not as bad as as that. But it's gonna be really difficult. And there hasn't been there wasn't that much pitch rolling for it in the in the conference speech. There wasn't that much pitch rolling for it.

in Rachel Reeves' speech and I think it's gonna be very difficult for them, which is they're gonna try and do, which is to blame Brexit and to blame the Last Tory government, because for any tax rises which do happen or spending cuts, because Ultimately. Rachel Reeves a year ago said it wouldn't be necessary, and the only real conclusion for that is that something has gone wrong in the interim, which has means that it is necessary and it's gonna be very expensive.

And there's one other thing, you mentioned going to Birmingham yesterday actually. Just I actually thought about this as a little microcosm of what's to come. I was talking to someone there involved in Birmingham politics and I hadn't actually thought about it properly. But you know, there is the Birmingham with the many elections which are taking place next year, everyone talking about Wales and Scotland. All of the Birmingham uh council seats are up.

They were saying that is going to be an absolute microcosm. of national British politics because there is everything in Birmingham. There is the sort of more white reform areas, there's the kind of sort of green, more oriented sort of inner city places and all those sort of things, sort of the Gaza vote is going to be big, Lib Dem areas, Conservative Labour battles. Basically that is going to be a little microcosm.

in this first past of the post in the world. In May, yeah. For a little microcosm of what happens in constituency based contests when you have five or, you know, potentially more in some places, five, you know, very active strong parties they're all going in a first past the po system. Birmingham, the centre of politics? The centre of Britain, the centre of politics. Well tie that's Robert Generick. He never stops talking about it. He loves it. He loves it. We'll be back after the break.

The news agents. A week tonight, the people of New York are going to have their final vote. on the mayoral candidate and the runaway favourite is one Zoran Mamdani, Ugandan born Muslim socialist, who seems to have slightly set The city, and indeed much of his party, alike. We're gonna be discussing his chances and what it might mean for the Democratic Party with one of his really good mates.

On the NewsAgence USA. But we will be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player original production.