Why does Kemi Badenoch want an even smaller Tory party?

This is a Global Player original podcast. I was elected by Conservative Party members to renew and rebuild. That is exactly what I am doing. But we're not just renewing with policy, we are also renewing with standards, conduct, our discipline and our culture. And the people who don't agree with this direction need to get out of the way.

to reform, taking a quite unorthodox approach, basically saying to figures in her party's centre that she doesn't really want them. Is she right to say she won't be swayed by those centrists who may want to join her? Or is she cutting off a whole tranche of voters who just haven't made up their minds yet? Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents.

It's Emily. It's Lewis and Kemi Badenok as say she's um trying to get back on the front foot. Her party's obviously been rocked by this series of defections. We've seen Robert Jenrick, we've seen Nadim Zahawi, uh we saw Suella Bravman just this week.

And of course one approach or one response you might take to that, and some people have speculated this might be the case, is to say, okay, reform are going off to the populist right, the Conservative Party is going to be the place of the centre right, the moderate right.

And that is a sort of clear, open, vacant bit of political space which you could say kind of exists in British politics right now, what used to historically be called one nation conservatism. Kemi Bay Nock in a speech today, two Conservative members, has taken precisely the opposite approach.

She is actually said that In explicit terms that centrist ideas and we can maybe talk about what that might mean, but centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative Party, arguing that one nation type Tories or others who have qualms about her rightward direction for the party need to get out of the way. In fact she said explicitly that the party has been moving to the right every day and every week. Since she became leader.

Yeah. I mean that line interestingly was removed from the speech in its latter draft. Yeah, for time, they said. Yeah. They said for time, who knows? But I think we should try and unpack whether she is onto something here or whether she is just isolating people because she essentially I guess is fighting people on two flanks at the moment.

Or at least she would see it as a fight. She's losing Jenrik and she's losing Suela to reform. And as she said, it's not that they disagreed with any of her policies. the way she put it was like, they just wanted to be leader and it turns out that I am. To those who are defecting, who don't actually disagree with our policies, I will say

I'm sorry you didn't win the leadership contest. I'm sorry you didn't get a job in the Shadow Cabinet. I'm sorry you didn't get into the Lords, but you are not offering a plan to fix this country. This is a tantrum dressed up as politics. So she's kind of waved them goodbye. Off you go, you have your temper tantrum somewhere else.

But she's also facing a sort of newer reformatted group, which had its inaugural reception last week, which is A movement called Prosper. And they are names of the One Nation Tory Party from the past, frankly. They are Ruth Davison, they are Andy Street, they are Amber Rudd, either former leaders, former mayors, Former MPs, former cabinet and they have come together essentially to reinvigorate centrism within their party, believing that millions of moderate voters who might be conservative,

Are now looking for a home. And I think what's really interesting is that just as they sort of put their heads above the parapet and said, you know, Kemi, we're trying to help you. We're in the business of helping conservatism. We want to breathe new life into the centre of conservatism. Kemmie's gone, No, shut up. I don't need you.

And I guess the point is she doesn't dare give ground to reform on anything that might be construed as a weakening of her position on immigration. So is she right to say centrist? Back off, back down, get out of my way. When so many of the seats at the last election

to the Conservatives but went instead to the Lib Dems. Well I think she's wrong to say it and she could have been right to sort of act as if she were saying it. And what I mean by that is this, look, if you're a party, I think one of the big stories of British politics over the last fifteen years.

Has basically been we're supposed to have a two party system. First past the post kind of funnels voters into two of the big parties. That's how it's worked historically, anyway. And in order to be the Labour and the Conservatives want to be the main two parties.

So in our system what that means is is you have to be big tents. You have to have big, broad coalitions. And historically speaking, certainly for the post war period, much of the post war period, that was true. You know, the Labour Party had Jeremy Corbyn. Blair never tried to get rid of him. Conservative Party had people all the way in recent years from say David Cork to the Cork to the left, Jacob Rees Mogg to the right. They all existed within within the same party.

One of the stories of the last ten years or so has been that these two parties, in their own different ways, have become narrower, more sect like, more doctrinaire, more dogmatic. And the net result of that has been that they've become less popular. And then they are both often surprised and express surprise that they have become less popular. The reason is is because you're basically telling lots. of voters not to vote for.

That's what they're basically saying. It's happened with the Labour Party with the left. For example, I I I sort of lose count sometimes. of t the number of sort of people on the Labour right, for example, who basically say they don't want left wing votes or they don't want these as very left wing policies, but then get really angry with say people who are going to the Greens or whoever it happens to be because they say, you're gonna split the vote.

Well you can't have it both ways, right? Either you represent all strands of left opinion, or in the Conservative case right opinion, or somebody is gonna represent those voters for you. I think the danger for Kemi Badenok look I think she is right to say. that much of the energy on the right of politics, in fact on politics generally right now, is on

The right, rather than the centre right. I haven't heard lots of convincing kind of diagnosis or prescriptions from the centre of the Conservative Party. as to the problems with Britain and what they're going to do about it. The problem is so it's all very it's fine in a sense to sort of focus your efforts on those things.

But you don't need to explicitly tell centrist voters not to vote for us or vote for you. Because in that case you'll get the you're as you hint at Emily, basically what you're doing is opening a big, big space open for, say, the Liberal Democrats.

To represent them for you? I don't think she's talking to voters. And I think But voters could hear it. Of course. But I think what she's doing, funnily enough, or what those around her are acknowledging is She's playing to her strength of dogmatism, and there is something about her demeanour. She's very straight talking. She's always enjoyed being straight talking. Her problem actually in the past has often been that her first line on a policy was great.

And then as soon as you prod it and you go, Well what does that mean? Well help me unpack that. Well, what are you saying about maternity leave? Or what are you saying about cultures that you don't agree with? She has nowhere to go. And I think what they've done is they've allowed her to sound strong. There is probably less to this, weirdly, than the sort of physical importance of its delivery. I was speaking to somebody in her team who said the Conservative Party under her leadership

Is not diverted one way or the other by reform or any other narrative, it's more about her retaining the direction she's set out. The right stroke center narrative is one crafted by commentators, not her. And so I wonder if they're just giving her space to sound Strong about something in a week when she might be buffeted by the Amber Ruds, she might be buffeted by the Suellas, and she's got to remind people that she does have a message and a place.

And presumably there will be people who don't actually sit there questioning whether they are centrists or whether they might be centrists who just go, Oh, I like her, she sounded strong. Oh that sounded credible, oh she sounded competent. And if you're just going for those kind of adjectives, You're not I mean most people frankly are not ideological in the country. Most people don't sit there kind of working out where they are on the left or right.

sort of PH value system. They just kinda go, Oh, I liked her she spoke well or she sounded competent or she knows her mind. Maybe that's what they're playing for at this point. Perhaps but I think you know you can also say, look, I think Baynock's dogmatism

Clearly is a strength. It's also I think a profound weakness. Because you have to be a supple politician. If you're gonna build a coalition that can win an election, which needs to be let's at the very minimum thirty to thirty five percent plus.

You need to expand And how how far that has come down? Yeah, you need to expand. When Badenock, I mean let's not forget, when Badenock became leader, the party was polling in the mid-20s, was winning council by election. Like that's no longer the case. So she's got to expand. Her job is to expand the coalition. And so although I think I I think ideologically, she is right to say that much as I say, the energy of

politics on at least on her part of the spectrum is on the populist right. I can see why she wouldn't want to cede all of that ground to reform. But likewise, politics sometimes is about sending signals about who you are, even if it's not who you are. So for example, David Cameron was always way more right wing than him.

I mean David Cameron was an unreconstructed neo Thatcherite, certainly in economic terms, right? But when he becomes leader, He sends off, you know, he's sort of doing press conferences where he's handing out smoothies and he's, you know, doing the famous la going up to the Arctic and being seen

Suggests that he cares about climate change because he's in the Arctic, or the hug-a-hoodie thing, which he never really said, but it was a speech that kind of became associated with him. It sort of denoted a turn to a Sort of compassionate conservatism. But of course, as we know when he got into office, he was dry as dust economic.

And that's what I mean. I mean there was a greater awareness in the past that at the very least you had to send signals to the voters that you are alive to the fact that, you know, when you're constructing a political party, you're not building a sect, you're building a broad coalition. So I do think that, you know, Baidanock's insistence

on ideological coherence is a curious thing to do precisely at the moment precisely at the moment when space is opening up for her. So for example at the moment we talked earlier in the week, Emily, what is the difference between the Conservative Party and and Reform right now. She's actually there is a world where politically she could actually try and make a difference. What she's doing is insisting

I'm not sure that's right. I think the Well can I read you a bit of the speech? Let me just say she said this. A party that wants stronger borders and has done the work to leave the ECHR. A party that wants to stop bankrupting our country by deindustrializing and destroying manufacturing under the guise of net zero. We've done the work.

and will repeal the Climate Change Act. We're a party that will stop our country's welfare addiction. This is a party people that wants to get on in life, we've done their work and have made a fully funded plan to scrap stamp duty. Which bit of that would for our disagree with. Well, I think uh interestingly enough, the welfare addiction is a really interesting place because she wants to gain Conservative, traditional conservative economics.

against a party who as we know is very conflicted on whether they are fiscally to the left or fiscally to the right. I mean immigration is centre stage for Farage. But I don't think he's worked out whether he wants to be a big state in a sort of Trumpian way, you know, or whether he wants to be

conservative small state and bring down taxes. I think that is a very important thing. Well we all kind of know what he thinks deep down. I mean the the party is subtly confused. I think we all know what Farage is a very important thing. Well Farage wants to be the leader of the Conservative Party. I mean ideally he'd like to be the you know A conservative prime minister, and this is his way round. But that actually takes us on to an interesting question, which is has everything moved?

to the right a bit. And you invoked David Cameron. And obviously if you think back to the austerity years, now tempered But look, you know, he still brought in an austerity agenda. He still brought in a bedroom tax, which was pretty horrific. He still brought in cuts to disability allowance. He was pretty right wing. And I think if he were back here now, presumably He would be much closer to

to the sort of generic position on immigration. Absolutely. Everything has shifted in a way. So I don't know whether she is giving up in policy terms, anything particular on the sort of centre, centre left. Well I don't think Cameron the difference I agree, I mean as I said myself, I think that Cameron was a far more right wing figure than the kind of vibes he emitted and the press that he created suggested.

Well I think so I think you're absolutely right. I think a young David Cameron today would absolutely be sensing where the kind of

political winds were g blowing and where the politics of the Conservative Party were, and he would place himself exactly in the middle of it. But I don't think he would have given a speech like that. I don't think he would have said in explicit terms to the party's centrists and then that can be read therefore to the more centrist voters at large, or, you know, people who maybe centre right but are a bit concerned about kind of the populist right.

Basically, we're not the party for you. That is a weird thing to say. But I think this all comes down to personality. That's exactly my point. And I mean both Cameron and Blair, and obviously Cameron was frequently called the heir to Blair, were about this sort of big Sort of public hug in a way. Come in. We will make you feel great. The sunlit uplands, a way you'll feel great. If you look at Farage now, and somebody recently said,

he's managed to make populism sound unpopular. It's quite hard now, the language coming out of Farage's mouth. It's not particularly welcoming, it's not warm, it's not cuddly, and I think Kemi is almost Sort of imitating some of that.

This is who I am. You need to come to me. I'm not going to start coming towards you. Yeah, it's a social media age thing as well. It's a kind of like the idea of being authentic is rather than being nebulay. Although Farage, I suppose my point is that you know Farage, I mean you mentioned the welfare stuff.

I have no doubt at all. Farage doesn't really he definitely doesn't want to spend more money on welfare. But you're right, they've been making those noises and sounding more statist. But why have they been doing that? They've been doing that precisely because they know as well. They've got to broaden their coalition.

You know, it's all very well being your authentic self, but in which case you should just be a party of one and you just have to be a little bit more than a little bit reform is an invention, don't forget. So reform is an invention about not being like other political parties. Therefore you're starting with an absolute clean slate. And what is on it? People hate immigration that's too high and then you're making up the rest as you go along. That's what we see from

from Farage the whole time. I mean he's kind of making up the economic policy as he goes because He's got loads of people Redwool Labour voters that have now come over to reform because their standard of living isn't going anywhere. are not going to want to see cuts to welfare particularly. Oh for sure. But exactly but they are trying to broaden the appeal and bringing new voters to the tent. Whereas what I I find curious about Baden Arku

You know, speeches are wars. I mean, I read the speech and you know, there were some really interesting there are some interesting parts of it and she's clearly thinking about politics, you know, conceptually, but I don't understand. A strategy which actively tries to alienate voters who not so long ago were part of your coalition and you still have MPs who let's not forget, she's now down to what, hundred and fifteen MPs? I mean, what does she want?

Small centre left MPs to to go another one? Yeah, yeah. I mean how how small do you have to get before you get the ideological coherence that that you want, right? And I think again though, it kind of goes back to the discussion we had on

on Monday. I mean uh you're absolutely right. There will be differences particularly on welfare and kind of the role of the s of the state, I think. But again, this schism on the right feels just increasingly more than anything else, more and more personal. If Baynock is saying basically My agenda is not so far from Farage's or or very similar. You know, my project is one of the right.

And Faraji's project is self evidently a project of the right, then it makes the whole schism even less explicable than it was before. At this point, if Keir Starmer and the Labour Party just say Come on in. We will find a broad church. We will find a temple. We want all ideas. We want every idea and we want all the experience. Yeah. I don't think that the prosper team are about to join Labour, but they're not being made to feel very welcome in the Conservatives right now.

In a moment, is the US gearing up for military intervention in Iran? And what would that look like with Trump's so-called beautiful armada? With a ward win. Okay, under random. American week is next. Reporting from the heart of Life. or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation. The news agents. And by the way, there's another beautiful armada floating beautifully toward Iran right now. So we'll see. I hope I hope they make it deal.

I hope they make a deal. They should have made a deal the first time. Trump is talking about a possible US attack with his beautiful armada, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is stationed in waters now, which would make it possible for it to attack.

Tehran. And if you think that this is about coming in to save democracy, if you think this is about America trying to be the world's policeman in a place that is going through the seeds of revolution or counter revolution, the uprising of protesters against the regime. Then many people inside the country are actually much more clear sighted, much more sceptical about what Trump intends to do because he spelled out Today, and in recent days

That this is still about a deal. This is still about a deal with the Iranian administration. This is a deal that would see Iran cleaned, cleansed of its nuclear capabilities. And so protesters now are really confused because they are dying in their thousands. We know that the death toll sits somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand in the last few weeks. This is based on UN and external projections. And the protesters are desperate to see someone, somewhere, take action against their regime.

But his trump's Beautiful Armada, gain to deliver them that freedom, not so sure. Meanwhile there are continued crackdowns on dissents, continued examples of murder from the authorities, reports just in the last twenty four hours of a nineteen year old Influencer being shot dead by security forces and there continues to be of course an internet blackout which has prevented Iranians from telling the rest of the world.

in the main what is going on. Nonetheless, as these crackdowns really extraordinary report bit reporting from the FT um today on this, as these crackdowns have continued and got worse and public shows of dissent or displays of dissent on the streets have become less and less possible. Iran is being gripped by all its social media internally, is being flooded by Iranian families showing pictures and videos of

Funerals of protesters and they're doing something that you might not imagine. Families and friends dancing, clapping, clapping at the funerals as music blares all around them. Just listen to a bit of this. So dancing at funerals, the F T says not unprecedented in Iran, but nonetheless this recent trend is going further.

clearly as an act of defiance against the theocracy. Women dancing, when it's been banned previously expressions of grief and joy, festive funerals are basically being transformed

Into an act of resistance, which tells you something about the feeling in Iran right now. Yeah, and we've been talking to people in the diaspora and some who have given us their contacts, friends, family on the streets of Iran and trying to paint a picture of of what that is like right now and of course When Trump tweeted, posted what, nearly two weeks ago, that help was on the way, many people took that as a sign that they

could go out and protest. They were emboldened to actually head to the streets because for that glimpse, for that moment, they thought it meant liberation is on the way. They thought that if they went into the street The opposite was true and there is an eye hospital, the Farabi Eye Hospital, that has treated a thousand eyes, we hear in the last ten days for pellet wounds. seventeen people at least shot in both eyes. In other words, they are trying to blind people, they are trying to

scare people who are in the crowds and at some points they are just shooting point blank with rubber. I I think the the fact I was told last night was the ratio of rubber to real bullets used to be four to one and now it's more like one to two. In other words, they're not even pretending that they're just trying to disperse the crowds. They are trying to shoot people dead within them. And so you have people who might have been in two minds about what

Trump what America what intervention looked like two weeks ago. But now they're saying, well, we need something, right? Is Trump and the the US Abraham Lincoln, the Almada, is that the only thing on offer now? And does anyone believe that what looked like the beginning of an overthrow of Hermane at the beginning of this year looked like that was possible, it was in the grass. Doesn't look like that at all.

The army is clearly still on the administration's side. The protesters have been shot to death. There are people, as you say, still going out, still trying to look as if they have protests within them, even at the funerals of their loved ones. But I think the sense of whether we're about to see the overthrow that I mean y you were talking about here on the news agents two weeks ago look

Really just in there. Well, one person that we've been in touch with is Negin Shirai. She's a former journalist, she is an activist. She is joining us from a country which is not Iran and it's not even the UK because the Iranian administration has been targeting both her and her family. Negin, thank you for joining us. Can we start with the news that's coming out of the US right now?

Donald Trump telling us that a massive armada is heading to Iran and warning us that time is running out. When you hear that, Do you feel relief or or concern with what may be about to happen? I feel big concern because um when you read what he wrote it's There's like underlying, you know, between the line, there is a message to the Iranian government. And that's what scares me most more than anything, which is

His aim at the end is uh making a nuclear deal, making sure that he's getting what he wants. And that has nothing to do with the massacre that's happening inside the country and the people. dying and especially now, a lot of people have been arrested and we don't know what happens to them in the prison and we're really worried about that. So this is contrary to what he the message he was putting out there at the beginning of these protests.

that you know, after the first ten days he was saying, If there is any death on the streets, I'm gonna attack. Then that changed to if there's any execution, I will attack. And then now it's changing to uh if there is no nuclear deal I will show you. So I think

When you look at his uh patterns and what he does, at the end it's not about the democracy and it's not about the people of Iran, and everyone knows that. But also I think for for people inside the country, There is a still a glimmer of hope that some sort of help should come from outside to help them to stop the killing.

But would it be effective even if there is an attack by Donald Trump and uh, you know, Islamic Republic doesn't come to the table? I really don't know. I feel I have a feeling that Islamic Republic there's two scenarios here. Either they're gonna continue until there's no opposition left in the country, they're gonna continue killing, they're gonna continue the arrest. That has been their pattern for for the last three weeks, or there's gonna be an attack where US in one way or form.

If that attack is successful, which is really a big if, then we would have a Iran which is in conflict. So I don't think he would be successful in toppling the government with one attack. Then at the same time, if it's a full-on war, which we don't see it happening yet with the you know, the armies that is in the Middle East and all of that. I think then it leads to a lot of infighting and a lot of other players inside the country trying to gain power. So it's um it's a scary time.

Do we think that in terms of an attack on Iran, obviously lots of Iranians have been asking Trump to do it and it's something that seems to be growing in appetite as well on on the American right within the Re Republican Party. And yet at the same time he also says maybe we can reach a deal. That's quite confusing, isn't it? Because either it's about Iranian freedom, democracy, the regime ending

or it's about some sort of geopolitical arrangements between the Iranians and the Americans. Are you clear in your mind what this Amada is for? I I'm clear. I think it's it's for the geopolitical reasons and it's for oil. And it's for China, because China has a lot of influence inside Iraq. They have this massive deal with the Iranian um government that they that they're selling the sanctioned oil really cheap to the Chinese. And this contract was gonna last until twenty Uh forty five.

And there's a growing influence that because of the sanctions, Iran became even more close to China. It was close to China, but now it's like this. massive collaboration. So that's one part of it. Then for Donald Trump, when was it about people or democracy? I don't I don't believe for a moment that Trump is after democracy. And he's been really clear in that messaging. in all of his attitudes inside the US and outside the US. So

I don't think anyone is fooled. Even my mom, who's eighty years old in Iran and lives under this regime and is really angry at the regime, she understands and she told me that she doesn't believe Trump is after democracy or or thinking about them. But the feeling is we're helpless here. There is no help coming from anywhere and this government is trying to kill us.

And there is no shame in that for them, and they will continue until a until there is no opposition inside. So if there is someone, even a bully. who doesn't care about us and might, you know, do something that uh as a side effect we would benefit of it.

Then let them do that. I think that's the feeling of a lot of people inside the country. I won't argue the same for the people who are outside. We've seen a lot of protests that are asking for Trump to attack, and it's a Far right. fraction of the Iranian society, especially in diaspora, which has a different mindset in in in mind of what they want. They want to implement the monarchy in place of the Islamic Republic.

So their mandate is different. But I think the message that's coming from inside the country is more out of frustration of international community who's been watching this massacre happening in the country. and doing nothing about it. Imagine their their their infants who's been killed on the street by shotguns. There are people uh who's been on a in a hospital bed with um, you know, the hospital equipment is still attached to them, who's been shot in the head. So, sorry.

It's where you see that in your life on a daily basis. You would react to that, you would you would cling to anything that is out there that might be able to help you. So you don't think I mean listening to you Negan, you don't think that Trump wants regime change, you don't think he's going to topple the Ayatollah. And you don't think that there is help coming from any other source, is that right? I mean are you basically saying The Iranian people can't win this one on their own. Yes, so

I've been a journalist for more than 20 years. I've been a journalist inside Iran. I've been I've worked outside as well. I worked with a lot of

activists in different parts of the world, in Myanmar, in Sudan. So I know how the authoritarian regimes work and especially the mindset of the Islamic Republic. They're in that last leg of survival for them it's a moment that they have to cling to power and that's why we see even the reformists who always try to keep their face and saying, Oh, you know, where there is

uh we would be more modern and, you know, try to open up the country, they're saying the killing is justified and they have to kill people. So we are in this existential moment for the Islamic Republic. people know and have that feeling inside the country that no one is uh that that it belonged to that government would defect at this moment. So there's no defection. They're gonna continue fighting until the end.

And for Trump, it was obvious even from the beginning that for him it's about what he can gain from ev any given situation, for him, for himself and for the US. So in that scenario, there is nothing for him to gain from a democratic Iran. There is a lot of things to gain. Keeping the you know, as they c y they used to call it in foreign policy, containment of the Middle East.

So making sure that the flow of the oil continues, making sure the players in that region are playing the hands that he wants. And then at the end benefiting from that. That's the end of it. No it doesn't matter how many are people are killed on the street. It doesn't matter what the people are demanding. And we've seen in the Iranian history for the last hundred and fifty years more than that.

Iranian people over and over again, every time they try to do a democratic transition in their own country, it's been a stop by the foreign forces. It's a case of our country that we are in a really good geopolitical situation, that everyone has an interest in it. We are really rich on oil and minerals.

So it's a country that has been in a battleground of of powerful forces. It was powerful once, it lost the power, and then now it's always been uh you know divided between the sources. We've never been colonized. But it's a country that during the World War has been run by other countries. We've been divided between Russia and and at some point. We had, you know, the coup against our elected uh prime minister.

Most at that there. So it's been the trend over and over again and unfortunately what I see at this moment in history is is the history is repeating itself.

of and there's been much speculation about this, do you have much sense of what the death toll might now have been, now this has been going on for some weeks. And also, obviously there's been a lot of hope and speculation that maybe this would finally be The set of protests that would lead to the collapse of the Ayotollers regime. Given this has now been going on for some weeks, do we think that those hopes have been far-fetched?

So the death toll the UN special rapporteur talked about the twenty thousand people dead. The human rights organisations are starting to, you know, documenting more, but it's really difficult because of the internet shutdown and the remote places that the deaths are happening. So for example, yesterday there was a news came out that one of the organizations could confirm and, you know, say this is correct. In this village that none of us heard the name before, there was like two people

shot down couple of days ago by checkpoints. You know, they were stopped at a checkpoint. Their mobile phone was checked. They were released and ten meters later they were like shot down by the police forces. There's a crazy frenzy of killing happening in the country is still ongoing. So I would argue that we would see the rise of the numbers because of the how widespread the protests were.

How many are happening already now on the ground? And also the fact that a lot of people who've been wounded. are scared to go to the hospitals because they've been killed in the hospital. as injured people and because they can get arrested and then the body is returned to the family in a couple of days later. So there's a lot of infections going around and people are in the homes. I would argue that the dissent hasn't happened.

That has been one of the biggest factors that happened in 1979. So there were like the police forces stopped. collaborating with the government. The right now the situation is that the security forces are so embedded within the Iranian regime mindset and indoctrinated into that. that I don't see the descent necessarily happening at this moment and we've seen it. The other part of it, I would argue, is that the opposition is not organized enough, the democratic opposition is not organized enough.

So the only opposition that is organized at the moment, and we hear the name is Pahlabi and the monarchist, which is the far right values and their manifesto. has been read by people inside the country, especially Labour activists, students who are the ones who are driving the protests and out of civil society in Iran for years. B they they're they haven't bought into that. They believe it's another form of dictatorship in place so

Even if right now anything happens, I think there would be a fight against if monarchy come into place from inside the country. The minority groups, the different groups. So there is also this grey area of a society that hasn't decided they want they they know we know based on the uh statistic that is coming from Iran that they are pro democracy. They don't have a representation.

And I think that's the biggest challenge. If we manage to get that in place, there are efforts in the civil society, outside Iran, we are part of it. Which we are trying to create a two years transition for the Iranian people, what happens in within these two years, how the uh transitional justice processes will start, how the constitutional assembly would start.

But this kind of activities needs international support. It cannot be done in vacuum. It needs money, it needs budget a lot of budgets and supports from international community. So until th there is infrastructure like that. I don't think that dissent would happen. I don't think there's enough power inside the country to go against this massive killing because people thought in this round that if they go to the streets en masse.

In millions, especially because Trump said if there is a killing, I would attack. They thought this time the government wouldn't kill them. And they killed them and nothing has happened. So in that situation, I would feel in the short term the people would go through to depression. There's a lot of anger on the ground. But what happens after there is a there is another element missing at this moment. How that can happen I really

Have no clue at this moment. Negan Shiragi, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Negan. Thank you.

The news agents. It's pretty unusual. But nobody knows when they saw the gun, how they saw the gun, everything else. Uh the bottom line it was terrible. Both of'em were terrible. The other was terrible too. And I'm not sure about his parents, but I know her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway. But I mean, I guess you could say even worse they were tremendous Trump people, Trum Trump fans and, you know, the daughter was uh she was

I don't know if it you could say radicalized, maybe radicalized, maybe not. I don't know. But I hate to see it. I hate to see that. So that is President Trump weighing in, giving his assessment on the killing of Rennie Good and of Alex Pressi. And even for Trump, uh you've got to say it's pretty grotesque.

Grotesque, basically saying that he feels worse about one than the other, precisely because in his view, I don't know where he's got this from, but the parents of one were Trump supporters and the others were not. Yeah, and he was commenting on both the deaths. and his take on Alex Pritty, with whom he doesn't, as we've heard, have as much sympathy. He was the ICU nurse, was that he was essentially a fool to be carrying a gun. Now, to put this in context,

Minnesota is an open carry state. He was carrying a gun, I think concealed carry, which is allowed. He had a gun license. And the Second Amendment allows you to take a gun with you. Yes, even to a protest. Now it's a weird place for us this, isn't it, to be sort of trying to unpick the row that is unfolding. Because I would say that most Brits are not big fans of

Second Amendment rights. We are not big fans of weaponry on the streets of any city and yet here is the NRA trying to defend citizens who were carrying guns because it is a constitutional right. against a president who has always been very friendly to the NRA, who is now making citizens who carry guns legally

feel like they were doing wrong. And so you've got this very interesting juxtaposition now, haven't you? Where you've got gun lobbies that not just the NRA, but lots of, you know, guns for American people, lots of these different sort of lobby groups.

saying, why is he having a go at ordinary American citizens? But they don't really want to back left-wing demonstrators, so they end up sort of attacking Tim Wals and saying, Oh, it's the governor's fault for allowing the protests and there shouldn't have been these protests in the first place. But if there are going to be protests, Then they should be allowed to carry guns. It puts us in all of us I think in a kind of slightly weird headspace.

Sort of we're the ones going well. He had the right to have to bear to to bear arms and maybe exposes us. Do I think actually, Alex Presley or anybody, having been to them and seen how high the tensions are running there, do I think it's a good idea that anyone takes guns? No, I don't. That isn't excatory of what happened, that doesn't excuse what happened, but

I just don't think in any protest or anything like that. Just in the same way that I don't think, you know, all of those people who took guns on the January the sixth riot That that was a very good idea either, and I think we would have been hearing imagine if the Biden administration or the Capitol Police

attacked and then shot on sight anybody who was carrying a gun during January the sixth, I think we'd have heard quite a different tone and different analysis from Trump and others if that had taken place. falling for it by having a discussion about something completely tangential to the one that we should be having, which is the murdering of US citizens on the streets by federal ICE agents. In other words We should be talking about the process.

Or lack of process, we should be talking about why there isn't a judicial investigation, we should be talking about why there isn't a criminal investigation into either of those deaths.

But yeah, yeah. Second Amendment rights chat, which is sort of vintage Trump, you know, he's managed once again to sort of make you turn the page and go off down this rabbit hole.

So that nobody's chasing what on earth ICE were doing on the streets of Minneapolis for the last three weeks. Well frankly, just going back to that first clip of Trump saying that he's more bothered about one than than the other because of their political affiliation. I mean there's only two explanations for that. Either he knows it's grotesque.

and he's literally seeking to troll the families and everybody, which is grotesque if not psychopathic. Or he's been so grotesque for that long and he's been so sort of adult and pickled in that particular type of politics for that long that he doesn't even know it's grotesque, in which case it's basically a form of psychopathy. You know, this is the president of the United States and again we just get so inured to it.

But honestly, I mean there've been plenty of people talking about his decline in mental acuity. I mean it's so hard to tell with Trump'cause he's always said things like this, but just listening to that now and the fact that barely causes a ripple and we sh shrug our shoulders, that's the grotesque. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Production.