Do you blame Thatcher and Brexit for the UK's problems? | James O'Brien - The Whole Show

It's four minutes after ten and you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I don't know whether I'm drawn to the idea of things being quite simple or repelled by it

I mean, would I be sort of talking myself out of a job? If fixing all of the things that are wrong with this country and indeed celebrating all the things that are right

was a relatively straightforward business? I mean, if it was a medical diagnosis, you know, and you had to spend two minutes in the GP's chair

even if you'd spent the previous 40 years diagnosing yourself by looking up things on the internet

and getting absolutely terrified of what the cause may be. I've got two slightly strange thoughts in my head at the moment

The first is the way in which our thoughts about things are controlled

I don't mean that in a kind of mind-melding way. But I just mean that in a sort of the things that we think are important

How do you decide what's important about politics in particular or even the sort of country in general

How do you decide what is important? Because I can tell you, even the Daily Telegraph online is reporting this morning that small boats arrivals in June, July and August were the lowest for six years

almost ironic that that statistic should drop on the day that Keir Starmer decides to quit

parliament altogether or at least on the day that Keir Starmer announces he has decided to quit

parliament altogether because I mean obviously on this show we tend to be a little bit above such

sad behavior but it was possible not that long ago to talk of little else wasn't it you could

turn your radio on and it was all you would ever hear. You could turn to the array of front pages

in your newspapers or even some BBC bulletins and small boats, small boats, small boats. You could

have been forgiven for thinking that the relatively negligible contribution to overall migration

figures was the single most important issue facing the entire nation. Nigel Farage could

speak of little else unless somebody brown has committed a crime, in which case you can't wait

to poor metaphorical petrol upon the flames of unhappiness. But why now is no one talking..

Well, we know now why no one is talking about it, because the numbers have come... Why aren't they all celebrating in the streets

Why is there not some sort of farewell party? Why aren't we having a whip round for Keir Starmer

If this was really... And, of course, you're perfectly entitled to say, oh, well, they're still too high

and, you know, you're perfectly entitled to hold that view, but you can't really argue with gravity

You can't argue with the fact that what you want is happening, they are coming down. It's almost as if the people who

encourage you to think that this was the most important thing going on in the country don't really care about

it at all. Politicians, pundits, commentators, presenters. Because if they really cared

about it, why would it fall to me who genuinely doesn't spend much

time talking about this, because even if it dropped to zero tomorrow, it would not improve

the cost of living crisis, or get you seen in a hospital any sooner, or

get your daughter moving faster up the housing list or whatever it is you're concerned about most

at the moment. Even if it were to be reduced to zero

your life would not improve measurably. Why? All the people who've been

wanging on about it forever, why aren't they wanging on about it now that the news is

you know, technically good? That's bizarre, right? Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that. It's not particularly

relevant to the... Well, I suppose it is in a way relevant to the conversation that we're

going to have this morning. But answers on a postcard, please. Why are the people who

have been obsessed with small boats for, it seems, ever, not talking at all about the

fact that the numbers are the lowest that they've been for six years? I can't even remember

who was Prime Minister six years ago. It was probably Boris Johnson, was it? Anyway, it

must have been Boris Johnson, because of course he introduced most of the rules that meant people couldn't come here safely and legally, which meant they had to start trying to get

here in risking their lives in dinghies and crossing the English Channel. So there it is

Eight minutes after 10 is the time. The speech that Andy Burnham gave yesterday

the second thought I've got in my head is that I don't think he actually mentioned Margaret Thatcher

I think he talked about the 80s and should perhaps have talked about privatization as

having been part of a series of wrong turns undertaken by the entire country over the last

40 years. And remember, he served in governments. He served in at least one government

during that time. 16 years ago, last time he spoke from the dispatch box

he was a minister in Tony Blair's government. But I don't know, I've

just got this sense of scale. Do you see what I mean? This sense

of scale. And Keir Starmer was a technocrat, right? Love him or loathe him

or, I mean, quite hard to do either, actually. I think most people probably fall somewhere between those

two stools. He was a tinkerer and a technocrat. Some of the stuff that he tinkered with

was for the good of the nation. Some of the stuff that he

approached with a technocratic attitude, he approached very successfully. History may judge him a little bit more kindly

than most people are doing this morning. I don't know. I think this

decision to leave in the way that he's left is a very bad look. I think it makes him look at the

very best petulant, and at the very worst, almost fraudulent. Someone who, you know, just waltzes

away and takes his ball home. the minute things don't go his own way. He hasn't been in Parliament for, what, is it 11 years or something like that

There's loads of work to do. Brilliant constituency MP. Hang in there like James Callaghan, Jim Callaghan

I don't know. Anyway, that's not the conversation that we're having. I look at the, I listened to the speech yesterday

and I thought, what if he's right? What if it's actually a lot simpler than we usually allow

I am allergic, usually, to simple answers to complicated questions. But what if the answer, what if the question isn't actually that complicated

Why has Britain been in a period of low growth for the last decade

Answer, all the money that is being generated by many of the biggest organisations in the land

is going into the hands of the owning classes and shareholders. And Brexit is just white billions of pounds off our balance sheet

billions of pounds of trade, just waved goodbye to because Nigel Farage wanted to be famous

and Boris Johnson wanted to be Prime Minister and I think that's probably it

It's not going to be a very long book when it comes to be written. Why did it happen? Why did these men do what they did

Answer, vanity. Vanity and greed, I think. It really is that simple

There'd be some ideologues in there. Sir Bill Cash, for example, believed passionately in disassociating the United Kingdom

from the rest of the European Union for reasons that were not selfish or personal or sadly valid

But we are where we are. An absolute mess. So, is it possible that he's just got it absolutely correct

I'd quite like a few no's today, with your permission. No, he blimey hasn't. 03456060973

But have a little listen. Have a little listen to what he had to say in the House of Commons yesterday From the 1980s this country took a series of wrong turns Political power was centralised

Economic power privatised. The country de-industrialised. Austerity followed, hollowing out councils

and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this

and then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration

Change begins with honesty, Mr Speaker. I'm not hearing much of it this afternoon

Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we won't turn things around

Far from taking back control, the combination of these policies took control out of the hands of communities up and down Britain

Are you going to hear that again, but not immediately? I'm just thinking out loud now. You've got what? Starmer obviously disappearing into the rearview mirror. Spent a lot of time appeasing and accommodating positions that were just wrong. So saying we would never reverse Brexit in my lifetime. What a silly thing to say. I probably was not as caustic at the time as I should have been

and being accommodating or appeasing to the racist marches being led through the streets of our city

by people who don't live here and spend their lives online telling lies about our capital

Just moving the dial on issues like immigration closer to the racists and the liars

A simple and straightforward diagnosis of what has gone wrong in this country over 40 years

So you have 30 years of, and remember, he was in Tony Blair's government, so he can't be writing the whole thing off, can he

But the idea that we prioritized the profits of business, you remember Peter Mandelson telling us he was supremely comfortable with the idea of people being extraordinarily rich

and simultaneously watching the standard of living for ordinary people go down

and then trying to work out what has happened in the sense of a national malaise

a national sense of, what's the word that I'm looking for, decline

Things could be better than this. What are you going to point at

I mean, you might want to argue things aren't quite as bad as Andy Burnham would attest

but unless they're blaming immigrants, nobody on the right seems to have any diagnosis whatsoever

It's all the fault of woke snowflakes and immigrants. What is? What is

So, I'll play you that again, and then I'll play you Cammy Badenot's response

which is clever, sadly, I mean, in the nature of the British media, by saying, God, you're still blaming Thatcher for things

I mean, it leaves the door open for lazy critiques. You know, what if Thatcher is the reason why

the industrial manufacturing base in this country was completely destroyed from 1979 onwards

What if Margaret Thatcher's policies are the reason why huge swathes of Yorkshire, the former coalfields

the former steelworks, huge swathes of North Wales, huge swathes of the North East

We were talking last week about the parlous condition of a town like Middlesbrough and what it has been brought to by economic, if you like, conditions

What if it does all track back? It seems a bit lazy, maybe, doesn't it

But it doesn't mean it's wrong. There might be other things going on as well

The idea that you take a utility, you take a monopoly, you take a necessity

I love that word. You take a necessity, a national necessity. Don't think we use that word enough

like energy, like water, like transport, a national necessity, a thing that we cannot function without

The things that you can't put hotels on, on the monopoly board

the railway stations, the electricity companies, the water companies, the prison. You need to listen to yesterday's show

The prison bit is a red herring. But you see what I mean? The stuff you can't put hotels on

the national necessities, the utilities, the infrastructure, and you flog them and you flog them

and you give them to return for large sums of money which in the short term are spent on the country

you give them to people who are only buying them because they know they're going to make more money out of them

over the decades than they are going to have to pay for them at the point of purchase

and then you talk about low growth I don't know, I'm not a fan of symbolism

but I am, I think a fan of Andy Burnham and of this ysis

So let's listen to it once more. From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns

Political power was centralised. Economic power privatised. The country de-industrialised

Austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this

And then Brexit compounded the damage. ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration

Change begins with honesty, Mr Speaker. I'm not hearing much of it this afternoon

Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we won't turn things around

Far from taking back control, the combination of these policies took control

out of the hands of communities up and down Britain. I haven't got the history to comment on some of that

but I can pick up on de-industrialised. Did we really have any option? You can pick up on austerity

the idea that the global financial crisis of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton

And I'm not unfamiliar with Brexit. Let's hear how Cami Bader not responded

The year is 2026. Yet the Prime Minister said in his statement

that everything has gone wrong since the 1980s, still complaining about Margaret Thatcher

I am 46. Mr Speaker, I'm 46 years old. I may not look it, but I'm 46 years old

He is talking about a woman who became prime minister before I was born

He is living in the past and he wants to take us back to the 1970s on this side of the house

We are for the future. I mean, if he's critiquing 40 years of politics, he's also, of course, critiquing Tony Blair and John Major, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and even, I would argue, Keir Starmer

But it was still quite a good line if you don't understand history. If you think you can look at anything in 2026 and not see the roots of it in 1926, even in 1826, possibly in 1066, you want to know why the Duke of Westminster is the richest man in the country

because his ancestor was best friends with William the Conqueror. But hey, let's not dwell in the past

when we're trying to answer questions about the modern day. So it's a clever line that the Daily Mail will almost certainly..

Well, I'm sure it has, actually. The Daily Mail would have blown up into great big letters

even though he didn even mention Margaret Thatcher I sure the Daily Mail has stuck Margaret Thatcher in enormous letters on its front page There it is Britain problems I blame Thatcher and Brexit says Burnham

What if he's right? If you were a massive cheerleader for Thatcher and Brexit, this would be kryptonite for you, wouldn't it

The idea that you can't find the roots of problems in the modern day, in the past, is so spectacularly ignorant, I'm surprised anyone would say it out loud

But what do you think? What do you think? He didn't actually bring Thatcher into it

but he must have known that that would happen. This critique of austerity, de-industrialisation

privatisation and Brexit as being somehow, and you could almost call it neoliberalism, could you

As being somehow the root of many of our problems. Is he right

0345 6060 973 and if he's not right why is he not right

what is he wrong about because I don't really like as you know

simple answers to complicated questions and what's wrong with this country is a complicated question

but is he on to something the bigger the diagnosis the bigger the problem

is he on to something we all look at the country at the moment and think

things could be a little bit better and some of us get distracted by the racists

telling us it's all the fault of foreigners, but most of us don't, actually. The numbers don't support the idea

And even the ones that do are surely going to wake up to the fact

that they've been lied to when they start wondering why they're not being told about, for example, small boat crossings

hitting the lowest level in six years. Why is Nigel Farage not calling a press conference

to claim the credit for it or do a lap of honour or, I don't know, whatever else he might do

to respond to something that he apparently desperately wants but now seems to be silent about

It's a rival, the fact that it's happened. so what if it is just the fact that

I'll tell you what else I'm haunted by I'm haunted by that statistic that popped up yesterday

about public ownership and that confession that I made to you about my own gut reaction to public control of utilities

there's this sense in my gut which thankfully you got rid of yesterday this sense in my gut that

there's something wrong with public control there's something wrong with public ownership

I've been completely gaslit by 25 years working in this industry. And memories of British Rail sandwiches

and Arthur Scargill. Public ownership, yes, it's all a bit utopian. It's all a bit idealistic

Proper communism hasn't been tried yet. What if he's just right? What if Margaret Thatcher's selling everything

to the richest mates she could find and them just milking it of money for the last 40 years

whether it's a water company or an energy company or a railway, just milking it

milking it of money for decades. and then looking around and wondering why most people feel they haven't got enough

What if it is a big part of the diagnosis? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need

And the question is pretty straightforward. Is he onto something? Do you agree with Andy Burnham

Or have you got a better answer to the question of what has gone wrong

Including, of course, the contention that nothing has gone wrong. Everything is hunky-dory

It's 22 minutes after 10. James O'Brien on LBC. It's 10.23. Centralised, privatised, de-industrialised

Austerity, Brexit. So five things there that Andy Burnham thinks help explain

or possibly completely explain, why this country currently feels like a place that is not fulfilling its potential

Is he right? Because I tell you what, if he is, they're going to come for him even more violently than they did for Keir Starmer

because think about who benefits from privatisation, who has benefited from de-industrialisation

who was responsible for, cheer-led and demanded austerity, who brought you Brexit, all of those

It's more or less a circle, that Venn diagram, in my profession, in the media and in politics as well

But what if he's right? Tony's in Greenock. Tony, what would you like to say? Morning, James

I might have a maybe oversimplistic view on this, But I agree to the extent that I think the biggest single mistake that Thatcher's government made was selling off the oil licences in a way that was very, very short term in its approach to getting money

And if you look at the way Norway did it with our sovereign wealth fund, which is now sitting at trillions, if we had replicated that model in the UK, I think everything else that we're talking about, the impact would have been softened by the fact that we have got this sovereign wealth fund sitting there that could cushion the blow of things like Brexit, things like austerity

You're leading me into territory I'm not very knowledgeable about. Do we know why Margaret Thatcher chose a very different model from Norway

which, of course, was getting oil from beneath the same sea? I can only hazard a guess as to why that was

I mean, cynical old me has my own opinion about Thatcher and why she did it

Yes, but you've got to stop that now. Kemi Badenot says so. You're not allowed to have opinions about Margaret Thatcher

because they're irrelevant in 2026. Well, as I said to your producer..

Same with Winston Churchill, by the way, and do not get me started, whatever you do

on William the Conqueror. It's got nothing to do with modern Britain, mate

Absolutely no impact whatsoever. You should write a book about that. Yes. You should write a book about that

No, as I said to your producer, I think if you fail to remember the mistakes of the past

you repeat them in the future. I think there's a phrase that goes along those lines

You're damned forever to repeat them. You do not learn the mistakes of your past

You're damned forever to repeat them. So if we have the opportunity to do something similar in the future, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past

Let's say, for example, we have good wind or wave power facilities, and we should have

Up here in Scotland, we've got plenty of it. Then, you know, let's not sell licenses off for buttons

Let's replicate a model that maximizes our revenue over a longer period

not just sell it off to your mates for peanuts and then make them off the profits

We know what privatised means. We know what de-industrialised means. You don't have to do this

because there'll be plenty of other people contributing. Do we know what centralised means

I mean, I know literally what it means but are we clear that that is a bad thing

on a par with, for example, privatisation and Brexit? Well, I would say on the basis of what John Swinney said yesterday

I think he's going more towards centralisation than he is decentralisation. I mean, he's cutting back on the number of health boards

He's cutting back on probably the number of local authorities that we're going to be running with

So for me, that's centralising more than decentralising. So I don't know the market economics of the industry

And also, you've got councils now that are run by 11-year-old Nigel Farage fans

Decentralise that and put more out to those necks of the woods

and just spend all our money on flags. Tony, thank you. Jim is in

is it Bancory, if I pronounced that correctly? Bancory, James. Jim, what would you like to say

Well basically well I not a Labour Party supporter I was up until 1985 when I saw what was happening in England and my politics went off in a different direction

out of independence for Scotland. But what Burnham said yesterday was buying the money

and it's refreshing and all overdue to hear it coming from a Labour Party leader

because they have kowtowed to Thatcherism since Blair went into Downing Street back in 1997

People talked about him. Didn't she even talk about him as her heir, I think? She said that that was her greatest victory, was Tony Blair

I think she did. Yeah. I think Camille Baden-Ott must have missed that bit

Mm-hm. What did you like most? I mean, was it the reference to the..

Because you're talking about 40 years. We're talking about neoliberalism, aren't we

That's really what he's critiquing. The prioritisation of capital and profit over almost everything else

on the proviso, either deliberately bogus or naively believed, that all boats will rise

If you make the rich richer, then we've got trickle-down economics and everyone will get better off

So just stick everything on making the rich richer and the rest will follow

Yeah, I mean, what Bonham said yesterday is what I've been saying

For the past 40-odd years, I worked with the Department of Employment in Earsha

at the height of the Thatcher recession. And I saw the absolute misery it caused

and the hope was that someday the Labour Party would get back into power

But England kept on voting for the Conservative Party, and then we got Blair

which was a bit of an ameliorisation of her policies. However, you know

they continued, and eventually when the Tories come back, and we had Osborne's austerity

I don't want to... I'm just going to borrow your roast-tinted spectacles, if I may

because things were pretty rubbish in many ways in the 70s as well

I mean, we don't want to sort of portray for our younger listeners the idea that the 1970s were some sort of utopian idyll

They were not a utopian idyll, but your previous caller spoke about North Sea oil

That was a windfall that we had which could have modernised British industry

modernised the country. Tax cuts for the wealthy is where a lot of that money went

It was absolutely squandered. And the thing is, it's not just privatisation of industries, James

it was the de-industrialisation. It was a whole... I even blame her, honestly, for causing the massive drug problems

that eventually come on during the early 1980s and that we're living with these days as well

And you're not alone in that. I mean, you know, the idea that a workforce with no work

is going to find something else to fill its days is not, I don't think, controversial or even difficult

to understand. So, popular so far, Andy Burnham's ysis from certainly at least one voter who

is not going to be voting Labour anytime soon, but who welcomes

the diagnosis. Just looking at that, because neoliberalism is one of those words that gets bandied around quite a lot

The neatest distillation of it is in four parts. You're looking at free markets

you're looking at privatisation, you're looking at deregulation, and you're looking at austerity and low taxes

That is pretty much the picture of this country over the course of the last 40 years and i suppose you'd struggle to find someone who thinks it's worked

so what's the alternative it hasn't here's dominic ellis with the headlines james o'brien on lbc

it's 10 34 i mean the thought i had a moment ago looking at those core principles of neoliberalism

which i think you can say since 1979 have been the um the prevailing winds in british politics

And I think this is what Andy Burnham was nailing yesterday, although he didn't use the word neoliberalism

He did use the words de-industrialized, privatized. He used the word austerity

He pointed to Brexit, of course, which was the sort of culmination of these people's project

And you look at free markets, privatization, deregulation, austerity, low taxes for the wealthy

But, of course, you can say low taxes for everybody. But, of course, the more you rely upon the utilities, the necessities, the welfare state, then in a sense, the more forked tongue your low taxes become

You find yourself wondering, well, who benefited from this? You know, sort of Hayek, Milton Friedman

I've written quite a lot about why they set up these lobby groups that they call think tanks

and it was solely to promote this kind of economics, the idea that if you let companies or markets run everything

they will operate more efficiently than governments. That's what they all believe

the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, all these grand-sounding organisations

that just sort of punt and promote the interests of the super wealthy, usually anonymous people who pay their wages

And who's benefited from it? Who's done really well? Let's have a little think about it

Who's done really well from 40 years of free markets, privatizations, deregulations, austerity and low taxes

Give or take. You know, they're not for the whole 40 years. In the case of austerity and low taxes

Gordon Brown ensured that public spending was quite high under Tony Blair and his own governments

But who's done really well out of it? There's a story, it may be a little bit unfair to focus on it, but I think it's so emblematic

I remember reading this in 2013. I already had this job and I couldn't quite believe my eyes

because, again, if I can get gaslit, then I hope it doesn't sound too arrogant of me to say

then anyone can because I like to think I can see what's going on in front of me. I'm certainly quite good at critiquing the right-wing media bias in this country

But if I can get gaslit to somehow have a default position that public ownership is definitely inefficient

I can get gaslit into all sorts of things. The right-to-buy scheme, it allowed people

who could only dream of owning their own home to own their own home. That warms the cockles of my left-wing heart

Why on earth should those people on that estate, paying rent for 30 years

not get help in buying the home that they've been renting off the council for 30 years

And yet, I remember reading in 2013 about the son of the housing minister

who helped introduce the right-to-buy scheme, by 2013 owned about 40 ex-council properties

on a single South London estate. Now, I don't know if that housing minister knew what opportunities were going to be there for buy-to-let tycoons

as a consequence of selling off the council houses to the people who lived in those homes

I don't know. It could be an enormous coincidence that the son of Margaret Thatcher's housing minister

who was partly responsible for bringing in the right-to-buy scheme, ended up owning loads of them or fronting a company that owned loads of them

So who's benefited from 40 years? If you answer that question, maybe you come slightly differently

at the idea of what Andy Burnham was saying yesterday. Kevin is in Wellingborough

Kevin, what would you like to say? Hi, James. Yeah, I completely agree with Burnham

but the one thing that I think that's never really mentioned is that we sold off every single one of our assets

as a country. We did most of the show on it yesterday, mate

I don't know if it's never really mentioned. Yeah, but what I'm trying to say is, if you take that money and reinvest

it back into the country, if we kept them as public ownership, our taxation wouldn't

be so high. Because you can only leverage the population to make more money for the

government if you sold all of your public assets off. Because they make no money

Yeah, no, I hear you. I mean, this is what I mean. Maybe I need to be a bit clearer. This is what I mean when I say they buy these utilities, they buy these monopolies

because they know they're going to make more money out of them over a 30 or 40 year period

than they're going to have to pay for it in the 1980s. And the money that they make would otherwise have made its way into the Treasury

I don't think that's naive, simplistic or even idealistic. It's obviously true

Why would I want to own a water company, Kevin? Answer, so I can make a ton of money

And am I going to be prioritising the cleanliness of the water and the minimising of sewage dumps

No, I'm flipping not. I'm going to be prioritising the dividends for shareholders and the bonuses for me

That's what happens in a free market. That's what happens when you believe that markets

allocate resources more efficiently than governments and somehow act more responsibly. So he's right. He's just right

Is there anything he can do about it? The only thing we can do is try to re-bring them back

into public ownership and leverage that money back into the government. It's a massive long-term game, though

And here's the mad thing, right? It's the mad thing. The public support for renationalisation is off the charts

I think it's in the 80s. Public support, I mean, you would not know it from turning on your radio or your television

watching a debate on Newsnight when they've got some Herbert from the Institute of Economic Affairs

You would not know it. But renationalisation is an incredibly popular principle in this country

And it unites the far right and the far left and everybody in between. Except, I presume

the people who have either made a ton of money out of the 40 years of neoliberalism

or the poor saps who are too busy tugging their forelocks and doffing their caps to notice

that they're being rinsed on a daily basis. Yeah, I completely agree with you

but you also look at austerity, that it was a good thing in the short term

but long term, look how we're paying for it now. Lack of police, lack of prisons, lack of NHS

And it's the same in the 80s with the public, the public ownership of those things

It was good for the short term because people thought they saved tax, but now look at us

I'm not even sure austerity was. I think without Nick Clegg there

as the sort of midwife for the misery, I don't know that the Tories would have been able to inflict it

upon a population that had just come off the back of 13 years of labour rule

and only really got derired by a global financial crisis. But yeah, who brought you austerity

Who were the cheerleaders for austerity? Do you remember people saying the words don't bash the bankers while they were shutting shortstop

Now you look at places like Middlesbrough and you wonder why young people have grown up with no sense of purpose or direction

and you think back to where they were at the beginning of their lives

So if you were to, for example, go back 16 years, you'd be smack in the middle of 2010

and George Osborne is running around the country shutting down all the things that might be described as community assets

and not to make money. There's two strands to this. So, strand one is the privatisation

Everybody understands that. Everybody understands now what was going to happen always

in that someone's going to pay a ton of money for something because they're going to make much, much, much, much, much more money out of it in the long term

Margaret Thatcher trousers the money that they pay, uses it to give tax cuts to the whole country

Everyone thinks she's a genius. But those seeds have sprouted, and we are now dealing with the consequences of that policy

as Andy Burnham explained yesterday. But then you've got the second round

As this thing that you introduced me to, I didn't know what it was until you told me in a phone-in about ten years ago

It may have been after Grenfell, actually. It may have been more recent than that. You introduced me to the concept of social capital

as opposed to capital capital. So we all know what capital is. Financial capital

What's social capital? Because you might not have any financial capital. But in a civilised society, in a well-run society

in a liberal democracy, you should have social capital. So what's your social capital

Your social capital is your access to the NHS. That's incredibly valuable

Arguably, it's priceless. If, God forbid, you were to be sick enough, you could receive almost an infinite amount of care from the NHS

Social capital would be your schooling. You'd go to school. You'd have social capital

Social capital could be your library. It could be your Sure Start Centre. It could be anything that might be described as community-based and public-funded

All of these things are social capital. So you go back to the 1980s

and you've got the selling off of things that belonged to us

and then you get to the noughties, and you've got the closing, closing to save on costs

not to even make a profit, although it's presumably a few quid in turning an old library into flats

but selling off in the 80s, and then just closing down in the noughties

And that is the 40-year programme that I think Andy Burnham was talking about yesterday

But, of course, I could be wrong. And if I am, 03456060973 is the number that you need

Richard is in Havering. Richard, what would you like to say? Oh, hi, James. So, by the context, I'm 60, and I've got a degree in economics

So I kind of remember some of that 70s stuff, three-day week. But I also understand economics

But, ironically, you talked about Hayek, and you're correct. So Hayek wrote a book called The Road to Serfdom

which is highly ironic because it's kind of one of Thatcher's favorite books. So basically we've got to decentralize and have smaller governments

But now that logic is brilliant. And so what we've done is they have commed us into what I call the aspiration trap

or the fallacy of aspiration. They've made us feel that we too can have access to all this wealth like they have

The ordinary man can own his house and he can own some shares. I remember trying to buy Jaguar shares and not getting my allocation

thinking, oh my God, I'm losing out here. So this aspiration, we've got to the point now where, yes, markets can be efficient, but actually we know from the work of people like Grace Blakely that Bolts of capitalism, those markets were reeked

So all that value did not come back to us in terms of lower pricing

It went to the people that bought our assets. So they took our assets and then leased them back to us

And so when you want to explain neoliberalism to somebody, stop using that word because it just sounds like you're some sort of academic

I agree. So what it means is it means capitalism on crack

It means it's all rigged, and you haven't got a hope in hell of ever getting your piece of it

because we've got eight people on the planet Earth that own as much wealth as the poorest four billion

That statistic is common across all countries, right? So what we've got..

And it's not a coincidence or a consequence of meritocracy. There's no meritocracy whatsoever, no

We still live in a second empire, still exists, we know that, right? So, and by the way, I'm not sort of some weird, wokey lefty..

Well, you might be, but you're making sense so far. Well, I was a Tory councillor once for Peter Lilly, and he was Margaret Thatcher's..

Well, he was a fully paid-up member of the neoliberal elite. Exactly

I lived in Harkin I was a Tory councillor I believed all this stuff right I got a degree in economics so I studied it I was in St Andrews which is where Adam Smith is from So the invisible hand has been pickpocketing us

It kind of got hijacked by the Adam Smith Institute. So all those people you mentioned, they've hijacked economics

and said that, oh, by doing good, it will trickle down. And we know that's all rubbish

So basically what I'm saying to you is economics is a bit of rubbish. the modern models

or at least the 40 year and it goes back longer than 40 years my favourite quote is the Steinbeck line

about there being no such thing as poverty in the Dust Bowl era America just temporarily frustrated millionaires

and that's what you're talking about persuading people that they are going to be beneficiaries

of the obvious unfairness therefore they must support it but what can Andy Burnham do about it mate

Stop using the word neoliberalism He didn't, that was me leave him alone he didn't use the word neoliberalism

he said centralised, privatised, de-industrialised he said Brexit, and he said austerity

So those are all... He was absolutely right. They're the five horsemen of the neoliberal apocalypse

but he did not use the word neoliberal. That was just me. You mustn't use that word. Yes, no. We've got to stop using that word

so we've got to call it pirate equity. So FIFA, let me give you the best... No, don't

Just tell me what Andy Burnham has to do. What he has to do is talk about something what I call mutual equity

So you take companies like... So you think neoliberalism is an unhelpful word

because it sounds too academic, but you're here to sell us mutual equity. No, I'm just saying

Instead of private equity, we need to take back control, i.e. if we own the things that we already own

So social capital? It's kind of social capital, but what about a water company? We need sexier words

Why do the right wing have all the sexy words? Well, neoliberalism, they're so clever that even the word sounds woke

So if you call somebody a neoliberal, they think, oh, you must be a bit woke. I'm modern and liberal

So let's think of a water company, right? So you and I, where do you live

Barney's, Barney's. Brentford. Brentford, sorry. Again with a B. So let's now, you and I live in Brentford

And now we, plus the employees, we own our... Things are moving very quickly. We only met five minutes ago

Exactly. Social. And so we now own our water company. So we're the shareholders and we own that along with our employees

And that's like John Lewis or Arup. So mutual equity means we are the shareholders

We own it. And you can apply that model to care homes, to healthcare, to housing

Public control and any money that is generated. and ideally there wouldn't be much money generated

because it would all be recycled back round again into research, development, improvement and pay

There wouldn't be profits popping out of the bottom of companies like care homes and water companies

which is why I like to use the word necessity. Is it doable, Richard? I didn't mean to interrupt you then

You're in your stride. But briefly, is it doable? I mean, because you're talking about turning around

one almighty oil tanker here. Exactly. So what you're going to do is look at a company called KKR

who invented the concept of private equity. They did a reverse buyout in the 80s

They're a well-known company, KKR. They bought Nabisco, right? What they're doing now is they've created a company called Ownership Works

and what they're trying to do is to acquire companies, people that are retiring, and they're converting them into partially owned by their employees

So this isn't woke. This isn't co-ops and kibbutz and all this stuff

Communism. It isn't communism. I actually got called a Marxist by somebody because I said

I quite like the idea of John Lewis. The employees own the business, right

It's called an Employee Ownership Club. So the model exists, and KKR is looking at it

That's really interesting. So if you were a Labour and co-operative member of Parliament

you might look down that road and say, well, how can we encourage people to own the companies that they work for

Therefore, we are the shareholders. The world is retained locally. The world is retained in the country

And look at the effort. I am interrupting you now because I'm very late for the break

but look at the effort that is put into demonising really straightforward and simple ideas like that

I just look at it. You call him a communist. He's a former Conservative Council candidate

And John Lewis is some sort of Red Army construct. John Lewis, you know, partnership or the co-op

The NHS are arguably the most socialist construct in the history of humanity

And yet, look at the country we live in. And I'll say it again. I know it sounds a bit conceited

but it's actually self-deprecating, I promise. I can get gaslit, and almost anyone can, I think

It's 10.50. James O'Brien on LBC 53 I think we'll listen to it again

it's going to be his first PMQs today you're wary aren't you

this is why we did a Bob on Mondays or indeed this week on a Tuesday

the Burnham Optimism Barometer which just tests where you are a lot of people telling me they've gone up

as a consequence of his debut speech as Prime Minister yesterday do you know what I'm terrified of

more than anything else? Hope absolutely terrified of hope hopes dashed side. I mean, you live in a country

where the people who were wrong about everything keep winning. That's not even

an opinion. That's just counting. The people who were wrong about austerity

keep winning, because they went straight from austerity to Brexit. The people who were wrong about

Brexit keep winning, because they went straight from Brexit to Boris Johnson. The people who were wrong about

Boris Johnson keep winning, because they went straight from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss. Alistair Heath at the Telegraph, Nigel Farage

all talking about Liz Truss's mini-budget as if it was the finest thing. Actually, even better

than sliced bread. The people who were wrong about Liz Truss went straight to

I suppose they went to Rishi Sunak really and then they took their eye off domestic politics for a while

and started chanting for Donald Trump instead. It's the same people. It's always the same people and they can always

win. It's extraordinary. So there must be something a little bit slanted

about the playing field that we're all on, right? So maybe the first thing Andy Burnham

has done as Prime Minister is just point out how slanted the playing field is by acknowledging

centralised, privatised, de-industrialised austerity in Brexit has created a pitch that if you're at the right

end of it, you can't miss the goal. Or if you're at the wrong end of it, you've got to be a combination of

Linford Christie, Brian Jack and, I don't know, Mike Tyson to claw your way up

the park and get the ball anywhere near the opponent's net. It's mad when you think about it

And then I feel like an idiot. Then I sit here thinking, yeah, you sound like Wolfie

Smith, mate. You sound like Citizen Smith. And that's part of the field. That's part

of the slant. Oh, public ownership never works. You can't trust the unions break everything. You give them half a chance

And you realise we are all, in a way, a little bit. Well, not all. I don't want to be bombarded

with messages from people telling me they've been able to see through this forever. I see through bits of it. We all see through bits of it

But the simple idea of recalibration, which is one of my favourite words, and redistribution

which is one of my favourite ideas. So you just look at an imbalance. Think about a scale

I'm in full TED Talk mode today. I do apologize. Think about some scales, like Pisces

just normal old-fashioned scales. Weights on one side, weights on the other, and you want to balance them out, right

So the scales are currently skewed, massively skewed. So how do you balance the scales

How do you make things fair? You don't have to make it level, necessarily. We're just all recognizing that at the moment

the way things are distributed, the last caller's point about the Elon Musks of this world

is irresistible. Nobody should have that kind of money. So how do you do it? How do you level

the scales or bring them a little bit closer to parity or balance? Answer, you move stuff

from this pan into this pan, right? If you want to see how terrified the people that brought

you austerity Brexit Boris Johnson Liz Truss Donald Trump all the whole show if you want to see how terrible these people are And I don mean the actual plutocrats that are making all the money I mean the people who do their bidding in the media and politics

I mean the sort of lapdogs who will go out and bark at a left-wing idea without really understanding why. They just know that that's their job

If you want to know how they're going to respond to any of this stuff, just go and whisper wealth tax in their ear

just go and whisper wealth tax in their ear and watch what happens

so how are you going to redistribute wealth in this country where you're going to have to take some of it

from the people who've got all of it and then lesser the burdens

that are being placed on the people who've got none of it largely via the cost of living

whisper that in their ear and watch what happens that's the job Andy Burnham's got

Lynette is in Ealing Lynette what would you like to say good morning Jane

hello Lynette Hi. I think Andy Burnham was correct to go back to the 1980s

to actually look at the problems that are going on today, in part because when..

I'm old enough to remember all this, and I remember that... Sorry, I just need to interrupt you

It's Libra who has the scales, not Pisces. I can't believe you didn't point that out, Lynette

Sorry, everybody. That was a terrible faux pas, but nobody's perfect. I'm a bit right

How did I think... Oh, fish have got scales, you see. They have got scales

Anyway, Libra, lads, not Pisces. Carry on. Carry on, Lynette. Yeah, at the same time as privatisation

there was a very attractive policy by Margaret Thatcher. I know I didn't mention Margaret Thatcher

but she was the person in charge of time. She took on the unions

So taking on the unions makes privatisation more attractive because you're not having to adhere to collective bargaining and so on and so on

Even health and safety, all the things that they've turned into negatives

health and safety, employee protection, rights in the workplace, all of these things have been turned into negatives by these monsters

And it's still very relevant today, very relevant. So I think that is something that goes back to the 1980s

Funny enough, over the weekend, I was talking to somebody who worked in a mining village in Kent, not as a miner, but remembered what Margaret Thatcher did to the mines when she took on Arthur Scargill, for one thing

She flooded a mine that had had new machinery just put in for the purpose of extracting a very, very rich vein of coal

and, you know, they were talking about these machines being worth millions of pounds

And she didn't... She just flooded them. I don't know about this, but I mean..

No, I'm talking about who saw it with their eyes. I hear you. I know. I heard what you said

I just hadn't heard the story before, but I think everybody understood that..

Or rather, the big lesson of that era was that nobody thought she would go as far as she went up to

and including Arthur Scargel and members of her own cabinet that she would actually preside over the end of coal mining, essentially, in this country

for, you know, essentially ideological or political reasons. So why on earth would anybody ever mention her

Try going to South Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire or North Wales and giving lectures

Can we bait it off on why we should never mention Margaret Thatcher? And that's another weird thing, actually

It happened really quickly with Brexit. I don't know if you noticed, the people who told you to vote for it

very, very quickly started complaining about the fact that people were still talking about it

There's a reason for that. I wonder if it's the same reason why Carrie Badenow

doesn't want anybody to be talking about Margaret Thatcher. James O'Brien on LBC

Four minutes after 11 is the time. I wonder what it's like if you're only seeing it for the first time

It all sort of slots into place, doesn't it? I mean, why would anybody? I think it was Dickie Littlejohn in the Daily Mail

who first sort of started mocking health and safety. like hard hats and um and what are they called when you when you wear the the fluorescent tabard

it's got a special high-vis vests right-wing journalists taking the mickey out of high-vis

vests what they stop people getting hit by by diggers and vehicles and things but anything

once you see it through the lens of of deregulation reducing rules on businesses let

businesses do whatever they want, then even health and safety. Legislation becomes something

to rail against if you're one of the sort of yapping poodles for the plutocrat class

Health and safety becomes a negative thing. Oh, health and safety. Lanyards. Actually

they're not health and safety, but the high-vis vests are. I mean, you sometimes go, if you're

visiting countries that are economically far behind ours, and you see building sites

you know, I've been to Southeast Asia, you've sort of got bamboo ladders on building sites

or even in parts of Southern Europe, you'll see people on building sites not wearing hard hats

and it turns your stomach. Not if you are a member of the great British media

you think that health and safety equipment is for the birds. Five minutes after 11 is the time

And once you see those four things, the idea that markets will do a better job than governments

that publicly owned services and industries should be transferred to private control

that governments should have as few rules as is humanly possible on businesses and financial institutions

and that public spending should be cut to the bone and taxes reduced as far as is possible

in order to, quote, stimulate private enterprise. You see those four things, and you see 40 years of hurt

I just think you do. So we'll continue with your critique of what Andy Burnham said yesterday

If you're just joining us, allow me to remind you of the central thrust of his speech and indeed of Burnhamism

From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns. Political power was centralised

Economic power privatised. The country de-industrialised. Austerity followed hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this

and then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration

Change begins with honesty, Mr Speaker, not hearing much of it this afternoon

Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we won't turn things around

Far from taking back control, the combination of these policies took control out of the hands of communities up and down Britain

And speaking of communities up and down Britain, did you spot the deliberate mistake I made on three separate occasions in the last hour

It is, of course, South Wales that was decimated by the political movements

that Andy Burnham is describing, and not, as I may have very deliberately, brackets, accidentally, close brackets, said not North Wales

I don know where that came from Probably the same place that I got the idea that Pisces has scales I know fish have scales but not in terms of astrology The scales are all about Libra And if you want to make the

scales more evenly balanced, then you have to move stuff from one pan into the other

And yet, of course, that seems to strike terror into the heart of most of the people who've won

most of the big political battles in this country for most of the period that Andy Burnham was

talking about. Nice to hear some open criticism of Brexit in the House of Commons as well

instead of footing and sort of mealy-mouthed moaning about it and then adding immediately afterwards

well, I don't think we'll be reversing it in our time. I don't think we'll be reversing it any time soon

So, those are the three words. Centralised, privatised, de-industrialised. And the two big things, Brexit and austerity

Arguably, austerity has been, if not reversed, then curtailed. Maybe not even arguably

Brexit is fairly easy to unpick. It's not impossible to imagine what a post-Brexit improvement would look like

We could be like Iceland or Norway, or we could rejoin at some point

Probably a little bit easier in the next decade than some people like me have previously feared

But what can Burnham do about it? 0345 6060 973. This is the number that you need

What can Burnham actually do about it? This is the thing that I think underpins the fear of hope

as I'm going to call it. Well, the oil tanker is too big to turn around

The practices and principles that we've been discussing in the first hour of the programme

are just too baked into our society. I'll give you an example of what I mean

I just tuned in. I heard your reference to Thatcher and the mining industry. What's absolutely staggering is the amount of people in Barnsley

where I live, who now love reform. After Thatcher decimated this part of the world

people want to bring back the Timu Tories. And that's the point, isn't it

It's just such a part of our national experience, our national landscape

The idea that you can have government that is not essentially promoting and prioritising

the interests of wealth and business is almost anathema to us. It's almost, I don't know, impossible for us to grasp

So, the question then becomes, what on earth can Andy Burnham do about all this

And this is where the hope gets really scary. Because if he is going to undertake

what you would need to define as a genuine recalibration and a genuine redistribution

not a tinkering at the edges, not behaving as a Labour Prime Minister

in a way that caused Margaret Thatcher to celebrate elements of your policy platform

what is it going to look like? What is it going to take

They will, and I think with a degree of fairness, they are already accusing him of being a vibes merchant

a man who deals in vibes but doesn't deal in detail. It's obviously an unfair criticism to level at somebody

who's been in the job for six weeks, but as time passes, it becomes fairer

if he hasn't put detail where vibes currently reside. That's why the Burnham Optimism Barometer is such an interesting thing to do every Monday morning

because that's about vibes. And the vibes won't sustain the scores unless he starts backing them up with performance

And performance will always involve detail. So if you haven't been following it, the first six weeks of his premiership

despite the fact that Parliament hasn't been sitting, have seen the Burnham Optimism Barometer score 888899

It's entirely unscientific, but I like it, so we're sticking with it. And that won't sustain, will it, unless he starts providing detail to boost and sustain the vibes

So, what does he actually need to do? And this isn't a phone-in about the things that you want him to do, okay

So, for example, this is not a phone-in about Israel or other sort of single issues that animate and obsess some people

Understandably, I've got no beef with that at all. This isn't a conversation about transgender policy, because that's not going to improve the economic situation of the country

So this isn't the phone-in about what do you want Andy Burnham to do

This is the conversation about what he needs to do to undo the things that we've been talking about all morning

How do you undo the consequences of de-industrialization? I mean, you know, if it costs buttons to get your kit made in China, how do you persuade somebody to open a factory in this country

I don't know. Maybe you do. 03456060973. If it is, you know, privatized now, then someone owns it

Buy it back. Where are you going to get the money from to buy it back, even if in the long term you're going to make..

So you need two things, really, to have a proper position on conversations like this

You need a grasp of history, which is why it was so comical that Cammie Baden-Ock

sought to argue yesterday that we should ignore the past when trying to understand the present

Just think about that for a minute. I told you, I think she's fantastic. That level of self-confidence is just, it's a joy to behold

If you want to understand the present, Cammie Baden-Ock argues, you should ignore the past

So what do you look at instead? Tea leaves? Now, that's the future. If you want to understand the present, you have to study the past. And I think the other thing you need to have is a power of comparison. You have to have a knowledge of or an ability to compare and contrast

So you can't just shout Norwegian sovereign wealth fund at our economy

It is, you know, an interesting contribution, but it is not the beginning and the end of the answer

What does Andy Burnham need to do to actually begin the process of undoing what we are not going to call neoliberalism

So the prioritization of business and wealth over almost everything else, including, of course, rules and regulations

The cutting of public spending to the bone through austerity. There is not a lot of money coming in

so you can't just say, well, let's start spending it all again. You've got, and the same with taxes

the idea that lowering taxes creates more money is historically, let's just say, unproven

And then you've got the idea that markets are going to do a better job than governments

and that publicly owned services should be transferred to private control. I want to talk about feasibility

and I want to talk about recalibration and redistribution. So if we accept Andy Burnham's ysis, and I think most of us do

I don't really see how you can reject it, to be honest with you, unless you're sitting here thinking everything is hunky-dory

and all of these policies have not just made rich people richer

but they have improved the lives of absolutely everybody. What does he need to do in order to undo Brexit or stay

...centralisation, privatisation and de-industrialisation. What does he need to do? 0345 6060 973

And I don't mean first or what the biggest one is. You can bring anything you want to this party

All are welcome. But how can you actually do this? And remember, I'm sorry to be bossy

but this is not about the things you want Andy Burnham to do because you care so much about them

It's about what Andy Burnham needs to do to undo that five-pronged national malaise

Austerity, Brexit, centralisation, privatisation, de-industrialisation. How can he feasibly undo any of these decades-old practices

which are part, really, of the fabric of modern Britain? How can he do it

What does he need to do? 0345 6060 973 is the number you need

It's 1116. James O'Brien on LBC. Is it about thinking the unthinkable

So the bigger the problem, the bigger the diagnosis. A massive diagnosis from Andy Burnham yesterday

A 40-year critique. Four decades spent doing things wrong. That's a huge diagnosis

And that demands a huge prescription. And I'm not sure I understand the scale of what would need to be done

If he's serious about undoing these things, or rebuilding if you prefer

what would that actually look like? What does that actually demand or involve

Because I meant what I said an hour ago about tinkering and technocrats

The idea, I mean, I suppose, bless her little cotton socks, Liz Truss turned up and set fire to things

She wasn't a tinkerer or a technocrat. She was an arsonist. Boris Johnson could just as easily have been

pro-Brexit and left-wing if he thought that it would grease his passage into Downing Street more effectively than being

I beg your pardon, anti-Brexit and left-wing would have been greased his passage more than being pro-Brexit and right-wing

so that sort of level of opportunism is impossible to legislate for

Keir Starmer appeased and accommodated, tweaked and tinkered Andy Burnham looks set to

start again in some areas and I've got no idea what that involves

I don't actually have a personal grasp of what the really big stuff

might look like or if I do, it's currently eluding me and needs a little bit of help from you to surface

0345 6060 973. It's 1119. Alec is in Manchester. Alec, what would you like to say

Oh, yeah, yeah, I think... Yeah, sorry. I think there's quite a few big things that need to be done

So, an odd tangent, like... Not tangent, but like an odd one to start with

Privatising pensions. I think the public pension system does not work, especially with an ageing population

How would that... I mean, most people are expecting less privatisation and more nationalisation

but you're immediately swimming off in the opposite direction. I'm swimming off in both directions

That's an incredible achievement. Right, yeah. So, well, Liberal Democrats, that's me

Right, so, yeah, we need more social housing, like council housing, not social housing

council housing, and it needs to be good quality. That's a huge thing

Annie Byrne's completely right. Public ownership of the water utilities, like it's a monopoly

Private companies can't... All they can do is take the investment... But what do we give to the people who currently own them

Nothing. We let them go bankrupt. See, this is the problem. This is where I don't know whether I've been gaslit or not

into a position of acquiescence and just sort of lazy thinking that

well, it's always been like that, so it has to be like that, or whether you're actually mad

I mean, what about something you currently own? and the government decides it wants it

What would you expect them to give you? Well, OK, but the difference there is it's..

I don't... Yeah, do that noise again. Yeah, that's it. That's the noise

Because that's me right there thinking, what does the big stuff actually look like? Because I can say the words

but when I ask you and I point out to you, you can't just march around and say, right, we're having that, can you

The United States nationalises stuff, so I think you can, and I think there's precedent for it

If they're going bankrupt, that's their problem. And, yeah, stop them. Yeah, all right

So insolvency via legislation and then re-nationalisation on public ownership. It's happened with railways when they've gone under

but you have to wait for them to go under, don't you? No, so, yeah, you have to wait for them to go under

You can leave it to the open market, but say, hey, if you don't invest, you ain't buying it

And I don't think anyone will invest, frankly. I think the government's going to have to. So, yeah, that's how you do that

All right. I know. I like it. I mean, I think that's feasible. I need a feasible scale

I've got too many scales going on. We've got the Burnham Optimism Barometer, and now I want a feasibility

not a feasibility study, a feasibility scale. So, I don't know. Let's park privatising pensions

because I think that might be a little bit sticky for both of us to get stuck into

Obviously, there's a time bomb ticking, and he's going to have to do something about it

But it's not necessarily part of centralised, privatised, de-industrialised, austerity and Brexit

So it is, I mean, obviously the answer to how do you undo privatisation

is with re-nationalisation. And what you're saying is find a way to do it

Don't sit here going, hmm, but just find a way to do it. You're Prime Minister

What's the point of being Prime Minister if you're not going to find a way to do difficult things? A couple of other things. Cooperatives

The previous hour, that call was absolutely right. The right hand is pickpocketing

people's pockets. And the other line I did like from that call

was, why do all the right-wingers have the sexy lines? Yeah, that's when you chuckle

Have the what? You said, why do all the right-wingers have the sexy lines

or something like that. Oh, yes, I did say that. Well, that's a bit like saying the devil has all the best tunes, you know

You shout woke at somebody, nobody actually stops to wonder what it means. They just use it as an insult

You shout racist at somebody, everybody knows exactly what it means, but, of course, no one's going to admit to being it

So it is a variation on the devil having all the best tunes. Peter is in Banstead

Thank you, Alec. Peter, what does he need to do? well i i suggest james that you might consider getting some of the best people in the room really

and the patriotic millionaires were the people i was thinking of yeah um gary gary stevenson and

his group to make to partly to raise their profile because the media wouldn't be able to

ignore them in quite the same way oh yes it would well i know yes okay but but you know they might

at least get some i mean we know what they stand for or at least i hope people know what they stand

You're looking at a different system of taxation, which would be a redistribution of wealth, taking more from asset-rich individuals and moving the onus from income to asset

So that might help a little bit with austerity or cost of living

But in terms of the big five, centralised, privatised, de-industrialised, austerity and Brexit, what does a policy look like rather than a personnel issue

Well, the policy in terms of, you know, we've had deindustrialization because of people saying, you know, business has to dominate the whole discussion. Yes

And the word entrepreneur is just thrown around as if it a self virtue and a self opportunity Whereas you know there are clearly entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of much of the economy success

But it doesn't distinguish between those who are really working hard to make, you know, to develop the industries, to develop the new technologies

and those who are simply trying to rake off the top end of it. No, and the gap between productivity and workers' compensation since 1979, appropriately enough, given that everybody's talking about Margaret Thatcher this morning, is staggering, actually

You know, the graph is really arresting. 1948 to 1979, quite healthy, if you like, and then post-1979 it goes off a cliff

yes and thatcher with lawson and and and his the others who've succeeded him um shifted very quickly

shifted the the weight of taxation to suit their purposes and the purposes of those whom who had

supported them and continued to do so for many years now but you know it wasn't it was normalized

it was just normalized people can you can you do it though as this is where i get pessimistic

because of the state of our media which you alluded to at the very beginning people are

persuaded to believe things that are not true. So while they might currently show 80 odd percent

support for a program of renationalization, you get Tufton Street and the right-wing media on the

case, and by Christmas it'll be down to, dare I say it, 48 percent. Yeah, well, whenever I talk to

family about this stuff who don't agree, you know, we have differences of opinion like every family

I always feel the weight of the Daily Mail on my shoulder. Yeah, I bet you do. But, you know

But you can't win the arguments without putting some people in there who say, look, we've done this

We see the merits of shifting the financial priorities here. Yeah, and people who would have, to use that slightly unpleasant praise, people who would have skin in the game

So it's all very well getting undergraduates and gobs on sticks to chant about the importance of a redistribution of wealth

but it's the people with the wealth being in favor of the redistribution of wealth

who carry the most weight and the most power. And to continue my theme of pessimism, Peter

that's why George Soros gets so viciously demonized by the right wing

because, of course, he chose to spend huge swathes of his fortune

on improving the lot of other people. Bill Gates as well, of course

spending huge amounts of money on improving the lots of African people

people on the African continent. and you wonder why these people, obviously Bill Gates post Epstein is a slightly different proposition

but you wonder why these people are routinely attacked. And the answer is because if you're a billionaire

that wants to keep all his money, if you're a billionaire that wants to pay your staff as little as possible

if you're a billionaire that hates the idea of taxes at all

let alone taxes that are deliberately targeted at you, then your worst enemy is not the politician or the journalist

or the agitator calling for a redistribution of wealth or a wealth tax

Your worst enemy is the billionaire spending his money on improving the good of society

as opposed to improving his own financial situation. Peter, thank you. Toby's in Bristol

Toby, what would you like to say? Hello, James. It's back to Brexit, I'm afraid

Why do you say I'm afraid? This is something that we need to do, isn't it? We need to reinvigorate the Brexit conversation

I think that the only thing we can accept, and if you take the Bank of England, the most sensible economists

a reasoning that 6% of our GDP has been removed. That's £1.2 trillion removed from our economy since Brexit

Now, you've got the government running around, you know, we need £10 billion for defence

we need how much for social care? £1.2 trillion. That would have massively covered all of these costs

if we weren't hemorrhaging out of our economy. And I think that the only realistic approach

I would personally rejoin tomorrow. However, I think the customs union single market route that Iceland, Norway and other countries have is something that isn't so scary for people

But the problem is, if you go back to, you know, 2010 and the use of austerity as effectively a club to beat the government over and why the referendum even got through

It's incredible, isn't it? It's incredible when you look back on how simple that process was and how few people saw it at the time

And even went down to, you know, you look at what Iceland's been through

and they're still using sovereignty and fishing. That was literally, those were the things that still come up and are still so toxic

and easy to grip onto. And your colleague who I spoke to just said, well, how do we educate people

Well, we were staggeringly ignorant about the benefits of being in the EU

right the way through from... No, it's not coincidence, though. ...europe in 1993

It's not by accident. And we have to educate. Yeah, I mean, I don't even think that that was part of the sort of neoliberal conspiracy

Because I sometimes wonder, maybe you're a bit clearer on this than I am

I sit there and wonder why did the people that wanted all those other things that I list off every day

so I understand why they wanted austerity, because it means more money for them, and, you know, fewer children getting fed in the inner cities means that they can, I don't know

stick another grouse on the barbecue. you. They wanted Boris Johnson because they thought he'd make them richer

I don't know who thought Brexit, apart from a tiny number of people who bet

a ton of money on the pound tanking, who thought Brexit was going to be good for them

in terms of commerce or finances? It's a missing bit of the jigsaw

for me, Toby. I think it was a very long, drawn out idea that people wanted

The people who wanted to get it through because it would benefit them. And we're talking

about the people who didn't want to see scrutiny of taxation, the people who didn't want to see the European oversight

of what was going on in our country. And also, if you look at what's happened with things like water

and our other industries, that we used to have some of the cleanest beaches and water in Europe

And as soon as we left, the companies were sort of green-lighted into

we don't need to follow this anymore. So the missing bit of the jigsaw is deregulation

because that's one of the key tenets of... Yeah. Yeah, and that's exactly what's happening in the United States

where they're deregulating everything and they're throwing everything into the ground for the benefits of the people

who have basically wanted this for decades. It's a very long-term plan

It's not something that suddenly appeared in sort of 2010 with austerity

No, it's taken me a while to say thank you for that, because this is why when Rupert Murdoch complained a few years ago

he could march into Downing Street and they paid an awful lot of attention to what he said, but when he went to Brussels

nobody paid the blindest bit of notice to him. because you can control what happens at domestic level

You get your man into Downing Street and he'll get rid of all the rules and regulations

that are putting limits on your profits by instead diverting revenue towards stupid things

like paying workers or protecting them in the workplace. And what's also interesting is

I'm just sort of, you know, boom-scrolling. People still, I think it was, should we say

the Mr Vine show saying, why are we looking backwards? Why are we looking backwards? And the obvious answer is because we still haven't learned..

Point of history, Toby. Exactly. Why do we study history? Why don't we just study the future

Why don't we all give crystal balls to children in school? Why on earth would anybody look backwards and study history

Oh, Lord. Well, do you know what? You said we're all... Did you say we're all very stupid

I didn't quite use we're all very stupid. I said it very easy though to I think to make people Well you just answered that question haven you Because I getting a few texts saying but why Why have we all become so stupid And the answer is because we have national broadcasters asking questions like why are we looking backwards

in order to understand where we are today? Oh, my God. Can I just say something

Back in 1992, I was in one of my early teaching classrooms

and there actually was a unit in geography on the UK in the European Union

and I taught it to Year 5 children about our place in Europe

because we were heading into the EU. And that disappeared rather rapidly

obviously, as soon as we actually then became a member. But what that meant was that there was nothing going on

at any level of schooling, apart from maybe a bit of politics, to help educate people as to what was going on

And I think fundamentally, one of the things we can't say, they're going to look at the curriculum

is reintroduce this idea of our place in the world. And stick disinformation and misinformation on the list as well

teach people how to recognise when they're being lied to, like they do in Finland and other Baltic states

that are obviously under even more constant attack from Russian propaganda and lies online than we are

Lovely stuff, Toby. And that's the other thing as well, the other bit, I thought I knew everything about Brexit

but the other bit is when they used to say, oh, well, we're only supposed to join a trade organisation

That wasn't true. That was never how it was sold to people. Ted Heath was pretty clear about that

But that was actually what they objected to. It was the idea of there being Europe-wide rules and regulations on trade and commerce to protect workers that they hated

Because I'm never going to get rid of them, but if we can come out of the European Union and we can get Liz Truss into Downing Street

then we can really set fire to all the rules and regulations, all the protections and the privileges that workers enjoy

and keep all the money for ourselves. Dominic Ellis has the headlines. James O'Brien on LBC

It is 11.37 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

YouGov have done some polling into party leaders and they've asked people which three words they would use

to describe Nigel Farage. Have we got anything in the cupboard, Keith

Have we got any old tat which we can give away as a prize? We used to have some older LBC ice scrapers going back about to..

I'm not even joking, we did. It was just a bit of plastic, but you could scrape your windscreen and call it an ice scraper

Have we got any old toot knocking about Eleanor? Anything in the... Any books that we've been sent that we don't want to read

Give them away? Have we got... No? All right. Well, there's no prize on this

but can you guess which three words come top? So you ask a bunch of people

what three words they would use to describe Nigel Farage, and the three words that are most commonly cited

constitute the correct answer to this question. That's a thing we can play via text

Speaking of politics, which we haven't spoken about much else in the last couple of days. Natasha will be with me

in the next section of the programme to tee up Andy Burnham's first

PMQs. I got a message it's a funny one this, I don't know if it makes

me an anorak or whether you're the same actually but Mike was in touch

from Wolverhampton, he said, I thought you might be getting excited should I do the accent Mike? Would it be unfair

just to presume automatically because she's texting me from Wolverhampton this is your internal dialogue

I thought you may be getting excited for a new PM's. First PMQs

James, but then I remember just how many first PMQs you have done over the last few

years. Still excited, Mike. Don't know why. It doesn't even matter what party they belong to. There's something

about the moment, the sense of occasion that just gets me, even today. And I guess I'm more excited

about Andy Burnham than I was about Keir Starmer, rightly or wrongly, so I should be technically

more excited about his debut at PMQs than any previous ones. 11.39 is the time. So that's coming up

And then Luke Harding has written another incredible book, this time about Trump and Putin

Well, I'll give you the subtitle of it. It's called Betrayal, Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest

This will answer quite a few of the nagging questions you may have about how on earth things managed to go so bad so quickly

on the international stage. And speaking of the international stage, your very own Simon Marks will be with me just before one o'clock

to talk through the latest madnesses from the White House and beyond

But it's back to domestic politics for now. And the question of what does he actually need to do

I accept his diagnosis. The reasons why the country is in a much less fit state than it could be

are 40 years of mistakes or missteps or misapprehensions, best summed up as privatisation, centralisation

privatisation, centralisation, austerity, Brexit, and de-industrialisation. Those are the things that have gone wrong

So, how on earth do you undo things that are now so deeply baked into our national reality

I suppose is the word. Richard's in Tiverton. Richard, what would you like to say? I'd like to say that he has a real problem

What was that noise? Are you all right? Did you just blow your nose? No, I coughed, I'm sorry

Oh, I do apologise. I shouldn't be drawing attention to it. It's a bit rainy and windy down here in Devon

I've got a button I can press when I cough, but it was a little unlucky that the moment we went to you

the old tickle got the bit. Anyway, we digress. Carry on. Let's crack on

Burnham Place is an impossible task in dealing with the privatised industries

because the cost of buying them back simply cannot be afforded. And if it was afforded, it would have to come off other things

like welfare payments or defence. So we need an alternative. It's no good arguing, oh, we don't like the water industry

What you need to do is do a rail track. You need to go and have the drains up

work out how much money needs to be spent to bring the water industry to being legal and efficient

Then you need to tell them, right, boys and girls, you had the money to do this, do it or else

And then when they don't do it, you go to the high court and you petition to wind up the companies

just as rail track was wound up. So the argument is these companies are actually bankrupt

you know they're vampires living on borrowed time they're zombies and we can't go on like this

so we'll do a rail track so we force the issue yeah absolutely no more night mr nice guy is what

burnham needs to do and he needs to do the same thing with privatized social care and other areas

of the economy that are simply bust because they've been loaded with debt asset stripped

and are simply not financially viable but they blackmail us into letting them carry on and

And, of course, the fact that they are necessities rather than luxuries

adds weight to your ysis. How would it work? And you don't need to have the answer to this ready

I mean, heavens above, you've done enough work already. But with the private social care question, how would that work

Because I can see how you force the water companies to fix things

or they hand over the keys. It's a bit like a kind of repossession, isn't it, for failing

Yeah, exactly. How would that work with private social care? because there is a sense that they're rinsing clients

but there's not a sense that they're doing... Do you see what I mean

They're still providing social care. They're not dumping sewage in the river outside the care

No, what they're doing is destroying local government. They charging up to six figures a year to look after a child or provide social care for an elderly person That is not tenable That is not competitive

So we need to look into this and we need to set maximum prices that can be charged for these things

Now, once you do that, they rapidly stop making any money. They rapidly run into the ground

And you can then do a rail track with them as well. You can wind them up. So it is a widespread, long-term program of bringing things back into public control, back under public ownership, because they are things that nobody should be making profits from

Yeah, a bit like slavery. You know, we bought out the slavers, and then it took us hundreds of years to recover the money that we paid them to stop doing what they shouldn't have been doing in the first place

It's exactly the same problem. Burnham needs to decide no more Mr Nice Guy. He needs to turn the screw on these privatised organisations, drive them to the point where they can't make excessive profits, and they are forced to provide a fair service for a fair price at the quality required

And of course, I'm obsessed with these four tenets of neoliberalism, but the one that has allowed this to happen isn't just, or the two, it's not just privatisation that's transferred publicly owned services to private control, it's deregulation as well

So having fewer and fewer rules in place has allowed the madness to escalate, and in fact, you'd be bringing back rules to prevent them from taking the proverbial

If you look, for example, at pollution in watercourses, Liz Truss, when she was Environment Secretary

made redundant all the Environment Agency inspectors, well, not all of them, but an awful lot of them

and introduced a self-regulatory system where the farmers and the water companies reported on themselves

I didn't even know that. This is what I mean by the scale of the issue

and the widespread nature of the gaslighting. you'd need to have a particular interest, wouldn't you

to be fully au fait with that kind of thing. I mean, and it is all part of that for the forced legs on this chair

if you like, and free markets, privatisation, deregulation and austerity. Richard, I like it

I also like your can-do attitude. I mean, you are not sitting there thinking

oh, it's too difficult, you can't get the eggs out of a baked cake or the oil tank is too big to turn around

it's going to get stuck in the Straits of Panama. You think it's feasible, you think it's doable

Well, it was done with RailTrack. Yeah. And they screened the house down, but they all lost their shirts

Yeah, you're right. I don't see any difference between that and the water companies, except the water companies are a bloody sight bigger

And whilst RailTrack killed a lot of people through criminal negligence, the water companies' deaths and injuries are more insidious

Yes, I hear you. And take longer. I mean, crikey, you covered a lot of ground there, Richard

and I think quite powerfully as well. Thank you. It is 11.46

You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I'm just going to randomly read out some suggestions

Actually, no, I'd better just check what the legal situation is on this before I tell you the answer to the question

of what three words were used most often by people asked to describe Nigel Farage in three words

It's 11.46. James O'Brien on LBC. It's 11.49, you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

Some of these suggestions I can't actually read out. A lot of love for Nick Intivitant coming in, I have to tell you

And it's not wrong, you know. It's not just RailTrack you could point to

I think that Northern Rock would provide precedent for court rulings against shareholders

And there will be other examples as well. So bringing things back into public ownership, public control

perhaps a little bit more feasible than they feel at first glance

But the words most people associate with Nigel Farage, David's gone for fascist, narcissist

and dustbin Johnny suggests liar, racist, grifter that's a recurring theme liar, racist, Brexit

says Simon grifter, chancellor but these are my listeners that's an echo chamber

that's a self-selecting sample this is a clear sample of the entire British public

and the results are going to be very different than on the James O'Moron show

So, oh, they're almost exactly the same. So, racist is the most popular word used to describe Nigel Farage

Liar comes a very close second. And then, I can't quite work that out

It's either, is it insults? Liar, racist, and then either insults or a sort of dishonesty

Yeah, dishonest. So liar, racist, and then dishonest comes third equal with corrupt or crooked

Well, I never. Who'd have thought it? He seems like such a stand-up guy

11.51 is the time. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. And while we're talking about Nigel Farage, here's a little quiz for you

Which MP broke the rules on the first day back at Parliament yesterday

Oh, I gave that away, did I? Yeah, all right. It was Nigel Farage who filmed himself

or got someone to film him on the roof of Parliament, which you're not allowed to do

Perish the thought that anybody should write up that story under the headline, Fiddler on the Roof

John's in Canary Wharf. John, what would you like to say? Hi, James. Good to talk to you

Thank you, John. Carry on. I think Burnham has three chances. The first one is he's got to use his salesman skill

that he believes so much in and get out there and convince the nation

that we need to rejoin the customs union or the single market

Secondly, he's got to get out there, go to his friends in the regions

and start building homes. His so-called council house plan. Get everybody behind that program

And thirdly, although I understand what everybody said about public utilities, I am of an age when I remember when the Labour government

and then Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government came into power and all the publicly owned businesses

which included things like British Airways, British Leyland and on and on and on, were failing

Not all of them. Yes. No. No one. No, they weren't shoveling shocking amounts of sewage into our rivers, were they

While running the water companies. They couldn't give us coal to put in the power plants

That wasn't a water company. There were problems with nationalised industries, I grant you

But I'll give you one little counterpoint to this. Bill, what's his chops? Ben Elton made a brilliant documentary about how an awful lot of the demonisation of British rail was actually false

It was propaganda. He made a superb documentary about that. And the water companies were in much better shape than they are now

British Leyland was a disaster. But it didn't have to be. It didn't have to be

James, I lived it. So did I. I know what happened. So did I. I was six

I'll give you a very simple example. Go on, then. In 1986, I had a job on Park Lane in a well-known hotel

I was an assistant food and beverage manager, and I was being paid £900 a week

Flippin' heck. The guy who does the same job today. It's not getting that

In the same hotel, get £700 a week. Yeah. Journalism's the same, actually

Yeah. In 40 years, the pay's gone backwards. Now, the problem is, all the ideas about taking private utilities

back into the government's ownership, country's ownership, we don't have the time. Burnham has

Yeah, I mean, you still, I think, I disagree with you there

I like Nick Intiverton's ysis a little bit more, but just let me steer you back to that money thing

that wages thing. What can he do about that? Well, there's two fundamental problems

One is that companies, the world is run by major corporations in every sector

Yes. And the greed factor has overrun them. Yes. I know all this

What can he do about it? What can he do about it? Very simple

you can put in... Very simple, John. Do me a favour. Go on. Yeah, you can increase the minimum

wage. Everybody will complain about it. Everybody will threaten they're going to leave. Unfortunately, small

businesses will... Alright. It's funny. So you're going to be bold on

some things and you think some things are too big to tackle but I'm going to leave you with a..

I'm afraid I'm going to leave you with a bit of rug pulled from beneath you. I double-checked this because

I was only three at the time so I wasn't really paying attention. British Leyland

was nationalised because it ran out of money as a private concern

So the government nationalised it in order to protect 150,000 jobs in the

actual business down in Birmingham and Longbridge and places like that, and about another million

in the supply chain. And how long did it take for it to go out of business

and all those people end up redundant? Another 20 years, was it? There you go. What do you mean, there you go

It got nationalised because it was failing in the private sector. It didn't fail because it was nationalised

It just turned out, ultimately, perhaps they bit off more than they could chew

John, take care. Stop sending me three words to describe Nigel Farage

You're making me paranoid. I think you're messaging me. It's not very pretty reading

that. Don't worry, though. He called me a moron live on Nick Ferrari's show

not long ago, so it's perfectly reasonable to give him a taste of his own medicine

Thank you, John. Is it that time already? So, here we are

about to witness the debut Prime Minister's Questions performance by a new Prime Minister

Now, as I observed yesterday, because I went to posh schools, I was seven when I started at prep school, as we call it

and 18 when I left public school. And between those years of 1979 and 1990

there was precisely one Prime Minister. For the duration of my so-called education

there was one Prime Minister. If you had been 11 years ago, you would have just got in for the back end of David Cameron

So you would have had David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and now, lucky seven, Andy Burnham as well

And Natasha Clarke is here to tee it up. Good morning, James. Yes, Andy Burnham's first PMQ

So we got a bit of a flavour of it yesterday, didn't we, when he was in the House of Commons giving that big statement

and I actually thought he came off quite comfortable, quite assured. He seemed quite at ease behind the dispatch box

despite the fact he's not been behind there for a decade. So I think, to be honest with you

I've got quite high hopes for Andy Burnham's first PMQs today. I think it'll be really interesting to see how he treats Kemi Badenok

and whether she treats him differently to Keir Starmer. I don't think she will

We liked it when she was quite nice at the last one and it just made her seem much more warm and human

but she gets so much praise for being horrible from the people that she cares most about

And it is also a spiky atmosphere, right? It's a punch and duty politics, which it's meant to be set up to be

So, you know, potentially that's probably going to happen. But I think..

I can't see her landing many punches on Andy Byrne, or at least I can't see him caring particularly

I think it might be more water off a duck's back. Yes, exactly. But we have talked about in the past

Keir Starmer being a little bit unwilling and unable to answer some of the questions from Kevin Maiden

I think Andy Byrne is going to be far more honest and I think he's going to be far more open to answering the questions that are coming his way

I think so. I think Keir Starmer didn't want to give anything away. He didn't want to give Kemmy Badenock any information

And I think Andy Burnham might slip out. He kind of has to be, doesn't he? Because that's what he's selling himself on

Yeah. You know, he's going to be level with people. It's just Andy. It's an interesting point

I don't know if you've heard the trail for, I think it was Swarbrick's show actually, pointing out that Starmer came in promising

that everything was going to get worse. Which, when you look back on it, you can see why he did it

But, I mean, mate, whereas Burnham has sort of at least... He's done the opposite

Yes, he's going to work hard to make things better. I mean, you could, I suppose, defend Starmer by saying

things are going to get worse before they get better. Well, that's what he wanted to do. But, you know, like I say, you speak to so many people in government

and they think that was the beginning of the end. Do they really? That single line

Well, they think it's... And now I'm Prime Minister. Prepare for things getting worse. I think that's fair

I think it set off the government on the wrong note, which wasn't the note they fought the general election of 2020

on. So Andy Burnham's obviously setting himself up for a really big challenge

and he knows that all of the same challenges that Keir Starmer faced are still there. He knows that he's

got all of these problems mounting up. He's got a difficult budget coming up. He's got his first

conference speech. He's got lots of decisions to make, lots of money to try and

find to fund all the things he wants to do and it's going to be really difficult for the

optics, I think, ahead of the budget if he wants this big hopey-changey thing. Yes, exactly, hopey-changey thing

How mean he will be. Because I think he's, the temptation to be mean is almost irresistible

Starmer didn't go there. I don't think he had the... I don't think so. I don't think Andy Burnham loses his temper very much

No. Okay, Starmer, occasionally we saw him a little bit, just get a little bit frustrated. But will he be mean in a funny way

Will he put her down in a... Maybe. I think you have to have a little bit of fun

with Prime Minister's questions. I think he, you know... She's easily mocked. But you saw him with the

Who's a Naughty Boy then joke that he was quite good at reacting in the moment

I think he will be quite... It's going to be interesting. Yeah. I get excited. Even with Seven in the last 10 years, I still get excited

The last time I interviewed Andy Burnham, not last week, but the last time back in 2025, I believe, or 2024

I brandished a flip-flop in his face and he took it very well. So I think he's quite good at dealing with it

You were accusing him of flip-flopping. Well, the Tories were, so I decided it would be a fun idea to buy flip-flop

and to say, what do you think of this? Pulitzer Prize is in the post. It was fun, I know, exactly

It was actually my first interview for LBC. Any minute now. It's all gone downhill from there, James

We will cross live to the House of Commons as soon as Cammy Baden-Lock gets to her feet

He is very much to the man of Bourne, isn't he, Burnham? He looks really comfortable

Front bench look happier. They do, although yesterday I thought they seemed a bit nervous behind him

When he was doing that first statement, I thought they seemed a bit apprehensive. But John Healy certainly looks pretty comfortable on the front bench

Andy Burnham looks very comfortable there. And like I say, he should be. He's been a cabinet minister

He was a junior minister for many years. he was an MP for many years. This shouldn't be new territory for him, even though it's the first

time that he is doing PMQs as Prime Minister. And I say he has had a six-week warm-up. We've had the

soft launch of Andy Burnham This is the hard launch isn it Putting him on the grid Yeah I mean in terms of performance it is exactly that Not necessarily in terms of policy but we will watch with interest I mean he a slicker operator It weird

So much of what the back catalogue or the CV should have determined, the opposite is true

So I think technically, Keir Starmer's background was humbler than Andy Burnham's

And yet, partly because of the benefits of a Northern accent, Andy Burnham comes across as more authentically working class than Keir Starmer does

and Keir Starmer was a barrister. So, again, technically, Andy Burnham started on the trade press

He was working on a trade magazine in Brentford when he first moved to London from Cambridge

and Starmer was the director of public prosecution. So he should be much fleeter on his feet

and much quicker in verbal jousting. But, again, I think that the opposite is actually true

Yeah, it just goes... And I don't know whether Andy Burnham took partake in the debating society at Cambridge University

but, you know, he doesn't need to. I think he's too busy raving. He was probably too busy going to gigs and having a good time

That's why I never really illuminated the London School of Economics debating society

despite being a schoolboy champion. I found much better things to do when I moved to London

But it just goes to show you don't need that in order to succeed in the House of Commons

No, you're very right. And what do we think Ed Davies is going to do? Because he was actually quite a pebble in the shoe of Keir Starmer, wasn't he

He was indeed. And he always used to come to PMQs with a really interesting idea that none of us had thought of

or certainly I hadn't thought of. And obviously, social care so far, Andy Burnham's made that part of his attempt to work across party

And I think Davey will be wanting to continue to push him on that and to push the government on that

We also should try and tee up the Reform Party conference later this week

So I imagine we might be hearing from a reformed politician later. Haven't checked their list to see whether they are, but they will have obviously put their questions in

And this is going to be Nigel Farage's hardest ever party conference, I think

you know he's really facing the pressure he's obviously been on the back for

despite winning Clacton against a bin and I think this was going to be a really

really tough conference season for him he's got a lot of questions to answer

that we know about of course we may never know if anybody else was

siphoning money towards him in secret exactly so you know Keir Stamble was great at having a pop at Nigel Farage

will Andy Burnham want to have that same relationship where he was not

talking to Kenny Badenov Yeah, but he crossed the floor to shake his hand and stuff like that

I would like to see Andy Burnham reflecting what the British public have told YouGov

about their thoughts. You can accept that some people don't mind all the..

Well, I'll just read what the three words most popularly used by Britons

to describe Nigel Farrow as racist, liar and dishonest. So, I don't know

We shall see whether Burnham chooses to actually go in a little bit harder, a little bit more studs up than Keir Starmer

Starmer teased him. I think so, but I think he did get into his stride in attacking reform

And he would so often just ignore Kemi Baden-Ok and just go for Farage in a question later on in PMQs

And he'd sort of go through the motions with Kemi Baden-Ok and really go stunts up against Farage when he came up

So will that be something that Andy Burnham decides to do? Does he still think that the real opposition is reform, not the Conservative, despite what we see in Parliament in front of us

It's a three-horse race, really, isn't it, in the polling? It's a potentially very interesting period

Slightly longer than usual, no doubt, because Andy Burnham is, well, I don't know, doing some stretches, do you think

Flexing his muscles, getting ready. Oh, right, here we are. It's on. It's on

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And can I congratulate the Prime Minister on his stamina

Three hours. Yesterday... LAUGHTER Yesterday he faced 125 questions from MPs across the House

Of course, Labour and the Lib Dems just wanted more government spending as taxpayers' money

But can he name a single spending request to which he answered no

Prime Minister, what I can say to the right honourable lady is I was quite clear in my statement

about the need to get the welfare bill down. I do not want to be a prime minister

that sees a situation where we have so many people in their 20s

not in education, employment or training. I can't defend that. And I want to change that by giving more support to young people

so that we start investing in their success Mr Speaker, rather than paying for failure

as we have done for many years under successive governments Now this seems to me, Mr Speaker, to be one area

where we can both engage in problem solving rather than point scoring

and I hope the Right Honourable Lady will take up my offer on that point

Mr Speaker, he avoided the question he did not say no to a single spending request

and personally I think it's delightful that he wants to make everyone happy

but a prime minister needs to be a leader, not a people pleaser

He's talking about working together on welfare. I already made that offer

but that does mean cuts. He wants to bring the welfare bill down by spending more money

Yesterday, the prime minister told the House that his summer of promises would be paid for

by reprioritising within government. So what exactly has he cut? Well, in terms of what has he cut, tax is the simple answer to that question

Mr Speaker, within days of taking office I indicated that we would remove VAT

off electricity bills and that, Mr Speaker, will help people with the cost of living

and then days later with the support of my right honourable friend

the Chancellor we said that there would be a cut in business rates

for pubs, social clubs, live music, venues. So this government, lowering the cost of living

lowering the cost of business, and that is what we will continue to do

And can I say to the right-honored lady, it has to be fully funded

and those commitments are fully funded, and we made a decision early to be clear about our priorities

Digital ID is not a priority for me or for this government

We reallocated the funding and we made those commitments as a result

Mr Speaker, I asked what he cut. He says tax cuts. He hasn't said where the money is coming from

He talks about digital ID. Yeah, I know he said digital ID, but the chief secretary to the former prime minister

said that there was no money allocated for digital ID. You can't cut something that never existed in the first place

Mr Speaker, Lord O'Neill, a close friend of the Prime Minister, said yesterday's statement in the Commons was the last thing investors wanted to hear

Lord O'Neill is a serious economist. He knows what he's talking about

And sure enough yesterday the cost of government borrowing rose to its highest in 18 years How does he plan to tackle the government rising debt costs Well can I say to the Honourable Lady

Right Honourable Lady, I've worked with Jim O'Neill for 10 years. Jim O'Neill always gives me candid advice

We don't always agree, but he and I work together to turn Greater Manchester

from a former industrial heartland to the fastest growing city region in the country

They complain, Mr Speaker, but where are their ideas about growth? When they were in government

we saw 14 years of stagnant growth. We saw 14 years of debt rising as a percentage of GDP

I would say to her that the turbulence on global markets are because of that exposure that they left behind

We are turning that corner, Mr Speaker. In the first half of this year, we've had the fastest growth in the G7

Borrowing fell to its lowest level in six years. We're cutting the deficit faster than any other G7 country

I say to the party opposite, particularly to the right honourable lady

that is problem solving rather than point scoring. Mr. Speaker, I don't know what any of that has to do

with tackling the cost of increasing debt, Mr. Speaker. Collaborating with Jim O'Neill

is not how we're going to get the debt cost down. And he said yesterday that the markets would be worried

The markets are clearly worried that we now have a spendthrift Prime Minister

who wants to say yes to everyone but cannot tell us where the money is coming from

He needs to pay for all his new promises, and he has a choice

Higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts. Yesterday, he said change begins with honesty

So will he be honest and tell us, is he preparing to raise taxes again, yes or no

Can I say to the right-on-one lady, I've already indicated my first moves were to cut tax

but I'm not going to do what any Prime Minister has done

and is write the budget here. That will be the matter for my right honourable friend

But can I also say to her that he and I took a deliberate decision

to set an early date for the budget so that we reduced the period for prolonged speculation

of the kind that she is wanting us to indulge in today. But can I also say to her, and indeed to the whole of her

new shadow cabinet, the majority of whom were part of a government that lasted for 49 days

A government, a short-lived government that crashed confidence in the economy, hammered people's mortgages. She took a decision at the weekend. She removed a shadow chancellor

who said that the Truss mini-budget was a mistake. And she replaced that Shadow Chancellor

with one that helped to right the Truss mini-budget. And dare I remind the House, Mr Speaker

the leader of the opposition herself is on record as saying that Liz Truss is 100% right

What other thing can I say, Mr Speaker, in response to all of that other than God help us

Mr Speaker, the whole House will have heard that he did not rule out tax rises

Instead, what he did was lots of points scoring. He says he wants new politics

He says he wants honesty. So why is he pretending that a junior minister wrote that budget

The fact is, guilt yields now. The cost of borrowing now. Mr. Speaker, the cost..

They're laughing. They're laughing. I don't know why they're laughing, Mr. Speaker

The cost of borrowing now is far more than it ever was under Liz Cross

Mr. Speaker, the reason why that budget failed is because spending was announced before the money to pay for it

which is exactly what he is doing right now. He says it's the new politics

It's the same old Labour politics, tax and spend. He did not rule out tax rises

And what markets see is a government that cannot control its spending

So the markets will charge us more to borrow. That means higher mortgage rates for families

It makes life more difficult for businesses. And that pushes up the cost of living for everyone

Higher borrowing costs are the biggest threat to family finances. So will he rule out any more borrowing that will make people poorer? Yeah

Can I say to her something I said earlier? Debt was rising as a percentage of GDP under the government that she served in

and her new shadow chancellor served in, who was hardly some PPS to the Deferer secretary

with all respect to my right-on-one friend. He was in the Treasury, Mr Speaker, as a senior minister on the day of the trust budget

She mentions mortgage rates. Well, that was the day that they spiked

And that was the day the British public were hammered by the previous government

We are taking the action needed. to get debt down. This will be a government grounded in fiscal responsibility

It will stick to the fiscal rules, but at the same time, we will help reduce cost of living pressure

on our constituents, and that's the approach that we will take, and that's the one I would suggest the party offers it

They should follow too. Mr Speaker, he is the Prime Minister now

He needs to answer the questions. instead of spending time attacking someone who has more private sector experience than his entire cabinet

I asked him whether he would rule out more borrowing. He did not do so

We spend more servicing our debt than we do on defence. Almost double

There is war in Europe, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, Germany confirmed that Russia was behind the attack on Leipzig Airport

Tensions are so high, the director of the CIA flew to Moscow

We need the plan to hit 3% on defence now, but the armed forces won't know what they'll be getting until next July's spending review

There is a simple answer to this. Cut welfare spending and invest that money in our defence now

Mr Speaker, the honeymoon is over. isn't it time for the prime minister to ditch the vibes and get serious about defending our nation

well can i start with the serious point that she made mr speaker and that was the announcement by the german government yesterday in relation to the attack in Leipzig And I think that should unite the House in sending complete condemnation of that attack by Russia

and complete solidarity in this House to support both Germany and to support Ukraine

And that position will not change. And it takes me to defence

The very reason I appointed this Chancellor to his position is because of his strong commitment to the defence of our country and to defence spending

We will fully fund the defence investment plan and at the spending review we will set out a plan to meet our NATO commitments by 2035

There is no problem with our commitment to defence, Mr Speaker. but more broadly, the Honourable Lady has made a lot of accusations there about what went wrong

But I go back to what was the position that she left. The country was not heading in the right direction

Now we are heading in the right direction. Yesterday I laid out a clear, coherent, credible plan for growth

based on 10 years of delivering it myself. This is grounded in reality. I want to take it to all parts of the country

And it's all about bringing back a sense of positivity, Mr Speaker, a sense of possibility, growth in every postcode

Let this country believe in itself again. Let people have some hope. And that is what this government will do

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Speaker. there is really promising and exciting evidence about the successful use of psychedelic therapy treatments

for trauma, mental health, PTSD and end-of-life distress. Unfortunately, because many psychedelics are Schedule 1 controlled drugs

it makes access for clinical research bureaucratic and difficult. So would the Prime Minister and indeed members across the House

consider supporting my amendments to the Health Bill next week when it returns

which would keep safeguards in place but remove some of the barriers to some of this important research and treatment

Well, can I thank my honourable friend and pay tribute to his campaign on this particular issue

I was talking about getting the economy going in all parts of the country, innovation-led economy

and that applies to research and research into life sciences as well

And I believe strongly, Mr Speaker, we must address all barriers to high quality research in the life sciences

I'm happy to look at his amendment particularly, Mr Speaker. I will ask the Health Minister to meet him to discuss it

But of course, any changes must be evidence-based, proportionate and maintain our safeguards

Sir Ed David, Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Thank you, Mr Speaker

The Prime Minister said yesterday that Brexit ushered in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration

He is right. Our economy is stuck in this mess, thanks to the Conservatives and the leader of reform and their terrible Brexit deal

Unless we grow the economy, there is no way we can end the cost to live in crisis

or cut the cost of borrowing for the government. The answer is staring him in the face

Join the single market, get a new deal with Europe and cut costs for families, businesses and government

It's the bold step our country desperately needs. Will the Prime Minister take it

Well, can I thank the right honourable gentleman, and I think he is absolutely right to share the ysis that I laid out yesterday

It's clear. The growth, the low growth we've had, the decade of low growth, has been partly a result of Brexit

And the sooner the party opposite accepts that, the more we can start to face up to Britain's future and where do we go from here

I do want a closer relationship. I will build on the work of my predecessor

There are issues facing British farming right now and there are issues facing British steel right now

And the Made in Europe agenda could pose significant problems for British steel

So as he will know, we are approaching a UK-EU summit in the next couple of months

It is imperative, I believe, that we work hard to get a good deal for British steel

for British farming as part of that new deal that he talks about

Sir Ed David. Well, I hope at that summit he will negotiate a good deal for our country, our economy and our defence

And that means rejoining the single market. But moving on, Mr Speaker, North Devon's maternity unit has been closed for three weeks due to staff shortages

So women now have to travel up to two hours to give birth

When my kids were born, I can't imagine the extra stress and anxiety that would have caused us

Women are even being taught how to give birth in their cars

This should be unthinkable in our country So will the Prime Minister commit to reopening

North Devon's maternity unit in days, not weeks And will he stop maternity closures across the country

So expectant mums never have to face travelling such terrifying distances So let me give a direct answer

I will commit to reopening, but not within days I don't think I am in a position to make that commitment today, Mr Speaker, but I am, again, in agreement with him that it's not acceptable for his constituents, for people living in the North Devon area, to have to travel that far. Apologies, I realise his constituency is somewhere else

So let me take that away and let me also, though, say to him with honesty, there are structural issues here affecting maternity services across the UK because this is not the only hospital where there have been difficulties

And I am aware from my former time as Secretary of State for Health

that there have been long-standing shortages of midwives across the country. And I believe it is right that we look at all of those issues

But I can give him a guarantee that my rights honourable friend, the Health Secretary, is looking at those issues

following the recent maternity reviews that we've had. Natasha Irons. Thank you, Mr Speaker

23 minutes after 12, and there it is. How long until we witness our eighth PMQs in 10 years

At the moment, I'd say it's going to be a while, but I've got a horrible feeling I said that two years ago about the seventh

24 after 12. James O'Brien on LBC. And it's after 12, so there it is

I'll rattle through a couple of texts and then we shall find out what Natasha Clark..

of all that. Josephine points out that Andy Burnham would have done well to listen to Andrew

Ma last night because on Andrew Ma's show, Jim O'Neill, who got a lot of mentions there

pointed out that the current fluctuations in the bond market, he said, and he was the

expert being cited by Baden-Ock, of course, that about 80% of that rise had absolutely

nothing to do with the UK. He is battering her, says Bruce. I don't think so, Bruce

personally. They really don't have a decent response to their record with trust, do they

says Lauren. Go on, my son, writes Ian, who is perhaps taking it a little bit too seriously

And Kemi's response to Burnham is apparently to be utterly joyless, which I suppose I've got to expect by now

Nonetheless, it's disappointing that she simply can't respond decently as leader of the opposition in the interests of the country

And Ben in Manchester points out that he failed the quite clear test

immediately, Psy. Can we not simply ban that expression in politics, or at least in Parliament? Kemi's tone is condescending

and sickly. I can see that starting to grate badly in comparison

to Burnham's speakers. I fine-toned, but he could do dropping with dropping the

I'm being clear comment as the public is sick to the eye

teeth of it. Burnham is coming across as the adult in the room, and

Badenock is back to being like Veruca Salt. And my two favourite Kemi lines so far from Will

I don't understand what he just said, and I don't know why they're laughing. Well

you want honesty in politicians, and that's what she's here to give you. pretty much a score draw was it or did he just slightly edge it oh i think he did slightly edge

it um and on we talked about the sort of honesty um factor from andy burnham he did try to answer

some of those questions i thought very straightforwardly like saying to ed davie

yes i will commit to trying to reopen that devon uh hospital that he was talking about the maternity

unit being closed for for weeks said very honestly yeah i'll do my best i can't say when i'm going to

reopen it but it's unacceptable that it's done that's a promise that keir starmer would have never made. He would have never been so bold as to say that without even looking at the detail

But actually there was a bit of a ghost of Keir Starmer in the room, wasn't there? He's using a

lot of the lines that the former Prime Minister used, you know, highest growth in the G7

you know, we're turning a corner. That's a phrase that Keir Starmer used all the time. And talking about, you know, Liz Truss, that's an argument that Keir Starmer repeatedly used

and not completely unfairly. Of course, it's fair enough to point out the Conservatives

record on the economy and mortgage rates and interest rates going up. But it did feel like

he was using quite a lot of old lines that maybe number 10 or the PMQ's prep team have shoved in

front of his face from previous prime ministers. It did feel like maybe he's yet to get into the

real Andy Burnham. There's a bruise there that he's going to keep punching for all the talk of

not point scoring. I don't think you cannot repeatedly point out that the shadow chancellor

was financial secretary to the Treasury and a major cheerleader of Liz Truss's so-called many budget

So much so, in fact, that Liz Truss herself posted yesterday congratulations to Andrew Griffith on becoming Shadow Chancellor

The economic establishment of the last three decades has failed Britain. They must be taken on

So he'll be gutted. He'll be absolutely devastated at this endorsement. That's the worst thing that could happen on the first day in the job

Liz Truss is kind of trying to paint me as her man. I know. It's awful, isn't it? I saw this and I thought, I'll ask you, Philip

Sorry for you now. Yes, indeed. And, you know, for all Andy Burnham does talk about wanting not to point score

unfortunately in politics you have to do a bit of point scoring. That's the whole point of political debate

You have to prove that you're better than your opponent. You have to be better, a fleeter on your feet

and quicker to answer and answer in a better way. But I did think that, I agree with you

that at the end of that performance, Kemi Baden-Ox started to lose her rag with him

But I said that off air, so in case people are confused about what you're agreeing with me

Sorry, yes, you did. and she's not, I mean, I don't think she's very good. But she does tend to do that at the end of the session, doesn't she

It's a bit like somebody... When her notes run away from her, probably. It's like when you're having an argument with someone

and they just shout back, you're not listening at me, you're not listening, you're not listening to what I'm saying

Let me finish! Let me finish! Let me just get my argument across

And she doesn't, she's not really able to understand that it doesn't matter what you say, Kirby Bader

or Andy Burnham's not going to agree with you. And she can't accept that, and she seems like she's desperately trying to change his mind

That's not what PMQs is about. It's not how you play this game

But very interesting on him repeating that promise that he wants to work with the Conservatives

to bring the welfare bill down. That would be a really interesting one to watch. Well, just in case there's a chance that Labour MPs

may not vote for something like they didn't before, the Conservatives may offer their support up

in terms of votes to get it through the House of Commons. I don't think that will happen in reality

I think Kemi Bajanok has already put a number of conditions on those talks and it won't happen

So he's diffusing her weapon, really, by saying neither of them have got any intention, really, of acting like that

No, probably not. But I think there will be occasions where they will work together and actually that will be a nice occasion for politics

They're a bit bruised, though. It's a weirder point. I don't want to get obsessed with it. But, I mean, you know, the first thing you do

don't put anyone, Truss adjacent, in the Treasury. It made him shadow chance

Truss is number three. It's Bader Knots number one. He's been promoted

Yeah. And she clearly thinks this is the man that can win us an argument on the economy for the next election

And it's a real problem. It's a real problem for the Conservatives because they're not going to be able to shake off that ghost of Liz Truss

in the way that Keir Starmer couldn't shake off that ghost of Jeremy Corbyn

And I think it's going to continue. It's one of the main reasons I think many people still don't want to go back to the Conservatives

and vote for them anytime soon. We think they're the right plans because those plans make our economy competitive

What we politicians are responsible for is making the economic decisions that will drive continued growth

One of the things that, I mean, he didn't just sort of sit there and wait for the whole thing to fall apart

Here you go. That's why I, the Chancellor, my colleague in government, are focused on getting on delivering that growth plan

That is what, I mean, he was a big cheerleader for it, arguably the third biggest name on the ticket

And in fairness, you have to be. When you're a minister for any government, of course you have to defend it

Of course you do. But yes, it's a very interesting appointment from Kemi Badenock

and I'm sure she will have been warned. Are you sure you want this guy in your shadow cabinet

Because he comes with a difficult past to be able to argue. Indeed

Although, I mean, some people may suggest she doesn't always come across as somebody

who is susceptible to taking good advice. Natasha Clarke, many thanks. You'll be back next week

as indeed will Andy Burnham, as far as we know. Coming up, I've got James Harding joining us in..

Sorry, Luke Harding joining us in the studio to talk about his new book, Betrayal

which really does do a deep dive into Trump, Putin and the mess that many people don't seem to realise the world is now in

And then on a similar theme, Simon Marks will be here with one of his regular US updates

It's 12.33 and Amelia Cox has your headlines. James O'Brien on LBC

Myself as an anorak again given the contents of my inbox at the moment Alright so Andrew Griffith the Shadow Chancellor wasn number three on the list of people responsible for the Liz Truss economic apocalypse He was number four So it goes Liz Truss Kwasi Kwarteng and then Chris Philp who was number two in the Treasury

and then Andrew Griffith, who was number three in the Treasury at the time

So, you know, it's good that they have been properly punished for their association with one of the worst fiscal disasters this country has ever seen

um griffith now shadow chancellor and chris philip um philip of course shadow home secretary but uh

but enough about them let's talk about luke harding instead he is as you know foreign

correspondent uh for the guardian newspaper and um indefatigable author most recently of betrayal

trump putin and the age of conquest what is the betrayal that that uh provided you with the title

of this book i mean there are several but the biggest betrayal is obviously donald trump and

Ukraine. I mean, since he came back, he's cut all direct US military assistance. He's tossed

Volodymyr Zelensky last year from the Oval Office. And he keeps mysteriously repeating

Kremlin talking points. And basically, my thesis or one of them is that he swapped sides

He actually supports Russia. He's the most pro-Russian president in US history. And either

he actively wants Russia to win in Ukraine, or he doesn't really care much what goes on there

I mean, you frame the question, don't you? Which I've heard a couple of other people ask as well

Philip said, Brian, most recently on this program. If Trump were a Russian agent, what exactly would he do differently

And when you actually think about that, when you try to answer that, it's terrifying

It's terrifying. And the point is, this is this chaotic, protean president with people coming and going and the cast being swapped like in reality TV

And the only constant that we've seen, James, over two non-consecutive presidencies is his sort of fealty to Putin, his submissiveness

And it really is bizarre. I mean, I write about the Alaska summit, you remember last year, where Trump is waiting for Putin to descend from his plane

And he starts applauding wildly and looks nervous. The word compromise does appear in the text

Well, yeah, for those not familiar with KGB methods, compromising material, which I'm sure by now, James, has been gathered on you as well

There isn't any, mate. I'm not so sure about that. But anyway, the point is that this is what the KGB and its successor, the FSB, which Putin used to run, does, which is to target upwardly mobile people in business and politics, particularly from America and the UK, and to try and seduce them or use them, instrumentalize them

And the thing is, we don't know what Putin has got in his vault

But it's clear, I think, that Trump knows what he did and Putin knows what Trump did as well

And I think this is one factor among others which explains Putin's leverage

Because the leverage is the most extraordinary element of all of it, isn't it? This idea that, you know, it may just be because, as you say, he's chaotic

or it may be because he is compromised, but he just is a puppet on a string when it comes to Putin's interests

Well, I mean, it looks like, and I think the other striking thing about our dark times

this sort of new age of imperialism, is that it's not just the Russians who, let's remember

stole Crimea in 2014, began a covert war in the east of Ukraine the same year

It's not just them who want to kind of reconstitute a great empire. It's the Americans as well

I mean, we've seen Trump threaten to annex Greenland, menace Canada, rename Lake Ontario, Lake America

And it's the sense that they're kind of dividing up the world, like the famous James Gilray cartoon

of people sitting there with knives and forks from the 19th century

And this is not the America that you and I grew up with, a shining city on a hill, a place of freedom

global leadership and so on. It's predatory, unreliable and grubby. And it's striking how quickly that has happened

I was delighted to see a reference to something. I began to worry

I dreamt in some sort of fever dream, going back to when Fiona Hill warned

I think at a Senate hearing, that the conversation she had reached her ears

about a deal being done by which Putin would be left to steal the rest of Ukraine

and Trump would, in return, be able to take over Venezuela unmolested

And that's so grim and Bond villain-like in its content that I seriously began to think I'd dreamt it

I had to double-check that it did actually occur. It's all true, and it turned out to be

prophetic i mean you know go go fiona hill but that's precisely what happened i mean

things move at such a pace you forget but just to remind everybody in january donald trump kidnapped

the president of venezuela and the problem was it was quite a successful operation that they

paraded him on tv and chains in new york and all great and i think this emboldened him

to next attack iran yes um and look at the the quagmire that he's ended up with in the middle

How do you do it? You manage to do something that a lot of us struggle to do, which is to simultaneously report the reality while recognising that the reality is completely warped

Because there's a danger of bringing a slide rule, a traditional toolbox or, I don't know, the Queensbury rules to a knife fight

Because Trump is so obviously unhinged and Putin is so obviously depraved that you almost can't say 2 plus 2 equals 4

Certainly when it comes to Iran, Trump will claim victory on Monday, announce another ceasefire on a Tuesday, threaten Iran with imminent destruction on a Wednesday, claim that they have been destroyed completely on a Thursday, and then go back to threatening them again on a Friday

How do you, I mean, do you just get your head down and crack on, or do you have tactics? I'm going to have tactics. I mean, I think the most important thing is truth

Yeah. Do you remember that? Vaguely. Truth and the idea of truth

In other words, that we don't fall for both sides-ism, that he says this, and they say that

A lot of the media still does, doesn't it? We're distracted by say, by speech, whereas actually what we should look at is what they do

And my other tactic, I think, is to be there, is good method

So I've spent much of the last five years reporting from Ukraine, including the front line. And as well as the geopolitics and the crazy swirl of international relations

what I try and do is give voices to the people caught up in this you know old people or families

you know those who are displaced or bombed or killed or maimed so so that history isn't abstract

it's actually something that affects you and me. They are the victims of the betrayal really

They're the ultimate victims of the betrayal and but for a kind of quirk of geography or genetics

that that could be us and we're talking in Ukraine about the biggest war in Europe since 1945 with

1 kilometer frontline with ballistic missiles and drones raining down on Kyiv where I live for much of the year This is not normal And of course you bring China into it because it just a form of green light for their imperial ambitions

We're back to the Gilray cartoon. We look at the ongoing intimidation of European states

And that brings us to the news that has broken in the last couple of days

with regards to the drone attack at Leipzig Airport. Again, you know, we're looking at Russia being blamed for a drone attack at a European airport

And you must be one of the least surprised people on the planet. Yeah, I mean, they tried to blow up a plane

Let's be clear. They tried to blow up a plane at a German airport. And I think, again, there's a sort of conceptual issue here

This is something which eludes many politicians, which is that the Russians say very clearly they are at war with us

By which I mean the UK, the collective West and so on. And there's a squeamishness to acknowledge that we, therefore, we are at war with them

But once you start from that basis, you can understand the drones, the disinformation

the bribery of politicians from the Reform Party or UKIP, to be precise

the attempts to meddle in our politics, to undermine our society, and also to incite us

I mean, you've had a bit of experience with this, so that we shouted each other all the time. You know, we don't have a civilized conversation and that the moderate center of politics somehow collapses

So this is the KGB playbook. It's being rolled out across Europe

The Russians especially hate this country and this town. They think it's full of tea-drinking MI6 spies

Probably you're a spy, I'm a spy, who plot ceaselessly against Russia

And it would be funny were it not actually quite serious. And had the guardrails that were largely policed

by the United States of America not collapsed so completely. Let me steer you back to the thing you just mentioned, chapter 11 of the book, looks at the bribery of Nigel Farage's close friend and protégé Nathan Gill on eight counts of bribery, ten and a half years at the Bailey, sentenced last year because he was accepting money to parrot Kremlin talking points in the European Parliament and beyond

And what's remarkable about this story is I know that the alleged Ukrainian-born Russian spy who bribed Nathan Gill

I mean, in fact, he sent me an angry email two days ago from Moscow, accusing me of being a member of the perfidious liberal establishment

But that story again. But the point is that British politicians sell themselves quite cheaply

Nathan Gill was getting 5,000 euros in used notes wrapped in a rubber band under a table in Brussels

to repeat Kremlin nonsense in the European Parliament. And what is... Some of his colleagues happy to repeat Kremlin nonsense for free, though

Well, that is the question. The question is that other members of his party

but Barron Myrtle's office was next door to Nigel Farage, were saying the same thing. They were joined at the hip

And witting or unwitting, paid or unpaid, they were happy to do Russia's bidding

And you have to ask yourself why, and also ultimately where their allegiances lie

Did you expect that story to have longer legs, a longer tail, Nathan Gills

Did you expect the ramifications perhaps to reach some of his former colleagues

and indeed his mentor, Nigel Farage? I mean, look, I tend to write about foreign politics rather than domestic politics

but if it had been a Labour politician who'd taken money from a Russian

you expect that the din, the noise... And a very, very close associate of the current leader

Yeah, would have been all enveloping. and somehow because it's Nigel Farage, he gets a free pass

But I do think that, you know, the flow of money into UKIP and reform

the associations with Moscow and MAGA is catching up with Farage. And I guess he doesn't come on your show, but he seems to have been quite quiet

He's always welcome, Luke. I just want to make that absolutely clear. 14 years we've been waiting for, or 12 years, I think

We've had the door open since he last stormed out of it. But, you know, I'm nothing if not an optimist

to Ukraine. There's some nice stuff, isn't there? There's some sort of silver lining territory. It's

a scant silver lining in some ways, of course, but they are now a world beating authority and

manufacturer of drones and drone technology. The status of Ukraine, if and when peace is finally

achieved, is utterly different from what it was before the illegal invasion. Yeah, I've been going

to Ukraine for nearly 20 years and there've been several Ukraines. It changes at warp speed and

really now they've actually surprised everybody including the americans and the brits by by

holding off this kind of russian monster and and now bringing the war to russian territory you you

heard zelensky recently saying you know warning that russian airspace is unsafe because it's full

of marauding ukrainian drones that have been blowing up oil refineries and warehouses and so

on and vladimir pigeon he genuinely expected to seize kiev in three days and to raise the russian

flag, you know, above the main street. And that hasn't happened. And of course, he's escalating

which is what he does. Which leads to the obvious and probably unanswerable question about how you

see things transpiring. Well, I mean, my assessment is pretty gloomy. I mean, I think the war will

continue so long as Putin is in the Kremlin. And it will end or pause only when he's removed

horizontally in a coffin like Leonid Brezhnev. Remember him in the 1980s. So unfortunately

he is bound up with the war. He has a kind of, he's given a kind of rosy portrait

of what's going on there. And he's an incredibly murderous and vindictive individual

One thing occurred to me, and there's quite a lot of very compelling ysis

of America's broader decline. The fact that Middle Eastern countries now no longer feel

either protected by or threatened by the United States on the way that they did under previous administrations

whether or not this is a consequence of Trump being useless or whether or not it is a broader issue of, you know, the rot setting in

Similar here, Putin probably believed, I mean, your ysis is that Putin expected Trump

to deliver the Ukrainian surrender that he wanted, that Trump would come into the White House and somehow strong arm or finagle

or just, you know, pull the rug from beneath Zelensky. That hasn't happened

Is that more, first of all, is that a fair ysis? Yeah, I mean, Putin's brain is a Soviet brain

And he believes that the Americans puppet the Ukrainians and can tell them what to do

And, I mean, firstly, that's wrong. And secondly, the irony is that by not supporting Ukraine with military assistance

I mean, the Americans still give intelligence, but not much else. That means that Trump's ability to influence events in Kiev is small

That's what I wondered. And, you know, he would love to bully Zelensky into signing a deal

He tried it last year. Because he hasn't got the leverage. It didn't fly because he hasn't got the leverage

which, and really, I think Trump has pretty much checked out with Ukraine. Certainly, American peacekeeping efforts have stopped

Another reason why he went into Iran. Another reason why he went... Don't look over here, look over here

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean again as I said the genre is almost dark comedy apart from the fact that people are dying All the time People are dying all the time And you address in the book including some extraordinary encounters with very sort of technically peripheral characters like North Korean soldiers who suddenly find themselves getting captured by Ukraine

A poignant vignette there and all sorts of other people in Ukraine who are living in circumstances that we didn't even see during the Blitz in this country

It's a bit vicious and it's primal and it's brilliant. So thank you

Betrayal by Luke Harding is out now. Trump, Putin and the new age of conquest

Bleak, that's the word, isn't it? That's the word that you just used. It's bleak, but I still think we need to try and be optimistic where we can

And hey, understanding things is always the first step towards undoing the bad stuff

And if you want to have a better understanding of what has gone on, what is going on and what will go on for the foreseeable future

you could do a lot worse than getting your hands on betrayal. Luke, it's always good to see you

James, thank you. I always feel ridiculous when I'm dealing with proper foreign correspondents

and proper war correspondents. I sit here all day just spouting nonsense into a microphone

Luke is the real deal, as I'm sure you've gathered if you didn't know already. It's 12.51

James O'Brien on LBC. Listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Continuing a theme there that underpinned much of my conversation with Luke Harding

the author of the new book Betrayal, Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest. There's something, no doubt, on Simon Marks' reading list

Absolutely. Continuing that theme, the stuff that happens that's huge and we don't properly note at the time just how huge it is

because it's the US Postal Service that you're here to draw our attention to. Yeah, very much so, James

And efforts by Donald Trump, undoubtedly in plain sight to engage in yet more jiggery-pokery

that is absolutely designed to suppress the turnout in this year's midterm elections now just two months away

A whistleblower has warned Congress that the post office, under the leadership of Donald Trump's hand-picked head of the United States Postal Service

is forging ahead with plans that could lead millions of mail-in ballots to be either invalidated or not even sent out in the first place

This relates to an executive order that Donald Trump signed earlier in the second term of his presidency that says every single person who gets a postal vote in America's elections has first to prove that they are an American citizen

And in order to do that, states all over the country must provide the post office with their voter manifests

so that the post office can be certain that every single voter that it is sending a postal vote to is an American citizen

Federal courts have so far blocked that executive order and have told the post office absolutely not to go ahead with preparations to implement any changes

to the way in which postal voting works in the United States. David Steiner, President Trump's hand-picked man atop the USPS

has nonetheless, according to this whistleblower, moved forward with what is described as a rushed, chaotic ballot tracking system

eliminating standard and needed testing, and therefore creating what the whistleblower told members of Congress

is a substantial risk of catastrophic failure of the system that could derail the midterm elections

And to put this into perspective, in 2024, one in three voters in America

in the presidential elections cast their ballots by post. So this has the real capacity

between now and November 3rd, election day in the United States, to upend things and is fresh evidence

of Donald Trump's determination to disrupt the system. To disrupt the system, but how can he be confident

that this would aid him, given that there'll be no control over which votes get next

and which votes don't. So he can be confident that this will aid him because it provides him

with fresh grist for the mill to argue that the elections were either not run

in accordance with his own rulings via executive law, or in some parts of the country

for instance, states didn't take advantage of the Supreme Court's permission that has been granted to them

to gerrymander their districts, redraw congressional boundaries. If you were the president of the United States

and let's remember, he is demonstrating absolutely no particular concern or even interest in the midterm elections

The bloke who spent all weekend publishing fake AI videos that either showed a group of Canada geese patrolling the shores of Lake Michigan

with assault rifles, or an entirely fictitious concocted video that purported to show an attack on Khark Island in Iran that did not happen

This is a president who's doing absolutely nothing to address the concerns of Americans 60 days out from midterm elections

but who continues absolutely to indicate that he is ready to fight the outcome of those elections

unless Republicans win them, and they evidently are not in a free and fair contest going to do that

So this is not an attempt to rig the vote, it is an attempt to prepare the ground for claims that the vote was rigged

Absolutely, 100%. preparing the way for it. It's amazing. Well, it is and it isn't, isn't it

I mean, there it is. Our postal service obviously disputing these allegations

but that whistleblower has some guts. Yeah, no question. And now, of course, Congress has to decide what to do about it

and Democrats have got the bit between their teeth, but Republicans clearly will not want to advance these investigations

with any degree of alacrity. So, I mean, he can whine and moan and lie

In fact, it would be a unique day if he didn't wake up one morning and did none of those things

But, I mean, the presidential election is the one we worried about most

that he might refuse to accept the results of a presidential election, which, of course, he did

But, I mean, what's the worst that could happen in the context of a challenge to the mid..

Months and months of litigation and the President of the United States going to the mat

and saying, I do not believe the new Congress should be allowed to sit as the Constitution calls for

You're looking at the real possibility of constitutional febrile, dangerous confrontation. Yeah, you are

Thank you for explaining that so clearly and bringing us in almost on time

which is my fault, not yours. The geese had Donald Trump haircuts, she

Did you know that? Did they? No, I didn't know. Donald ducks. Well done. That's it from me for today

If you missed any of it, you can listen back on the Global Player app or the LBC app. stay up to date with all the latest news videos and opinions

My podcasts are available there as well. There's so many of them, I can't keep count

So download the official LBC app for free from your app store now. Tom Sawbricht will be with you at four

but now it's time for Sheila Fogarty. James O'Brien on LBC