Why we are so moved by England at the World Cup | James O’Brien - The Whole Show

let's do it now

seriously why hang around this is you know I hate to say it this could be once in

well not quite once in a lifetime not unless you're only born in the last three years and 364 days

but this is a magical moment and I fully appreciate that some people

are left completely cold by sport by some sports, by all sports, by this sport

by that sport, by the other sport by sports sport but this is a moment of

And I also, of course, fully appreciate that this does not involve Scotland or Wales

But we are in a moment of extraordinary... What? What is the word

That message Tom read out at the end from Greg in Dorset. Can you tell me why, when I think about England and the World Cup

I have to stop myself from welling up? I'm taking my dad to a fan zone tonight

Come on, England. And that montage that they put together. um that's some beautiful stuff on the breakfast show today some uh um lovely little contributions

from england heroes of of yore uh if you're very nice to me and and you meet me in um

and you meet me in public at any point in the not too distant future and you ask me very very nicely

i might tell you the ones that didn't contribute because uh they demanded a very large fee but uh

but the ones that did all lovely lovely people all making beautiful contributions and all sorts

of speaking to something that is actually quite hard to pin down

It really is. Right, for the avoidance of doubt, and I think you know this, I feel it

I feel it in my waters. I feel it in my blood. I feel it in my bones. How does the Wet Wet Wet song go

I feel it in my fingers. Sorry, I promise not to sing again before the end of the program

But I completely feel it. I won't tell you which family member it is

but they clearly don't, because they just messaged me to tell me that Toy Story 5 is on at our local cinema at 8 o'clock tonight

and would I like to go with them? To which there is, of course, only one response

So clearly not everybody feels it, but it's not that that I want to talk about today

Because, and also, this is not confined to England. It's just today that we find ourselves in this extraordinary moment

But the question of what it is we're feeling applies to everybody

It doesn't have to be specific to football, does it? It doesn't have to be specific to football

It could be, I suppose, broadened out, but for the purposes of today's conversation

it's almost tailor-made for our programme, this question from Greg to Tom

can you tell me why, when I think about England and the World Cup, I have to stop myself from welling up

That's really the question. I mean, listen, don't panic. I'm probably going to do a 20-minute introduction to this programme anyway

But that, I think, is going to be the question that we end up asking. Why do we well up

Especially people who aren't particularly interested in football the rest of the time

or aren't particularly, you know, they don't fetishise flags or engage in behaviour regarding inanimate objects

to camouflage the fact that they don't have much emotional connection with other human beings

They'd rather get excited about a statue or a flag than they would about a person in need of help

or a human being in need of succour and support. Some people, of course, would much rather go to see Toy Story 5 tonight

but that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the what of it, not the why

What is it that we feel? What is it that explains why Greg is welling up

Why you had goosebumps down the back of your spine listening to that commentary. What is it? What does it touch inside us

What do these moments reach that other moments cannot reach? You know the number

You can book your place early today. 0345 6060973. Why do we all go a bit mad at moments like this

I want to pin it down. Well, I don't know that we can pin it down. It would be like trying to nail jelly to the wall, wouldn't it

But what is going on? Listen, if I were feeling... No, I think this is fair

You've got 22 men kicking a bladder around a field, right? However you break it down

it's a little bit illogical or irrational that the whole world stops to watch these moments

Various permutations of 22 men kicking an inflated bladder around a field

Some of the highest paid athletes that our civilisations have ever created

You know, not quite life and death. There's that great... Is it Bill Shankly, the quote about football

is not a matter of life and death, I can assure you it's far more important than that. The Liverpool legend Bill Shankly

I think it was him. And he was touching into what we're going to try to tap into today

when he said that. He was touching, wasn't he, on this sort of cognitive dissonance

that you simultaneously know it doesn't matter, but it's also the most important thing in the world

It's pointless. It's 22 men kicking a bladder around a field. But I will scream with delight and passion

I mean, I was watching... watching the Croatia game in a bar

I couldn't even understand the commentary. But, goodness me, jumping up and down, pumping my fist like an idiot

Why? What does it actually touch and tap into? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need

I was going to look at what's changed, why we are in a period that feels pretty purple

it feels pretty golden. When I was growing up, largely as a consequence of newspaper coverage

and really nasty men that used to run the tabloids in this country

it was open season on footballers. They would be attacked, they'd be written about in the vilest terms

But then, of course, I remembered what happened when three black men missed penalties

last time we got close to absolute glory. and the whole country, not the whole country

but a significant part of the country went full national front. So it would not be right of me

In fact, it would be a touch of the old white privilege, wouldn't it, to suggest that this is a golden era for not just football but also harmony

Everybody loves Jude Bellingham this week, but they didn't love Marcus Rashford and Bakaya Saka when they missed penalties

So there's always something dark and nasty lurking below the surface of these feelings

but on days like today I think and again please correct me if I'm wrong

but on days like today I think we can focus on the positive

and just try to work out what the positive is why? why do we feel

so much about this why does it touch us in ways that we are not embarrassed by

because we live in a society we live in an environment that doesn't encourage

embarrassment, nobody's really embarrassed about this, don't be boring you know don't message me

of course you can if you want but I'm not going to read it out to tell me that you're bored by football

because in a way this hour is for you this isn't really about the aesthetic

joy of watching 22 men kick a bladder around the field two of whom are of course allowed to touch it

with their hands but this is this is actually about what it is you

don feel that the rest of us do so it should in some ways be more interesting to people who are left completely cold by events like this Completely cold It should be more interesting to you than

it is to the rest of us who are just trying to self-diagnose a curious fever. Football fever

You're gonna get a little bit pompous about it, but maybe that's what the song's about. We're football crazy. We're football crazy. We're football mad. It's a kind of admission that

This makes no sense. This makes no sense. You know, you've got a family member who you hate

Chances are, if we score a goal tonight, you're going to start hugging them. You're going to start dancing around the sitting room

like you're auditioning for Strictly Come Dancing. And yet, by tea time tomorrow

you're probably back to, you know, battle stations. What is actually going on

Inside us and outsiders. Between us and within us. What is actually going on

Hey, you struggle probably to think of a subject upon which, for example

every single LBC presenter would be close to united. I can't speak for all of them, but certainly colleagues and friends with him

I may passionately disagree about some subjects, some of which are based on intellect, some of which are based on emotion

will be feeling something very similar today. I normally get a bit jealous when other programmes do something that I think is brilliant

and I wish I'd thought of it myself. So hearing Tom today playing out great messages of support and encouragement from other football players just made my heart swell

Just made my tear ducts tickle. It didn't make me go, oh, flipping out, why didn't I think of that

That would have been brilliant. So it just reaches parts that other moments cannot reach

Yeah, all right, you can also touch the ball when you're doing a throw-in. Thank you, Perry. Everybody loves a pedant

So what is it? and I think the way to approach this

is actually to address the people whose messages I'm not going to read out

the people who are minded at a moment like this to ignore the fact that millions and millions and millions

of their fellow countrymen and women are in a state of high excitement huge anticipation, magical moments

and your response is to go well I don't care, well I don't like it

not everybody's interested address them, tell them what they are missing not in terms of watching

the flight of a perfectly struck free kick, David Beckham, Greece, probably

Not in terms of watching an incredible save, Gordon Banks, Pele. Not in terms of these sort of measurable

and tangible achievements, but in terms of the intangible. The illogical, I think

because it doesn't make that... No one ever really feels like this about the darts or the snooker

football just goes to places there's a reason why that song there's a reason why Frank Skinner and David Baddiel

will never have to work again there's a reason why these things touch us

and I don't know what that reason is and of course it's not peculiar to this country

which makes it even more interesting it's not peculiar to Anglo-Saxon culture

it's not peculiar to Northern Europe far from it you know we're playing the defending champions tonight

well what is it and they will arguably go even more potty than we will in Argentina

Why? So you break it down into what is actually going on

and you put it in... I mean, it's one of those reasons why I'm not convinced that AI is going to take over the world

because AI can never feel what you're feeling now about the prospect of tonight's game

AI can never actually articulate what you are going to try to articulate

in a moment when you dial 0-3-4-5-6-0-6-0-9-7-3. What is going on? Why does it engender such extraordinary responses in all of us

including people who don't do it for the rest of the year? These moments, these single, these moments

these singular moments, that's a great phrase, what is happening in these singular moments

So, to be clear, I'm not talking about how I felt when Kidder Minister Harriers got promoted at the end of last season

I'm not talking about how I felt when Kidder Mr Harris almost beat West Ham in the FA Cup

I'm not talking about that feeling. That's tribal. That is tribal and a little bit esoteric

You know, that's club-based. And you can find yourself hurling abuse at some poor soul from Hereford

because he happens to be supporting the team that is the sworn enemy of the team that you support

That's not what happens on nights like tonight. Somehow it's different. It's not the same as supporting your club

it's less motivated actually by animosity and antipathy and it's more motivated by something warmer, something positive

what is it? why do we feel what we feel at moments like this

as the England football team prepares to go up against Argentina in the semi-final of the World Cup

with us probably closer to lifting the silverware than we have been at any point since 1966

what are you feeling and why are you feeling it? Alright? And if you need a nudge

imagine you're addressing someone who thinks it's all a load of old nonsense. Because these people exist

They're decent people. They're nice people. I hope they don't waste 10 minutes texting me. But what would you say

What are they not feeling? Sometimes that's an easier way to work out

what we are feeling, is by telling people who are not feeling it what they're missing. Well, why

Why is Greg welling up simply at the thought of England's match

coming up at 8 o'clock tonight? Why am I? Why did I have sort of shivers running down my spine

when Tom played out that montage a moment ago? What, what, what? Yeah, all right. It's a classic Marvin Gaye question

What's going on? What actually is going on? Because it doesn't make any sense at all at first glance

Let's try the second, the third, the fourth. All right, you ready? 03, 4, 5, 6, 0, 6, 0, 9, 7, 3

what are you feeling in this moment and why James O'Brien on LBC

just come here a minute alright, I need your help with something don't let me be a bully

today, because I don't think we're going to get close to an answer to this question I think it's like I said

it's like trying to herd cats or nail jelly to a wall what the hell are we feeling

as we prepare for tonight's game in the World Cup, and don't bore me

with messages about how you're not feeling it or you're Welsh or you're Scottish

because you either know what I'm talking about or you don't, whether you're currently feeling it in this moment or not

I want the people who are feeling it to explain it to the people who aren't, but I don't think we're going to be able to

so don't let me be a bully. Don't let me get impatient with people who can't do it

because I can't do it either. You may have heard this happen before on the programme. That's not what I'm asking

Give me the money. Show me the money, Gerry. But if I can't do it

I can hardly get cross with you for not doing it. But so just keep an eye on me, will you? Just let me know

You know, drop me a little note. 84850. James, you're bullying people for not being able to do what you can't do yourself

What is it? Tell me. Put it in a sentence. Put it in a paragraph. Put it in the Louvre

Steve's in Rye. Steve, what made you pick up the phone? As I was just saying to your producer

back in January, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Oh, mate. No, no, no, that's all gone well

Oh, good. And so, you know, I didn't phone up to bring down the mood. You can if you want

I really don't want to. But they now think it may have spread to my lungs so I waiting to hear on that You spent With great love Steve The old not bringing down the mood thing hasn worked out so well

I just want to make you smile. That's all I'm trying to do. That's all I'm trying to do

Don't worry about that. I have no trouble smiling, especially at the moment. Good man. But this particular World Cup, I mean, I'm 62, so I've spent..

I don't remember 66. No, would you? That's maths, that is. I've spent my whole life

dreaming of England winning the World Cup so your producer asked me

if it was hope, for me it goes beyond hope because this could well be my last

chance to see England win the World Cup so I've got it's a mixture of hope and desperation

because if England win the World Cup it doesn't matter what they throw at me

I'm totally happy. That's a beautiful distillation of what I'm trying to describe, but it's not

describing it, is it? Why? Why would it make you so happy that you can forget about

a cancer diagnosis, potentially? Because, because if England win the World Cup

the euphoria will just be unbelievable. I mean, every endorphin in my

body will be working overtime. But why? I'm not bullying you. Don't send me any messages to say I've already

started bullying people, but I am going to be like a six-year-old boy today going, but why, Steve? Why? Because it's that dream, isn't it? It's something

you never, ever thought you would see, and now it's in touching distance. It's a bit like buying

a lottery ticket and desperately hoping you're going to win it. It's not, though, is it? Because

I can sit here and work out exactly what I'm going to do with 10 million quid, or 5 million quid

if I'm lucky enough to bump into a cryptocurrency billionaire who's based in Thailand and is in the

business of chucking secret five million pound um gifts to people any time so and i know what i'd do

that i know how that would change my life so it's not the same at all this is in one sense meaningless

and in one sense so profoundly meaningful that it's going to transport you to a place where you

forget about potentially hideous news why why steve because because i've spent my whole life

dreaming that we could have him. I can't just keep saying why. Because it's just..

I'm a Barnet fan, so my football... Why, Steve? Why? I've asked myself that question

many times. But, you know, next week, I don't know, I might split City

But my footballing highs have been winning the conference. Yeah. And you're a kid, Mr. Pan

Everything's relative. But if England win the World Cup, it's just going to be..

It's magical, isn't it? The whole country will just... It'd be like every Christmas you've ever had rolled into one

The whole country will be happy. You're a poet. You're a poet, but you're not a philosopher

Because you're no closer to the why of it than I am. You're just describing the what of it

We're going to feel this, we're going to feel that, but we don't know why. Why? It's 22 men kicking a bladder around a field

and yet we're going to feel like all our Christmases have come at once. Because we never thought it could happen

There's lots of things I never thought would happen. Yeah. It's mad, right? It's mad

No, no, it is mad. It is mad. Do you mind if I call everyone Steve for the rest of this hour

So I don't have to check the stick. When I find myself moving towards the why

I'm just going to say, why Steve, why, even if I'm talking to Jim or Talia or Alison or Ian

Is that all right? I'm going to use your name as a sort of honour. Yeah, because you'll sound like my wife

Why Steve? Why? Why? I mean, yes, everything you've said is true

But the person listening to this who literally feels nothing about football in general and about the current scenario in particular

we, you and me, Steve, we've given them nothing in the course of this conversation, have we

Well, does it come back to the hope? The hope. Everyone understands hope. It's not the hope

It's the hope that gets you. It's the despair. I can deal with the despair. It's the hope

Is it hope? Is it but hope? But why? Why are you hope for good health? You hope for long life

I wish you both, Steve, as indeed does everybody else listening to this programme. What a remarkable starting point for the madness of what we feel

that it can be so profound and so powerful that it can even eclipse the kind of situations

that you have found yourself in recently and may yet find yourself in again, although, please God, you don't

I pray to the gods of football, all the gods you've got. So why, Steve? Why? Why do we feel what we feel in moments like this

Thank you. Jim's in Northfields. Jim, what have you got? I thought you were going to call me Steve

I will. When I get to the why, I'll call you Steve, but I'll introduce you politely, otherwise it would be weird

It'd be like one of those gentleman's clubs where the toffs call everybody John because they can't be bothered to find out their real names

We'll go with Steve or John or Jim, no problem. Carry on, Jim. Look, I used to... I mean, I absolutely love football now

I never did. When I was a kid, I never understood it at all. I got bullied a hell of a lot at school

and had a pretty, oh, it's all good. Loads of people do. But I had a nasty time

But when I got a bit older, sort of closer to late teens, I started getting friends

and I started just ignoring bullies and life became better. And part of that was watching international football

when people were all into these tournaments, the World Cup and the Euros

I sort of got it and I was invited to things. What did you get? What did you get

What did you get? Okay, so it's when I got invited to things, when there was a big match on

I'd go and watch the match with everyone and go, oh, my God, this is unbelievable. I'm part of something now

And it's the first, one of the first times I've felt like that. So I had this real, it was this togetherness

and it was amazing because I'd never had it. And we used to watch the matches and anything happened

But, you know, goals scored. No, you've done me. You've done me. You've done me

It was amazing. And I think now, like, I love football. And then I got into club football

Yeah. And I absolutely love it. And these games, these tournaments do something to me

because it's still, I think subconsciously, it's a reminder of that feeling

And it's an amazing thing. You know, like the last game, there were a whole bunch of us together at a friend's house

I mean, I'm a dad now. I'm an old man. Oh, my old mate. Oh, my old. You know, sitting in a friend's garden watching the game

and there were, I don't know, 30 of us and the kids were all there. And as soon as a goal scored, it's belting

It's just the best feeling. and I think, because I try to yse this

I wonder exactly the same thing. What is it? Why do I feel like that? Why, Steve? Why? Why, Steve? Why, Steve

There you go. I think it's subconscious. I think it takes me back to that and going

yeah, this is like, it was just, you know, back in the day, it was the first..

But if you were watching it on your own tonight, you would still feel an awful lot of what you're describing

You make a really good point, I would. You see? I probably wouldn't..

All right, there's times I watch, I'm afraid, Leeds United. I'm talking about tonight

Tonight. I'm not talking about the other times, where it is a sort of collective endeavour

and you turn to whoever you're standing next to and jump up and down while hugging them

But tonight, I was sitting in a bar in the Peloponnese with a family that was not massively engaged with it

although indulging me and commentary was in Greek There was only one other English family there but they were sitting quite far away and the first goal goes in and I am jumping up and down

So it's not the... Those moments are not collective endeavours, collective experiences

No, I get that, and I do feel it, but, yeah, I guess it's like watching a comedy on your own, isn't it

where you find something hilarious, but you won't laugh out loud. But you laugh differently, don't you, when you're in comedy

You do. You're absolutely right, and you set each other off a bit. So there is definitely something very communal about it

And maybe... Oh, massively. Even if people are not in the same room with you, you're kicking into that communal feeling anyway, aren't you

Because it's reminding you of the first time in your life that you felt you belonged somewhere

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely for sure. It's, yeah, to me, it's the only way I can explain it

But I get the question completely because I do think about it a lot. I think, why are we all..

Yeah, why, Steve, why? Probably everyone's got their different reasons. Yeah, well, I like yours. I love yours

But it's broad. I mean, it speaks to the football as opposed to this moment

It's an exaggeration, an embellishment, an enlargement of this moment, but it speaks to your love for the football

Why? I mean, there are plenty of people who never watch football at all, who are completely caught up in this moment

In fact, I'm getting quite a few messages from their husbands at the moment, people who never really follow the football

who don't have a club, who don't really care about it, don't even care about England in other tournaments

But this somehow reaches parts that other moments cannot reach. And why, Steve? Why

Thank you, Jim. It's coming up to half past ten. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

Let me read you a couple of those messages. It's a time of unspoken unity

Stuart picking up on Jim's point. My wife hardly ever watches football. She says she's a Villa fan, but she can only name Ollie Watkins

but the World Cup and the Euros, she watches every match and she dresses up the house

Why? Is it unity? Yes, an expression of unity. I mean, if I was going to get really soppy about it

is it a very rare opportunity to demonstrate that actually, given the chance, we all quite like each other

Rather than very much in this era, accepting the invitations to bite chunks out of each other

and to hate each other, it's simply saying, do you know, to paraphrase the late Joe Cox

We do have more in common than what sets us apart. I don't know

Is that too soppy? Why do we feel what we feel at times like this

0345 6060 973. It's half past ten. Dominic Ellis is here now with your news headlines

James O'Brien on LBC. It is 33 minutes after ten. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

It was the Mexico game, not the Croatia game. that I was watching in a Greek bar

not able to understand any of the commentary and not in any sense

Well, look, I'll just say, there's four of us sitting at the table and I was the only one that jumped up and down

in the whole bar. And I didn't feel a single modicum of embarrassment

So I think everyone who's talking about community and unity is right

But it's not the whole story, is it? Why are we feeling? Why do we feel what we feel

Why do these moments? To go back to the end of Tom Swarbrick's show this morning and the message from Greg in Dorset

which inspired this entire phone in. Can you tell me why, when I think about England and the World Cup

I have to stop myself from welling up? Let's get back to that question as well

Why? Why does it trigger emotions, often, particularly in men, and I'm not suggesting Greg is one of these men

who aren't very emotional anyway, aren't very good at articulating their emotions

aren't very open, and yet on this they will cry salt tears

Why? What is actually going on? Dan's in Lincoln. Dan, what would you like to say

Hi, James. Ten years of listening to you, I never thought I'd be actually ringing you about

playing listen up to Tina. There you go. Here we are. But it's great that I am

Yes, it is. For me, it's a bit personal, really. I'm a couple of years younger than you

and when I was younger, my dad used to have football on

and I used to be bored out of my tree watching him watch this

because it would take him away from me. And then the game that changed it all

was the Maradona game in 86, the quarterfinal, June 22nd. And I saw my dad become so animated for the first time

and so devastated. And something sparked in me. And 40 years of following football avidly since then

I now feel like we've got 11 people about to go out

who weren't even born then, who were about to kind of go and hopefully resolve all of that for us

So it's quite a personal thing for me. You know, my dad sadly passed away last year, so he won't have the chance to perhaps see it

And also, there's this fear of achievement in us. You know when you fear actually being successful, like most of the English do

Well, historically we have, yeah. Yeah, we have, and we're not very good at success, are we

We're not like the Americans, you know. we're rubbish with success and I'd like us to get rid of that feeling

It feels to be in retreat a little bit, that kind of although, I mean, to be fair

I think everybody who's contributed to the programme so far would have been insulated by their ethnicity

from what happened when those three lads missed the penalties because I'm getting a couple of messages saying

actually it has been spoiled forever for me this phrase here from Keith

they've yucked the yum we used to feel is pretty powerful for what will happen if it's a black or a mixed race player

that makes a mistake tonight, and let's just hope we never find out. But that's that, and I'm not making light of that

and I've got room on the switchboard for people who want to go further into that. But you're still not, because, I mean, why, Steve, why

I would now say to you, Dan, did your dad care so much about this

It doesn't really make sense on any level. No, it doesn't, I guess

I guess I'll never get a chance to ask him about that one

But I just saw the animation in him. I saw this thing come through him where he's quite a placid guy

When Maradona handled the ball in, he was furious. And then two minutes later, Maradona scored the greatest goal that's ever been scored

That's just insane, wasn't it? And I recall him being open-mouthed as if to say, oh

So it touches you. I mean, maybe there are millions and millions of quite individual answers to this question

There's a commonality that's triggered by these moments, but it's born of something very personal and something very specific

You couldn't separate it from your dad. Perhaps not. I would really like to see us overcome this fear of success, though

If you remember in Euro 96, we were heading towards it. There was a swell of good feeling around that time

because of what was happening in the country. And I'd like us to see us go over that line

to see actually what happens in this country. I get nervous when people who know what they're talking about

start talking about how we're in with a really good chance of winning the World Cup, you know, and that's happened

I think even David Baddiel posted something along the lines of it's coming home, and it really is this time

But none of this, and I said this would happen, and I don't think I've lapsed into bullying

people for not being able to do what I can't do, but we can't pin it down. Maybe that's the magic of it

Dan, take care. Maybe that is part of the magic of it. Is it Tennyson? Ours is not to reason why

ours is just to do or die. Okay, pretentiousness alert. So compare it to war. Why on earth did we

send our sons to die in the first world war over what was essentially a squabble between cousins

between various grandsons of Queen Victoria? And why did we feel such extraordinary

I mean, it's evolutionary. And football is the nearest that we get to that

There's a reason why the iconography is often quite military. There's kind of Henry V type echoes

and the cross, of course, of St. George. What is happening inside us there

is that we're actually turning off critical thinking. We're doing that thing that Keats wrote about

I told you I was going to get pretentious. You've already had your Tennyson. Ours is not the reason why

Ours is just to do or do. It was Tennyson, wasn't it, Keith? From Tennyson, a little bit of Keats

Not in his poetry, but in his letters. Keats wrote of his yearning for a life of sensation

rather than of thought. And that's what this moment gives us, is we don't actually have to think about anything

Old Steve doesn't even have to think about the possible return of his cancer

You can turn off the life of thought. you can turn off the voices in your head it's i mean whether you do yoga or whether you do golf or

whether you just like trance music we spend our lives pursuing the things that free us from the

quotidian that allow us to turn off the noises in our head that are constantly questioning and

quibbling the better you are at yoga the more peaceful you will be most of us never discover

that kind of thing. Call it zen, call it what you will. Football

oddly, despite the fact that we can move on a knife edge from being

transcendent with joy to being violent with anger and fury, we're not thinking

while we watch. We're not thinking. We're just feeling. It is, pretentiousness alert, what John Keats described

as a life of sensation rather than of thought. And of course

sensations can be violent and negative as well, but you're not thinking

You're not ysing. Excuse me. Unless you've accidentally tuned into this programme

In which case we're doing the polar opposite of what we should probably be doing and trying to yse everything

Gary is in Calais. Gary, what have you got? First off, sir, the Tennyson's being ironic

If you want to do the poetry, a corner of a foreign field that forever shall be England

Okay, that's what you're looking at. What you're looking at is a myth. Yes, it is, isn't it

A beautiful myth. A beautiful myth. I was there. I can say that

I'm 70 years of age. I remember it well. I can shut my eyes and I can remember it

For everyone else, it's a myth. Did it really happen? It's like the Odyssey, Odysseus

Did it happen? It's there in the subconscious. We don't know. And look at when it happened, 66, 60 years ago

The height of Cool Britannia, the 60s. The Beatles, fashion. It had everything else of it in black and white

20 years after the war, a Russian linesman. Yeah, it was redoing World War II

Good Lord, yes, I know that. I mean, you phoned the wrong show

You phoned the LBC mid-morning show in 1966. You've got the lines, James

They think it's all over. The crowd are on the pitch. It is now

And we're all looking back to that, James. You've had 40 years of pain, or 60 years of never being there

30 when they wrote the song. 1970, when it all went terribly wrong

Yeah, but if we'd never won the World Cup in 1966, I don't think that the phenomenon that we are discussing today

would be measurably different, would it? Correct. Right, so it's not all about that

Go on. I'll tell you why. When did the World Cup become popular in 1966

I don't know, quarterfinals? When we built Portugal. Yeah. In the semis, that was probably the best game of the whole tournament

We built, there was the, Matt Ramsey's comments about their animals, Argentina, that Sunday

Up to then, the biggest thing we knew was Pickles, the dog had found the Jules remake up

And World Cup winning. Yeah, that then kicked it off. You've got the Portugal game, you've got the Argentinian game

Who are we playing? We're playing Germany. And that's what dragged everybody in

And I knew guys that were at that match, and I said, were you there? What was it like

I knew another guy who sold his 10 shillian ticket for five pounds

and thought he got a better deal. Oh, boy. But what are we getting

Because for people who don't know, Gary is a military expert who leads military tours, history tours in Normandy and elsewhere

And I just made a parallel with some of the things that war engenders

But what are we getting? What are we feeling? I mean, imagine the mythical listener who doesn't care

Doesn't feel any of the things you're describing. But what do you tell them? How do you articulate to them what it is that everybody else is going a little bit mad about at the moment

Hope. You're given hope. But then I'm going, why, Steve? Why? Because why do you hope for this so much more than you hope for other things

You know, hope is a many-splendored thing. Why this? Why do we hope for this so much

When you take it back to 66, everything you've ever seen in 66

You talk to people that were never there, never went through it, never see Bobby Moore raise that trophy

never see the three West Ham lads. You know, West Ham, they won the FA Cup

the European Cup and the World Cup. You get that trophy. No one's ever seen that, but you've all spoken about it

You've all seen it on the TV. You've phoned up radio shows. You've spoken about it

Yeah, but that's not it. Because, again, I still think we'd be where we are today

if we'd never won it before. So it's not just hoping to repeat history

What do you feel when the ball goes in? That some people watching would just go

meh, yeah, whatever. Let's watch Bargain Hunt on the other side. Last night, Spain beat France 2-0

It was on Bastille Day. Last night, I sat out in the courtyard. When that final whistle went

there was not a sound over the valley. You're giving me the what's. You're giving me the what's, not the why's, Gary

It's not like you. You're normally the king of the why's, mate. The king of the why's

But there's no why. We can't do it. It's a life of sensation rather than of thought

The whole point is that you can't explain it or articulate it

You just feel it. It's kicking your boxes. And it goes down to emotion

Yeah. It pushes the emotions. And who knows why? We'll never know why

Don't need to know. Nobody knows. Are we born with hope? Why have we pinned it on this

Because we've been told to. There is that attitude. I think there is

It sells beers, it sells shirts, it sells advertising. Not just here, all over the world

We have been told that this is that old Shankly quote about more important than life and death

It was tongue-in-cheek at the time, but it spoke to an eternal truth. And we've just been told this matters more than that does

This matters more than this does. This matters more than this does. And on the war thing, look at the quote, the manager

I can remember was it Liverpool or Man United I think it was Liverpool When it was in Rome they were playing a German team and they said to him have you ever been in Rome before And he went yeah last time on the back of a tank and we beat the Germans then

So it's all back to that thing again. It's the national pride

Well, yeah, I mean, you're tapping into something similar. And, of course, Argentina has its echoes

its military relevances, which some people have tried to resurrect, happily not ours

but it does feel a little bit like that and I suppose you would never be able

and Gary knows a lot more about this than either you'd never be able to convince people to lay down their lives

for king and country unless they felt this thing inside that was worth laying down your life for

and it is possibly very similar albeit much less serious than the thing that you feel

when you cheer on your football team a pointless exercise and yet one of the most powerful

emotional experiences we'll ever have Gary stay safe I got my Tennyson wrong, apologies

Keith, you normally pick me up when I get my classic poetry, incorrect

theirs is not to reason why theirs not to make reply theirs not to reason why

theirs but to do and die into the valley of death rode the 600, obviously the

charge of the light brigade is not the historical parallel that I am hoping

to see reflected against Argentina tonight James O'Brien on LBC 10.49 is the time

What is going on? A question I've asked you a million times

First time I've ever thought, actually, that's not the point. The point is that you can't tell me what's going on

I don't think there'll ever be another phone-in quite like this. I'm enjoying it enormously. But we can't pin..

So, yes, of course, unity, pride, patriotism, all of those things, but we can't quite explain

why our emotional reaction is so enormous. Our emotional reaction to something that

if you broke it down in mathematical terms, if you broke it down to brass tacks

it's meaningless, it's pointless, it's 22 men kicking a bladder around a field

But it's the most important thing in your life tonight, if not already

And if it isn't, that's fine too, but you can't deny the fact that there's someone over there

for whom it is, and we don't know why. and we probably will never know why. Although, I mean, this is really clever, I have to say

This one has given me lots of food for thought and it has a very tangential link to Jude Bellingham as well, actually

I mean, identically tangential to the link to Jude Bellingham yesterday when I did my world-exclusive football story live on LBC

This is from Dave, who's in Droitwich, just up the road from Stourbridge, which is, of course, where Jude Bellingham hails from

And he says, I have my hammer and jelly, referencing my suggestion that trying to pin down what's going on here is like trying to herd cats or pin jelly to a wall

We crave the sense of belonging and shared connection. Yes, it's about collective effervescence

Durkheim is your man. The god of the clan, he quotes, can be none other than the clan itself, but the clan transfigured and imagined

This is getting close to nailing it. Even when you're on your own, Durkheim would write

the individual soul is open to the action of all the forces surrounding it

So even if you're watching on your own, you are in the clan. You know, that extraordinary call, it was Jim, I think, in Northfield

having had a really tough old time at school. The first time he felt that he really belonged

the first time he felt he was really in a clan, was when he started watching international football with his mates

Even if you weren't watching it with your mates, that feeling has already been engendered

so that when you watch it on your own, the individual soul, writes Durkheim, is open to the action of all the forces surrounding it

Shared intentionality, more philosophers, Searle and Tomasello, we are watching, we are hoping

we might win. And that capacity is one of the foundations of human cooperation. All right

in layman's terms, when England plays in a World Cup semi-final, the object of emotion isn't merely

11 footballers, the match becomes a symbol through which millions of people experience

themselves as part of a larger social whole. With a W. Larger social whole. But that's

what we've been, we've been groping towards this, right? This hour. What are we feeling

We're feeling part of something huge. We don't really need to go any further than that. And

the better we do, the better we feel. This idea, Dave tells us, has become hugely influential

Many researchers would see a World Cup, a coronation, a mass concert, a political demonstration

even for clapping for carers during the pandemic, as modern examples of collective effervescence

God, I've got some clever listeners. Collective effervescence. So you would also look at ritual

and synchronicity. You'd look at emotional contagion, and you'd look at social identity

theory. So, says Dave Indroy, which just down the road from where Jude Bellingham and his brother

Job grew up, we do know why. And it is actually all of the things and none of

the things that we've already talked about today. Alison is in Kelso. Alison, what would you

like to say? Oh, hi. I think everything that I was going to say

is probably just about being covered. I think it is really a

unity and tribal thing, even though it's on a whole country scale

And, like, human beings are, like, emotional. because we're humans, so you want to be united with everybody

And in answer to the question of why on this thing, the only answer really is why not

Well, yeah, basically. I think parts of the elements of the country have been so divided

that you really want something good and something to unite that's not divisive

Yes, well, although, I mean, to go back to that message, and I know he's not trying to rain on anyone's parade

We no longer have that feeling around these parts, James. Ever since mistakes by the black and mixed race players

invited racist reactions from the so-called supporters who then lured them up when they score

They've yucked the yum we used to feel. I'm feeling really nervous about what will happen

if it's a black player or a mixed race player who makes a mistake tonight

So, you know, unity has been polluted perhaps by recent events. There is a bit of that, I suppose

but I mean, hopefully for their sake it doesn't happen. For all our sakes, but especially those

That's football, you know. I do. Anybody can make a mistake at any point

Goalies make mistakes and, you know, it can happen to anybody. It doesn't matter who you are

The best can make mistakes. Of course. No, of course. And that notion of collective effervescence

is that I'm not going to try to work out why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. I'm just going to let myself feel it

because it's lovely and it's wonderful. And if it doesn't curdle, if it doesn't get polluted

if it isn't spoiled by people, then we will feel it and remember it for the rest of our lives

Alison, thank you. Lee's in Sheffield. Lee, what have you got? Oh, hello, James. Good morning

Yeah, I had a massive gulp this morning when I listened to that clip

and I had to ask myself the question before you started the actual phoning

Same, same, actually. It's exactly the same thing that happened to me at, like, one minute to ten this morning

I just thought, what's going on? So I deep think about it I was thinking well it reminds me of being young and playing football Yes When it fit healthy and also it the ultimate dream and desires

If you're any good at football, you dream of playing in a World Cup. If you're no good at football, imagine a dream of playing in a World Cup

But so it holds a fantasy element, a memory of childhood for me

Yes. Sorry, and then I thought the other thing is that if football is essentially

a reflection of the human condition. I remember the World Cup semi-final

1990, which I called my first World Cup. It wasn't Mexico my first

But my World Cup, 1990. When we went 1-0 down to Germany

I went to my bedroom and I prayed that we'd get an equaliser

And we went back downstairs and he scored. And he was just utterly transformative. And now you're a monk. Is that the payoff

Now you've been a Benedictine monk for the last 28 years. Now I've ended up with Sheffield United, man

So, don't know what I'm talking about. You get plenty of penance. You got it

I'm a used Catholic as well. So, here's the question that none of us can answer

And I think it's good that we can't answer. Why do you care so much about the result

Tonight, well... Not just tonight, but then when you were praying, when you were on your knees in your childhood bedroom

Oh, yeah, well, I don't... Yeah, you got me going. Well, because I wanted the dream to be true

Do you know what I mean? But why? Why do you care so much? Why do we care so much

Well, I mean, just for me personally, it's because I loved football so much

and I loved playing football. And they are like an articulation of the best of us

of all little boys' and girls' dreams of being a footballer. They're like an extended metaphor of what we could be

Do you know what I mean? Cain, Sacker, Bellingham. And I'm going to do it again

I warned you. Why, Steve? Why? I know your name is Lee, but you need to be listening

I had to call early with Stephen. Why, Steve? Why? Because everything you're saying is true

Why do we want to grow up to be, in my case, Trevor Francis, actually, to show my age? Francis

Or Peter Shilton, one or the other. But why, Steve? Why? Why do we feel what we..

Because I suppose, I suppose that if the game, and I'm not so worried about talking to people

who don't get this, because I think that they've got their own World Cup

Yes, that's true. Of course they do. They'll have the same thing. I hope so. I hope so. Yeah, I do as well

because I hope they can feel this joy. But if you said it's become the dominant, it's the dominant form of an expression

of human condition in the culture, then that's what we're kind of reflecting

we're reflecting what the highest human ambitions are, I suppose, deep within us

And football is an articulation of that. I think you're onto something. I don't think I actually did a phone-in on it

but last year, or earlier this year, I told... I said I'd gone to a classical music concert

which is not historically my bag by any stretch of the imagination. I'm going to see the streets tomorrow night

And I suddenly noticed I had tears running down my face. And I'd never be able to work out why, would I

I'd never be able to put into words why I had tears running down my face

in the middle of a classical music recital. So why will I jump up and down in unbridled joy

if we go over the line at... Well, it's got to be the same thing

That essentially we know that this is what it means to be human

and this is an expression of it, be it football, classical music, great literature, whatever that might be

And we just intuitively know it's important to us. And like I say, it doesn't have to be football

but for us, obviously, as I were brought up and where we're in Sheffield, Sheffield United

it's been my entire life. So Sheffield England is a way that I can celebrate that

in a way that I can, Sheffield United. Well, not lately, anyway. my mum supports sheffield united actually um thank you mate that was lovely that was really

lovely what an amazing hour and and normally i get frustrated at the end of an hour if we haven't

actually got any scores on the doors you know what i mean i'd be like well hang on a minute

i'm no clearer now than well i am a bit clearer now that's the point we can't put it into it's

not science there's no formula there's no objective algorithm popping out the back of

our conversation that will allow us next time to just punch in the data and come up with the answer

why do we care so much who knows but we do and that's the point oh for a life of sensation rather

than of thought or the collective endeavor the collective effervescence all of those things it

just is and sometimes it's really really nice especially if you've got a brain like mine

not to worry at these knots in the hope that you might one day unravel them

It is four minutes after 11 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

This fascinates me. PMQs today, final PMQs of Keir Starmer's premiership. And we will be covering that in exactly the same way that we always cover PMQs

I've also, Peter Gagan, our great mate, Peter Gagan is going to come in with some insights into something

I feel that I've, nobody's perfect. I can't be across everything, can I? But I feel that a lot of you have profound concerns about this outfit called Palantir that I haven't properly reflected or articulated on the programme

Luckily, Peter will be in a position to do that a little later in the programme

And we're also going to have a look at, I mean, a hideous story that involves, well, I'll give you some further detail in a moment

I just need to clarify precisely what the legal situation is with regards to whether or not arrests have been made

but it really is an illustration of how we are oddly living in a two-tier society at the moment

but not in the way that the various exponents of far-right rhetoric would have you believe

How old are you? How old are you now? You need to enter this game

Obviously, if you're really busy, if you're working in air traffic control, then just keep me on as background

You shouldn't really have me on at all, to be fair, if you're working in air traffic control

But if you can't spare me a little bit of your concentration, then just ignore what follows

But how old are you? And how old will you be when you retire

What will the official retirement age be when you reach it? How many people actually know the answer to that question

And also, how old do you have to be when you start thinking about retirement

did you like me used to think there was something deeply weird about people in their 20s who talked

about pensions well i think they're going to have the last laugh lads actually so i can't afford that

sorry i've got to put that aside for my pension currently the state pension age is 66 clickety

click for men and well no actually it says here it due to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028 yeah So it currently 66 It going to rise in the next couple of years to 67 And by um it going to be at 68 by I get you the year in a minute

I think 2046. It's due to gradually rise to 68 between 2044 and 2046. It makes you realise how

old you are doesn't it because I won't be in that category but you might be and

I'm 54 years old right and I would say that in the last 12 months for the first time in my life

I've actually started thinking about retiring and that means that if I wasn't married to a woman

who's much wiser than I am I would have made practically no provision whatsoever for my

retirement apart from having equity in in a property in my home that that would be my pension

but how is that going to work because I'm hoping to be living in the home when I reach retirement age

the days of having a pension taken care on your taken care of on your behalf by your employer are

mostly behind us I think some people in the public sector are still lucky enough to enjoy that

experience and of course many people in the private sector rather than wondering why they

are denied it will get crossed with the people who've still got it that's how um that's how

excess capitalist societies work but how many times the best advice i would give to my children

is to start thinking about your pensions now actually to start thinking about your pensions

now i've got an 18 year old and a 20 year old and and i can't remember whether my dad said that to

I'm 99% certain that he did, because he was always a great one for giving great advice

learned from his own mistakes. Why? So, 54, I mean, what I'd like to do

is a phone-in on whether or not I'm normal. If you've just tuned in

I should probably clarify a little bit first. Give me a ring. Am I normal? 0-3-4-5-6-0-6-0-9-7-3

I'll be here all day. but whether or not most of us actually

has anyone got numbers? have we got any numbers on this? most of us do not think about the finish line

except in the vaguest of terms until we are approaching it until we can see it

and that's why I mention my age when does it come into focus? when do you start looking at the finish line

because I was away last week as you know and there's always that little bit of you I'm very lucky

I find myself halfway through the second week of my holiday I start looking forward to getting back to work

particularly when the news agenda has been febrile shall we say I'm not referring to the murder of Ann Widdicombe

I'm talking about the much, much less serious events that unfolded while I was away

and you want to be on air for this stuff or at least I do so there's a little bit of me that's thinking

at the age of 54 or, wow, we are going to reach the finish line

We are going to end work. My line of work, I mean, it could happen before I reach the retirement age

and I won't be required necessarily to hang up my headphones when I do reach the retirement age

In some jobs, you do. Do you know, if you'd met me ten years ago, well, you did, didn't you, if you were listening to the programme

So you may, if you've been paying attention, know the anecdote that I'm about to share with you next

I used to work in a shop called Aquascutum on Regent Street, which was a little bit like Grace Brothers

It was a really old-fashioned department store. It only sold clothes, so you didn't have, you know, it wasn't a classic department store

It was solely clothes. It was good old-fashioned men's and women's tailoring. Margaret Thatcher used to get her clothes there

John Major used to get his clothes there as well. And I always remember walking past the..

I must have been upstairs for some reason, doing paperwork or getting some receipts

or dropping off some receipts, and I heard a man sobbing. I heard a grown man sobbing

In a menswear store. And I think, shamefully, in fact, the door in which the man was sobbing was ajar

and he, I discovered later, was being told that he had to retire

He was being told that he had reached the statutory retirement age

and they had considered his application to carry on working after reaching the statutory retirement age

and they had decided that that was not going to be able to happen

that it would set an unjustifiable precedent and it broke him. I remember his name, actually

And I was so young and so green and so wet behind the ears

that it might as well have been happening on a different planet. Do you know what I mean

It was so inconceivable to me that a lovely man would be brought so low

by that experience, by that moment. I suppose if I thought at all about retirement back then

i would have thought about a life of leisure i would have thought about you know going to nice

and getting my uh trotters up i would have thought about having a lovely existence of

sort of permanent holidays it would have been a very idealized and unrealistic concept for me

retirement and i stayed with me for a long time i haven't thought about him in a while

i have to be honest i mentioned it to you i have mentioned it to you a couple of times over the

years. Because it stuck with me. You never know what's going to stay with you, do you? You never

know the things that are going to stay with you. But I thought about him a bit on holiday, because

for the first time ever, I found myself thinking, gosh, I wonder what I'll do. I wonder what they'll

let me do here. I don't particularly want to do anything else. Maybe a few more books in me

carry on writing a newspaper column, but I love coming on the radio. Scale it down a bit

maybe do a weekend show? Do you think they'd let me take Fridays off? Do I want to knock it on the

head entirely? How long can I carry on for? Looking at some of the older presenters on LBC

do I want to be doing it when I'm their age? Do I want to be doing it until I get my sandwiches

wrapped in a roadmap? Just having these thoughts at the age of 54 for, I think, the first time

in my life. What happens next? And that is entirely, or almost entirely

unfinancial. Do you see what I mean? I'm kind of conscious of roughly

where we'll be financially if I stop earning what I'm earning now

And, you know, touch wood, we'll be more than okay. But that's luck, not judgment on my part

That's because I married a woman who's much wiser than I am. And because I've been lucky enough to earn a fairly, I won't say ridiculous crust, but a very well rewarded last few years of professional endeavour

If it wasn't for that, I don't know what would be going on. My dad lost his job

on the Daily Telegraph, pretty much at the moment I left public school. And the expense of sending me to that school was so great

I only realized this after we lost him. It took up such a huge chunk of his income that it was almost

I mean, it was beyond cruel that those two events coincided because that money was, you know

ideally he'd have another ten years earning that kind of money and he'd be able to keep it all

It would all be for him and Mum. they wouldn't have to spend it on my school fees

which were even then immense compared to what they are now and it affects everything

doesn't it? If your earning power in your own calculations is curtailed early then when you

reach retirement you are not as secure, you're not as comfortable as you thought you were going to be

I'm sharing all of this with you because I'm going to ask you to share with me it's not necessarily relevant to the question

that I'm going to ask, it's my relationship with retirement because when I read stories like the one that is on the front page of the Times today

about millions more people having to work until they are 68 before being able to claim their pension

I have a curious mixture of responses, one of which is, and I've told you this before

what the hell is going to happen when all of the people in their 60s

their 50s and 60s now, who are living in rented accommodation and paying the rent with their wages

what the hell is going to happen when they want to or have to retire

I think that's one of the biggest time bombs ticking below the population of this country

I'll say it again. What on earth is going to happen when all of the people

all of the workers in this country in their 50s and 60s who are currently paying their rent with part of their wages

not their mortgages, that's a slightly different proposition. It's a very different proposition

What on earth is going to happen when they want to or have

to retire? Who's going to pay their rent? How is their rent going to be paid? That, I think, is an... I could be completely

wrong, and if I am, you'll tell me. 0345 6060973, but it strikes

me as an enormous iceberg upon the horizon of our national endeavour

But it's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about your

relationship with retirement. And if it's not good, then perhaps you can share it

as a warning to others. And if it is good, try not to sound

too smug. I say that, as you know, very affectionately. But, um

what happens? What happens? When it comes around? Were you ready

for it? 03456060973. And forgive me, but I'm much, much more interested in

what happens if you weren't ready for retirement? Because I'm 54 and I'm only just thinking about it now

12 years away from D-Day. 12 years is not long enough to make any really profound and meaningful adjustments

Well, I don't know whether it is or not. Someone will tell me. But what happens if you haven't prepared for it

And in terms of your personal relationship with it, have you realised very recently

that you can't afford to retire ever. You don't yet know whether or not you'll be able to finesse

a working life well into your 70s, but you know that your current financial situation

means that you will have to try. Have you woken up? Because 54 is my age, and it's the point at which

if things had gone differently for me, if the cards had fallen differently, this is the moment in my life where I would have gone

oh my God, I'm an idiot. I am not ever going to be able to retire

And I don't know what's going to happen to me when I have to. If you're in a kind of job where the state retirement age

is like a professional guillotine, that's the day upon which your working life ends

and you haven't prepared for it. What is going to happen to you

What is happening to you now? 0345 6060973. So it's a funny one

because I think everybody's relationship with retirement is going to be different. And I don't know how much interest or patience we've got

with people who have done everything right, although I bear you nothing but envy and admiration

How scared should we be about our population's preparation or preparedness, that's a better word

How scared should we be about the population's preparedness for retirement? And I'm sorry to keep wanging on about my age

but I think it's pertinent that a relatively intelligent well-educated, thoughtful person

hasn't given much thought to this until the last 12 months. 54 years, oh, retirement, where do I sit

What's my relationship with retirement? So, what's going on? 0345 6060973 and what happens when you realise

this is the thing I think I'm possibly most interested in what happens when you realise that you can't retire

What are your options? I mean, how have you had to change your life? We all grew up, didn't we, thinking that

was it 60 when I was a kid or 65? But we all grew up thinking somehow you knock it on the head when you reach a certain age

and you just put your trotters up and the rest of the life is golden. And in large part that was true

because most employers had inbuilt pension schemes and they don't anymore. What happened

What happens or what happened, because you've already been there, when you realized that you weren't actually ready to retire

but the world required you to retire. Like that poor bloke who I don't think for the record

I should have finished that story. I don't think it was the, well, it wasn't the money

because he lived on his own and he was comfortably off. Owned his own place in North London, I remember it

Well, he just didn't know what he'd do with his life when he didn't come to work every day

He genuinely didn't know what he'd do with his life. It's that old adage, isn't there, about some of us live to work and some of us work to live

He lived to work and he was sobbing real tears. A grown man of 65, I presume, or thereabouts year old man, sobbing real tears

Because he was not going to be able to come to work anymore. I mean, I can't remember

If I was feeling irresponsible, I'd suggest that he offered to work for nothing

because he was so desperate to come in to the shop every day. that's the emotional

side of not being prepared not being ready for retirement I'll take that as well

but I'm also interested in the financial side of it and if you want to get apocalyptic about it

tell me about the iceberg what the hell happened so on the one hand you've got people who do physical work

in which I'd include actually postman I was thinking about our postman the other day

He puts a flipping shift in. By the time he's in his mid-sixties, and he's told he's got to work for three more years

that going to seem to me to be pretty unreasonable and pretty unfair So on the one hand you got the people who simply can continue the job that they doing for another three years but crucially you got the people who like me have just spent their entire life thinking that retirement is just the next stage on the conveyor belt

the next box that you tick. It's something that happens to you, and everything's hunky-dory

You've realized, because you're wiser than me, it's not like that at all

What happens if you're not ready, but you have to do it? You're not ready, but it is required of you

It's 11.22. Sorry, that took a bit longer than I thought. But you know what to do next. 0345 6060 973

James O'Brien on LBC. Four minutes after 11 is the time. Readiness for retirement

And the rather vexed and kind of scary question of what the hell happens if you're not ready but you are required to do it

Monica's in Newbury. Monica, what would you like to say? Oh, hi. Good to speak to you, James. It's been a very long time

Too long, Monica. Too long. It's been too long. It was a Brexit thing last time

So my husband actually survived, well, he's surviving the Brexit fallout 10 years later

but it hasn't been easy. And he is still working, and he's still working because we haven't got a choice

He is 76. And it's, as I said to your researcher, I sort of try and stress to my boys

and to any of my younger friends, for God's sake, make sure you, if you can, get home

because we had our own home, but things happen in life. Nothing straightforward

We lost our home due to a very bad partnership he was in, which involved actually a John Lennon car

and that was in the press at the time, in the early 90s. So the house had been put up as security on a business venture

and it all went south. Yeah, and things, and it had to go. So I, a good positive out of that

I went back to university and college, which was my saviour, to tell you the truth

It saved me. And it made me look at things in completely a different way

But I worked in a college then, helping young people in apprenticeships

But for my husband, I mean, it causes emotional stress. Yes. If he doesn't work, because it's not the retirement

I mean, I try not to get emotional. No, of course. I would have expected

No. Any money that we did get in a lump sum, we've helped the boys where we can so they can get themselves secure because I think that's most important

Yeah. And I worked until a couple of years ago, but I had to get medical retirement because when things go wrong, they really go wrong

Yeah. And it's not through, you know, when I hear about people, I mean, I've got the same sort of things as a lot of other people

I've been very, very active. But then you're diagnosed with fibromyalgia and then you have osteoarthritis

And now they want to make... Yeah, I mean, I fight it. You do what you can, you know

because I've always been very active. But there are people... You can't fight nature, can you

You can't fight biology. No, no. And also, you know, putting out the state pensions of 68

One of your colleagues who I often hear, and I turn off because he's got a thing about

WASPy women and pensions, but that's what I was. I was a WASPy woman

You lost out on that. And you work longer and longer, and actually, I really like my job

but you can't, I can't. I couldn't, you know, people say, could you go and get something

I specifically couldn't do that all the time. In fact, I've got grandchildren now. I want to spend time with them

and I look after them, and that helps the younger generation to be able to save on childcare

It's a different value. It's a social value, not necessarily an immediately financial one

So is your husband still working? Yeah. And he's 76. Yeah, he's got his own business

and it's a heavy business. And he has no choice because... No

Are you still renting? Have you got back on the property? No, we tried to

We wanted to, but... It's harder than ever now, isn't it? It went higher and higher and it was really hard

So you're the person I was worried about. I mean, what... You can't..

He can't ever stop working because if he does, you can't pay your rent anymore. No, no

I mean, it's... I mean, we have got some savings and I have got savings

and that is, you know, but... I mean, until they're run out, then..

I don't think about it, James. I try and take a day, a month, a week

Well, I think there's countless people in situations like yours. Some will be considerably worse, or some marginally better

But this idea of the finish line approaching, and it just keeps moving further away

And now it's pretty much disappeared for you, or for him. There are people... I love where we live

We live in a lovely village. I've got a fabulous community. We've got fabulous friends

And, I mean, I treasure them above all anything. Because, you know, from the children being very small and growing up

so much support. But I see other people in other areas that are struggling more than I am

Because you've got a nice environment to live in. Even if the financials are a little bit tricky

then at least you've got a life that you like living, in a sense. And forgive me

I mean, you might not know the answer to this question. I don't, for the record. What should you have done differently

Right. I also say to Tom White, what should we have done? He said he was involved in a partnership which he couldn't get out

There were circumstances beyond our control, which led to solicitor negligence. So it was a little bit too specific, probably

Oh, it went to High Court and everything, this John Lennon thing, this car

Right. And it cost a lot of money. I mean, at the time, we remortgaged

but then, you know, I mean, you were probably very, very young then. 1980s

I thought mid-60s. But it went up. We had Black Friday. The interest rates went insane

You know, and you think, it's like now you think, we think, yeah, we're okay, we're getting on

Then you get Trump and power. Yeah, and the prices go nuts, especially if you're in the automotive business

I suppose the thing is, for the younger generation, and the advice you'll probably give to your grandchildren

is get a pension as soon as you can, and whatever you do, keep paying it. Yeah, I mean, my grandchildren are very, very small at the moment

No, no, don't care, Monica. Phone them now. As soon as you say goodbye to me, get on the phone to them and say

Nana, Nana says get a pension. I know, I do say that

And I put them in touch with people I know in the business and that

So for God's sake, do something. Try and get, if you're not paying a mortgage, that is a big thing

But there's a lot of people out there that are. No, I think we're frightened of the numbers

I don't know anyone who's done the counting. How many people like you, 60s and 70s, worked all your lives, having to carry on working, not least because you're paying rent, you haven't paid off a mortgage

So if you stop working, you stop being able to pay your rent

I don't know what that is going to look like when it's magnified by, you know, however many thousands, however many hundreds of thousands for the whole of society

And as you remind us brilliantly, Monica, this is actually a problem for everybody, not just a problem for the people who are currently at the sharp end of it

because for, I mean, countless other people, it's what the future holds

It's the massive iceberg on the horizon that we are all, and Monica conceded there that she prefers not to think about it

We're all doing that thing again. Don't look up. Don't have a look at the iceberg

because it's too hard to contemplate. Half past 11 is the time

Dominic Ellis has your headlines James O on LBC 33 minutes after 11 Have I got that thing that we talked about The thing you played me yesterday Is that still top secret or can we reveal that it is now live

Sorry, I should have done this. I should have done this off air. Do you want me to wait? Okay

No, I'm joking. I'm obviously delighted that I'm doing it on air because it's like real Toto pulls back the curtain

Wizard of Oz, this is where the magic happens. Look at the old bloke pulling all the buttons. Ignore the old man pulling all the buttons

Okay, we're going to wait a sec. but it looks as if Mystic Jim could become a thing

In fact, I'm going to make a prediction. Ready? I think we'll have a jingle for Mystic Jim by the end of the week

Let's see if that could be the first Mystic Jim, the first jingled Mystic Jim prediction

It's not a proper one, though. My predictions are usually political, and unfortunately, they keep coming true

So the aftermath of Ann Whittacombe's apparent murder, suspected murder continues with some of the people responsible for introducing the worst

sort of rhetoric and division into british politics casting themselves now as the victims

um there's something that's really important that needs to be recognized and i don't know

who else is going to recognize it violent language and and vile language is a universal problem

There are plenty of people who would describe themselves as left-wing, who say and write on social media hideous things

and there are plenty of people who describe themselves as right-wing, who say and write on social media hideous things

And what both of those hideous actors try to do is pretend that it's a problem confined to the other side

I suppose it's the centrist position to adopt, to recognise that it happens everywhere

Some of the stuff said online in response to Anne Whittacombe's suspected murder is unforgivable

It's utterly disgusting. But I read one character yesterday trying to claim that that sort of unpleasantness

is somehow confined to people from the left, which is, I mean, if it wasn't such grim territory

it would actually be hilarious. And also, on social media, on Twitter in particular

people have moved almost overnight from claiming that our free speech was under threat

to claiming that what they used to call hurty words have suddenly become death threats

It's extraordinary, that, isn't it? The hypocrisy required to follow that particular path

is off the actual charts. I've said to you for a while

they're not worried about free speech, they just want to be able to say disgusting things online

up to and including threats of violence. Because something really odd is happening in Faraj land

That Zia Yusuf character, a donor who's been given a job in return for giving a lot of money to the party

He's just been giving a press conference in which they're trying to cast themselves

as unique victims of unpleasantness. So I thought it would be timely, perhaps

to remember what their attitude is to threats and violence, because it is something that everybody should be concerned about

and nobody should be using to make political capital. I'll take you back first to 2016

If you are worried about some of the language that is being used

in the context of political discourse by often unnamed or unidentified people on social media

this is what Nigel Farage had to say back in 2016, just after Britain had voted to leave the European Union

and merely weeks after Joe Cox, the Labour MP, had been shot dead by a white supremacist terrorist

in the middle of Brexit campaigning. We have fought against the multinationals

We fought against the big merchant banks. We fought against big politics

We fought against lies, corruption and deceit. And today, honesty, decency and belief in nation

I think now is going to win. And we will have done it

We will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired

What's that about, without a single bullet being fired? Why use military language or the language of murder

when you're discussing something like a referendum? I don't know, but here he is again in May 2017

If I don't deliver this record that I spent 25 years of my life working for

then I will be forced to don car key to pick up a rifle

and hit the front line. I don't know if that's a death threat or not

I mean, I don't know who he's threatening, who he's going to shoot with his rifle after he's donned car key

but I think this counts as a death threat. Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the effing hotels

full of the B-words for all I care. While you're at it, take the treacherous government

and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure

If that makes me racist, so be it. Just go back to that top line. Mass deportation now

But not that bit. This bit. Set fire to all the effing hotels

full of the B words for all I care. While you're at it

take the treacherous government and politicians with them. So, a woman called Lucy Connolly there

calling for politicians to be killed. Calling for the government to be killed

calling for politicians to be set fire to. And this is how Nigel Farage's party, Reform UK

chose to welcome that woman to the stage at their party conference in September of 2025

Our Planet Normal guest this week has become a living symbol of two-tier Britain

The sheer injustice she has suffered has shocked millions of people across Britain

and indeed across the whole world. She's a wonderful mum, wife, beloved childminder

little kids from every corner of the earth she's taken wonderful care of

So I am, of course, referring to Britain's favourite political prisoner. Ladies and gentlemen, please give the warmest of welcomes to Lucy Connelly

I didn't actually know they had a theme tune

I probably should have warned you. So just to recap on her greatest hits

Set fire to all the effing hotels full of the B words for all I care

She didn't censor it, by the way. She used the profane language. While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them

So you will, I think, forgive me for suggesting that for people like Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice

to currently be condemning the viciousness of public discourse in this country

while they treat that woman like some sort of folk hero is beyond outrageous

It is beyond disgusting. You condemn it all or you condemn none of it

You can't condemn some of it. You can't invite that. Listen to it again, all right

it. This is the party conference of the people currently claiming that they are passionately

opposed to and deeply concerned by the viciousness of language on social media Or even if you want to translate what they used to call hurty words into actual death threats then tell me what this is Set fire to all the effing hotels full of the B words for all I care

While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them

And now they're clutching their pearls and wringing their hands in public about the coarsening of public discourse

I'm not aware of any of the people who have said vile things about Anne Whittacombe's death

being invited onto the stage at other parties' conferences to be given a welcome like this

Our Planet Normal guest this week has become a living symbol of two-tier Britain

The sheer injustice she has suffered has shocked millions of people across Britain

and, indeed, across the whole world. She's a wonderful mum, wife, beloved childminder

little kids from every corner of the earth she's taken wonderful care of

So I am, of course, referring to Britain's favourite political prisoner. Ladies and gentlemen, please give the warmest of welcomes to Lucy Connolly

Alison Pearson and Liam Halligan there, providing a heroine's welcome for a woman calling for people to be burned to death

including politicians and members of the government um i suspect that one or both of them are

currently clutching their pearls and wringing their hands about some of the disgusting things

that have been said on social media as opposed to on the stage of a party conference um with

regard to the death of van wittekom listen this isn't hard condemn it all hate it all call for

twitter to be properly regulated don't give any uh credence to the people claiming that but like

Vance, J.D. Vance claiming that it's a threat to freedom of speech to get this poison taken off social media

But it's very, very hard to argue that we should be getting this poison off social media

if you are literally celebrating it on stage at your own party conference

So spare me the pretense that you are somehow opposed to vicious language

in political discourse when you literally celebrate a woman who called for politicians to be burnt alive in their beds

I thought I'd better point that out. Yeah? Because no one else is

It's 11.44. Let us return to the... Actually, no, let's take a little break and come to it shortly afterwards

I don't think it would be fair to expect someone to start reflecting upon their relationship with retirement

after that incredibly important reminder of precisely what the people presently pretending

to be deeply, deeply disturbed by violent discourse on social media actually do when one of their own engages in criminal

criminally violent discourse on social media. They invite her onto that stage

as if she were the winner of the X Factor or, I don't know, the British entry

in the Eurovision Song Contest. Unbelievable. But, of course, in Brexit Britain

completely credible. It's just coming up to 11.45. James O'Brien on LBC

11.48 is the time, and just an example of some of the language

that that Zia Yusuf character has employed himself. He's described opponents of his politics

as lunatics who deserve extinction, sick arsonists and traitors who will face a, quote, reckoning

So his speech earlier today, which I hope no responsible broadcasters took live

about how awful it is that people are using terrible language about people they disagree with politically

is yet another exercise in hypocrisy. Extraordinary hypocrisy. Anyway, back to retirement

BMQ's on the way. Leslie, in Nuffield, what's your relationship with retirement

and what can the rest of us learn from it, Leslie? Okay, morning, James. Hello

I'm absolutely dreading my retirement, to be fair, and very anxious about it, very worried

My situation is that I am currently 65. Right. When I started paying national insurance contributions

back when I had my first job at age 16, I was under the impression, or it was the case

that I would or should have been retiring at the age of 60. Yes. That was five years ago

And my current situation is that I will get my state pension

at the age of 67, but it won't be anywhere near enough to cover my rental costs and my living costs

Oh, sorry. So I'm looking at having to continue in employment. I'm self-employed, so I can continue to work after the age of 67

but I'm a swimming teacher. Oh. Exactly. Well, I mean, I don't want to generalise, but it is quite physical work

It's very physical. For example, I can be in the swimming pool, in the pool, in water

handling, manually handling young children for up to five hours. And that was fine when I was in my 30s

It was fine when I was in my 40s. It was harder in my 50s

It's hard in my 60s. And if I can't retire, I really don't know what I'm going to do

And do you own your own home? No, I rent, James. I think you mentioned that, forgive me

Have you always rented? No, I did have a home when I was married

but following divorce, my husband left me with a property which was in negative equity

So at that point, I had to go into rented accommodation. I mean, I hate it when my fears turn out to be justified, Leslie

because it's people like you that prove that my fears are justified

You feel, I presume, as if you've been pushed into the margins

of a society to which you've contributed for pretty much your entire adult life

It's as if nobody... And I understand the point you make about expecting to have retired at 60

but you wouldn't actually have been in a better position then than you're going to be at 67. No

It just would have come around a little bit sooner. Come around a bit quicker, yeah. Do you know what you're going to do

I mean, because you're going to need an income to pay the rent, and yet you're not going to be able to get it from doing

what you've been doing since you were young. So I'm hoping that at some point I've got a very rich uncle that I know nothing about who's got a very bad cough

Aren't we all, eh? Aren't we all? Ah, dear. And we smile about it, and you heard the lady earlier saying that she chooses not to think about it

Is that you as well? Yeah, it is. Absolutely. Because there is no option

You know, it's too late for me to do anything to provide me with an income going forward

So I guess I'm kind of sticking my head in the sand

and thinking I'll deal with it when it comes. It's Mr. McCorber, isn't it? It's Mr. McCorber and David Copperfield

Something will come up, he used to say, but I don't know whether he would have still been saying that

when he was in his 60s or whether he would still have been hoping that something..

And this isn't... I mean, I hate these conversations in a way because I want to say something upbeat and encouraging

but there isn't anything I can say to you, really. You are caught between the sort of scylla and charybdis

of life and financial planning. It's easy to look back and say

I wish I'd got a pension when I was younger, but... You didn't. I mean, the other thing that I'm concerned about

is that I'm very lucky. I've been renting. I have a wonderful landlord

I've got a one-bedroom flat, and I pay £670 a month, which in this area is crazily good

But God forbid, if he ever decided he was going to sell this property and I had to rent another property

you know, you're looking at double. Yeah, no. Oh, God, well, fingers crossed

I don't think anyone's counted how many people are either in your situation

or about to be in your situation or potentially in your situation

And I'm not even sure you can have conversations about pension provision in this country or indeed triple locks

without having an idea of how many people are caught in precisely the jeopardy that you find yourself in

Yeah. There is no easy way out. And that's why, A, you prefer not to think about it

and perhaps, B, why much of the media prefers not to talk about it, because it is, I mean, it's like looking under one rock and finding ten more

Thank you for sharing that. I wish you weren't in such a position to contribute to this conversation

I really do, and good grief. No fault of your own, that's the other thing

So I don't know where the tabloid rhetoric is going to go. People who need support from society, traditionally, in this country

since Rupert Murdoch bought the News of the World and then the Sun, the idea has been to pretend or to tell lies

about the people who need support from society. And you can do it if they're between jobs or if they're single mothers

or if you can portray them as feckless or irresponsible or lazy, but how the hell are they going to deal with people

who've actually worked for their entire lives and find themselves approaching the end

or should be approaching the end of their working lives, in dire need of support

in genuine and sincere need of deserved support. and I don't have any answers

which is one of the million reasons why I'm not a politician. Leslie, thank you. William is in shoobriness

William, what would you like to say? Hello, James. Yeah, I really want to talk about the retirement

Now, I am retired. I'm 64, and I retired two and a half years ago

Do you still love me? Of course I love you. Do you still need me? Don't try and think of the rest of that lyric

So am I. So am I. At least you got the joke. It would have been embarrassing if you didn't

Carry on with it. Yeah, I retired about two and a half years ago after suffering a heart attack

I'm sorry. So, well, yeah, it could have been worse. Yeah, true

But it's very difficult because I can see there's a bit of a lost generation now

So like the last caller you had, I have ultimate sympathy. Yeah

Because there's not a lot she's stuck. There's not a lot she can do. So really, my message would go out to younger people

and that is prepare for retirement. You've got to prepare for it

And it's never too early, right? No, no, no. What's the worst that can happen

You've got a little bit squirrelled away that you look back and think, oh, I wish I'd bought a car

but so what? You'll be glad of it in a few years' time. Yeah, I mean, the way I kind of looked at it

you know, if I'm preparing for my retirement, if I don't make it and I pop my clogs

then the kids will have the money. Yeah. I'm very pragmatic like that, you know

If I'm here, I'm here. If I'm not, I'm not, and such is. So prepare for it

And I've always viewed retirement like a bit like a Second World War bomber crew

Go on. If that makes some kind of sense. Yeah, I'm leaning in now. Go on. Right. Well, when you was on the bomber crew, you went on your mission

And you dropped your bombs. And after that, they said, right, now you're flying for yourself

Ah. So I kind of figured my going to work was I'm on the mission

But my retirement is flying for myself. It's what I make of it

And how's it going? It's going all right, yeah. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear it

I didn't expect... It's come a bit earlier than expected. Well, yeah, but fortunately

I was in a position where I could get by. The other thing I would say about retiring

is temper your expectations. Okay. Because, you know, everybody thinks they're going to retire

and you'll be having weekends in Rome with your missus and things like that

And unless you've got a lot of money, that's not really going to happen. So find your happiness within the parameters of what is plausible, what is achievable

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's good advice at every stage of life, isn't it? Yes, it is. But particularly when you can't kid yourself that you can pay for it tomorrow

with money that you'll earn next week, or you can pay for it next week with money that you'll earn tomorrow

because if you're out of the earning curve, then that becomes an even more ridiculous position than it is when you're earning

but not earning enough to pay for the thing that you've just bought tomorrow and plan to pay for now

I like that. You sound like a good... I mean, admittedly, as we've both acknowledged

the people who are in less happy situations than you are there through, in large part, no fault of their own

But it's important to remember that this isn't the destination for everybody of the relevant age or of the certain age

I wonder how many people in their 40s, listening to this now

could tell me what age they will be when they reach the state retirement age

I suspect a tiny percentage. I wouldn't be surprised if it was about 10%

I could be completely wrong. I could be sort of tarring you with the brush of my own irresponsibility

but I would not be surprised because it has changed in the course of your lifetime

and you probably haven't kept up with it. 11.57 is the time

I squeeze you in, Clive, in Canterbury, but I don't have a huge amount of time

and I don't want to miss any of Sir Keir Starmer's final outing as

Prime Ministers at Prime Minister's Question. So what made you pick up the phone

Well, that was brief. Clive, are you there? No? That's all right, don't worry

It's 11.58. Oh, he is here. Carry on. Yes, hello? I don't think this is

going to work. Is there some sort of delay on the line? And my apologies

because I know how annoying it is when you think that you've finally

made it to the to air and you discover that you haven't

I'm just looking at the House of Commons as I prepare for Natasha Clarke to

enter the studio and Keir Starmer is there holding his paperwork, holding his dossier

Not currently sitting down. There's a sort of changing of the guard in approximately two minutes time when the front benches

jiggled. I don't really remember. There's been so many final PMQs in the last few

years. It's sort of lost some of its majesty perhaps or lost some of its

significance, but it is still a moment, very much a moment in the

political calendar, and here it is, and there I notice on the BBC

they're doing the phone-in, they're doing precisely the headline there, that Eleanor and I decided

we'd done enough. What went wrong for Keir Starmer? We may get

round to that before the end of the week, or you may feel that we've done it more than enough already. Natasha

is here, our political editor. Will it be normal, PMQs? I don't want to

be rude about Cami Bader, so let me phrase this question diplomatic

will she I've asked you this before in other circumstances and the evidence

that it subsequently emerged provided an answer and that answer was no but will

she be respectful of the moment and the man I think she probably will use this as her final opportunity to kick the boot into Keir Starmer I don think we going to see some of the niceties that we regularly see with final PMPs I hope you wrong I hope I wrong too but I don think that her style

I just don't think she wants to do it, and I don't think she... Anyone would really believe her if she did do it

If she got up today and said, you know, actually, Keir Starmer has had some great achievements

and we'll be sad to see him go, I don't think anyone would believe her. She's moved so far beyond

It means it's the difference between parliamentary conversation and Twitter-based conversation, is that the nastiness and the vitriol has been so baked into performances

that to backtrack now and be nice would just look inauthentic and unconvincing

I don't think anyone would believe her. What a shame. And I don't generally, I don't know if you heard Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, speaking on the Sunday round

He was asked, you know, is there anything from Rachel Reeves that you can say that you think she's done a good job on

And he said, oh no, I'm going to scratch you in my head, I can't think of anything. which is disingenuous probably isn't it because let's be honest there's everybody will probably

look at rachel reeves and kirsten as record and you'll be able to pull out positives and negatives

everybody can do that but the fact that he was unable to do so makes me think that kemi bade

not probably will will not take the opportunity to to say thank you to sir kirsten she'll probably

just want to essentially gloat in taking him down i think is probably how she would we'd like to

look at this. Well, we forgot that. Of course, she'll claim the credit for it. She'll claim the credit. Done by his own party, of course, but she will. I think Farage has already claimed it was all down

to him. Badenov will claim it's all down to her. The only thing missing is the boogie

Exactly. The sunshine, the moonlight, blame it on the boogie. So what will she do? What will she go

for? What are his most vulnerable spots? Yeah, I think obviously the economic record is mixed

and Rachel Reeves has spent the last couple of days trying to defend it, but the two of them

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves so inextricably linked as Chancellor and Prime Minister

and arguably lots, you know, as I was speaking to somebody yesterday, a serving special advisor, who said, you know

so many of the big mistakes that this government have made in the last two years lead back to the Treasury, unfortunately

And that's the general view of lots of people in government, is that the Treasury and Rachel Reeves have made mistakes

and that has led in part to the downfall of this government. So that will be a definite weak one for her to put the boot in

Although they remain ahead of the time. in the latest polls well ahead of the Tories

So there's this curious combination of epic public failure and yet huge self-satisfaction and celebration

Now, as Mystic Jim predicted, with much of the right-wing media joining in, particularly as they come to realise that perhaps Farage

is not the messiah and is a very naughty boy, she will just not acknowledge that

Slarma might be going, but the polling is better for the Labour Party than it has been in years

Sure, yeah, and maybe part of that is the burn and bounce. Of course it is

And potentially maybe Kemi Starmer, Kemi Starmer, goodness, who's that? Kemi Badenot uses this Prime Minister's questions

to start attacking Andy Burnham, to start going after the man that's going to be

in that position in just a couple of days' time. Because we're not going to get

Andy Burnham versus Kemi Badenot for a number of weeks because we're about to go into Parliament for a recess

Six to seven week recess. Six, seven. Six, seven. My kids go nuts when I do that

Can't say that. Even Keir Starmer found out. You're not allowed to do it. Oh, sorry

It's just like a reflex. It's like a reflex. I know, I just pretend, can we scratch that

Can we delete that, Keith? Don't. Don't let that go anywhere. I want it off YouTube, I want it off the tape

I want it off the global player, everything. Don't rewind it, nothing. All right, I never did that, never happened

Ed Davey, presumably, will be a little bit more... He'll be a bit kinder to Keir Starmer

Although saying that, every time Ed Davey is nice to Keir Starmer, he ends up with a slapdown

I just don't think... I don't think Keir Starmer will be too respectful back

But yes, I think you've got much more of a chance there. But yes, it's an odd time when a Prime Minister is handing over for his final Prime Minister's questions

And you'll see probably lots of backbench MPs say lots of nice things about Keir Starmer

But privately behind closed doors, they are the ones, of course, as we know, that have basically ousted him from his position

Them and the Cabinet were the two real final straws for Keir Starmer's government

And I'm sure we will see lots of talk about Keir Starmer's legacy. He will obviously want to use this last PMQs to say, these are all the things I've done in the last two years

you know breakfast clubs i've put this defense spending plan in i've got the economy restabilized

i've got the world stage restabilized i've had a relationship with president trump i've been a

statesman internationally and i think he will be absolutely wanting to trumpet his record there

and kemi bay not all doing all she can to to essentially trash it and say the next guy it's

not going to be any better indeedy doody without mentioning the fact that they're beating her in

the polls still despite the fact that the current government has had uh far from a happy time of it

in the last two and a half years. Why did he get, and forgive me, this might sound like a gotcha

I don't know the answer, so don't worry if you don't, he got a Légion d'unner yesterday in France from Emmanuel Macron

the first serving British Prime Minister ever to get that on. Yeah, for his work on Ukraine, they said

a coalition of the willing, and I think it's fair to say he has really led on that

When I spoke to Yvette Cooper earlier this week, she says that she thinks one of the things that Andy Burnham

will be absolutely keen to stress is that the relationship on Ukraine and our strength standing by them will absolutely be certain

under Andy Burnham. and apparently there was a report out today saying that he's been told he needs to develop

a personal relationship with Zelensky to make that happen, which is interesting

because I'm not sure the two of them have ever met. They've got a similar dress sense

That's true, they do, they do. Swap black t-shirt notes. The anti-uniform wasn't wearing it

I might do this tomorrow, actually, or before the end of the week. Not so much where did it all go wrong for Kirstenmer

but the single biggest thing. I suspect not going to war in Iran

As more time passes, is that, just in terms of the most effective

the bravest political thing that he did, to tell Donald Trump to sling his hook

to accept the abuse from everybody, albeit that they pretend otherwise now, Baden-Ock and Farage both absolutely full-throated

in their expressed desire to do whatever Donald Trump wanted them to do

now beating hasty retreats and reverse ferrets galore. He got that absolutely right

Yeah, and I think, you know, critics will say that was the way the wind was blowing in our relationship and Donald Trump's relationship

But I agree with you. I think it's probably one of his strengths. Looks more right every day

Absolutely. OK, here we go. Keir Starmer's last PMQ. Mr Speaker, can I start by thanking the Prime Minister

for the way he responded to the murder of Anne Whittacombe last week

This is the first opportunity I've had on the floor of the House to commemorate her life

A lot has been said about how she died. I want to focus on celebrating the life she lived

She was a woman of high principle, profound beliefs with a wicked sense of humour

A wonderful combination of being a serious person who did not take herself too seriously

She changed her faith from Anglican to Catholic and from the Conservative Party to the Brexit Party

But she always remained part of the Conservative family. You may not always have agreed with her, but Anne Whittacombe was a woman who said what she meant and meant what she said

Hers was an honesty that made our politics better. Her wit and forthrightness sat alongside a deep humanity and decency

She had wonderful turns of phrase. She said, we need less political correctness and more political courage

She said if we deny our culture become nothing and everything that weakens us And finally Mr Speaker she also said it is a truth universally unacknowledged at Westminster

that there is life after politics. So with that in mind, I turn to this Prime Minister's final

questions. And Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make sure that I got the tone right today

So, I looked back at his final questions to Boris Johnson. And luckily for him, I plan to be much gentler than he was that day

Week after week, the Prime Minister and I have clashed at this dispatch box and rarely agreed on anything

But there is one thing I did admire. When President Zelensky was attacked in the White House

the Prime Minister showed leadership and invited him to Downing Street. That was the right thing to do

Ukraine is on the front line in the battle for freedom. So does the Prime Minister agree that cross-party support for their cause must endure

Prime Minister, can I start by joining her in a tribute to Anne Whittacombe

And I know that the hurt is keenly felt across all her friends and family

but it's particularly keenly felt by political colleagues in the Conservative Party for many years

and in reform as well. And that's why one of the first things I did on Friday

was to phone the leader of the opposition and the leader and deputy leader of reform

to express my condolences and to try to act in a cross-party manner

because I knew how much this would hurt them and their parties and many people in their party

And I thank them for taking that call in the spirit that they did last Friday. I thank her for her comments about Ukraine

We have stood united on Ukraine in this House. We supported the last government

in the approach that they took, and we've taken that approach on

That meeting with President Zelensky, the day after he was evicted from the Oval Office

he left alone, he got a plane, we got him to come to London

and I asked him to come to Downing Street straight away, and I walked out to meet him, I gave him a hug

and then I showed him what was in the street, which was many people who had come thinking that he was visiting Downing Street

And the moment he got out the car and hugged me, they cheered on the top of their voices

the British people, to tell President Zelensky exactly what they thought of him and the way that he had been treated

And that was a really emotional moment because it was the first human contact

he had effectively had outside of his immediate team since he left the Oval Office

I had a meeting with him to tell him that in this country we will stand with him and Ukraine. and I didn't let him leave alone

I walked him out to his car because we don't let people in Britain walk out of our buildings alone

We escort them out. Can I thank the Prime Minister for that answer

And no doubt he will be disappointed that he won't be emulating his hero, Harold Wilson

in winning multiple elections. However, we all hope that he may be about to emulate him

in another way, by being the Prime Minister when England win the World Cup

That is something that every single one of us in this House should get behind

especially the SNP. Mr Speaker, as leader of the opposition

as leader of the opposition, the Prime Minister led his party to a landslide

after a historic defeat. I fully intend to do the same. But if you want to lead this country, if you want to lead this country, you should set out your plans to do so

We have. But one politician intends to spend the summer avoiding scrutiny, refusing to set out his plans

So does he not agree that what the country deserves is a televised debate between Nigel Farage and Count Binface

Mr Speaker, they intend to fed the summer arguing with a bin

My advice to everyone is put your vote in the bin. Mr Speaker, can I just say that I'm delighted today that we are joined in the gallery

by some of the people I've met across the country in opposition and in power

and these are the people in the gallery today who are in my mind's eye

people like Trevor and Lewis, they worked together at JLR for over 30 years

and I visited them just before we got the deal with America

when tariffs were threatened, and I faced the entire workforce that day

who were very, very concerned that they were going to lose their jobs because the tariffs would not be possible for JLR

When we went back, when we got the deal, I took the call from President Trump at JLR in Solihull

so that they could hear the deal and they knew exactly what it would mean for them

The only mistake I made was putting it on loudspeaker, which of course is always a slightly unpredictable thing to do when you've got President Trump on the other end

but luckily he agreed the deal and the cheer went out but these are the people across the galleries who are here with us today that are always in my mind's eye

Mr Speaker, I know how much the Prime Minister has come to enjoy our exchanges

In fact, in the King's speech last month he told me that on difficult days

my input was always a ray of sunshine. He might not have answered many of the questions I asked him

but at least he turned up. It is important to respect Parliament. So does the Prime Minister

agree with me that his successor should come to this place and answer questions rather than

scurrying away for the summer? Mr Speaker, as Prime Minister, I have participated in

over 60 PMQs. Always a pleasure, always something to look forward to. And I've answered, or at least

given answers, on 2,800 times. And I'm sure she will question my successor in the same way

And I'm sure she'll forgive me if I just mention one or two others who are in the gallery who have

been affected by the decisions we've made, because Billy, who is sitting in the gallery in front

to me, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. She was there, Mr Speaker, when we launched our

plan for change, and she's been a tireless advocate for better cancer care. And Billy joins us today

from the Special Needs School, where she works in London, and I'm pleased to tell the House

that Billy's cancer is in remission. Can I thank the Prime Minister for that answer and paying tribute to so many of the people who he has been able to help In fact I remember when I started this job the Prime Minister was very helpful to me saying that I wouldn last the year

Life comes at you fast. He spent a long time laughing that I'd lost control of my party

I think he should have been paying attention to his backbenchers instead of mine

But everyone in politics would do well to remember how quickly political fortunes can change

I know that he has been asked and he's been diplomatic, but on that note, does he have any advice for his successor

Prime Minister. Mr Speaker, I will give my wholehearted support to my successor

I want this Labour government to be a success. I want our country to be a success

I shall give my support privately if asked for, not publicly when not asked for

But Mr Speaker, I also, if I may, wanted to draw attention to Pooja, who's with us in the gallery today with her daughter

I first met Pooja in a cafe at the back of Euston Station

And she told me about her son Ronan, who was murdered when he was 16, having just done his GCSEs

I have to say, as a father of two teenagers, I found that very hard to hear

And his killer, who was also a teenager, collected a ninja sword and a machete from his local post office

He bought them online using a parent's credit card, a fake name with no ID checks

And when I heard that, I said to Poe Pooja that I would campaign with her to get the law changed and make a commitment and a promise to her

And that's why we passed Ronan's Law, driven by Pooja's inspirational campaign

And today I'd just like the opportunity to thank her for that. Mr Speaker, that is a lovely statement that the Prime Minister has just made to Pooja

I'm not sure the whole House will agree. I think the whole House will also agree that he gave a very diplomatic answer to the question I asked him on advice to his successor

And having heard it, I say this to Labour MPs with as much goodwill as I can muster

We have been where you are. Changing Prime Minister is not a silver bullet

Indeed, it may be that the Labour Party's troubles are only just beginning

Solving the fundamental problems in this country will require difficult decisions. And you also need to know how to get things done

The Prime Minister once said that when he pulled the levers, nothing happened

Why did he think that was? Minister. Mr Speaker, we did pull the levers

We pulled the levers to stabilise the economy, and we've stabilised the economy. We pulled the levers to StrengthsNow Public Services and NHS waiting lists are coming down at the fastest rate for 17 years

We pulled a big lever on child poverty and this government will be doing more on child poverty than any government ever, including previous Labour governments

We put the biggest investment into defence and security and our international standing has been restored

But Mr Speaker, we also pulled the lever on the individual cases that matter, including individuals like Carla, who's in the gallery today

She was one of the parents that came to see me about online harm and the harm it can do to our young children

And that's why we banned social media for under-16s. And Daniel, who's also here with his son, who spoke to me many times about the struggles he's had with the cost of living

and the need for a safe and secure home for every family and every child to grow up in

They're the people, Mr Speaker, that matter more to me than anything else because it's their lives that I think about when we make decisions in this government

I know a question coming back. Thank you, Mr Speaker. So for my last question, I mean the Prime Minister may not think so now, but it is a tribute to him that not a single sitting Labour MP could beat it

Not the member for Ashton Underline, who couldn't count her taxes. not the member for Sheffield Healy, who couldn't count how many phones she'd lost, lost, lost, lost

and definitely not the member for Ilford North, who couldn't count to 81

This is my last exchange with the right honourable gentleman, and I know how much his wife and children mean to him, and that they are in the gallery today

As everyone here knows, our families make a huge sacrifice for our choice to enter public life

So I hope he will allow me to draw our time together to a close by thanking them for the love and support they have given him throughout his time in office

Can I thank her very much for that? It is the last question I'll face from the leader of the opposition

And so let me wish her well and her family. we have had robust exchanges across this dispatch box but she has extended kindness to me

privately at very difficult times including when there was an attempt to burn down our family home

which deeply affected my family she reached out to me and when my brother died of cancer

she reached out to me privately not across this dispatch box and i thank her for that and the

tribute that she's just made to my wife and children who mean the world to me. I do thank

her for that. She knows this is robust and it has to be robust and that's the way politics is done

but the kindnesses that sit behind it privately are often just as powerful if not more powerful

and I thank her for that. I also stood at that dispatch box Mr Speaker for four years as leader

of the opposition. I know firsthand it's the most difficult job in politics and that is what she is

doing. When I did so, Mr Speaker, we had just lost the 2019 election, which nearly broke my party

It was the worst result since 1935. And we were found to be institutionally anti-Semitic

And Mr Speaker, I picked up our party. I turned it round. I made a promise to rip anti-Semitism

out of my party and I did. I turned my party to face the country

and we won a landslide Labour general election. And after two years

we've stabilised the economy. We have invested heavily in our public services

We've put better protections in for children, particularly on child poverty. We've strengthened our defence and we've

enhanced our international reputation. I'm proud to leave this country in a better shape than I found it

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is an emotional Prime Minister's question time today and I really welcome the tone that has been struck and think we should hear more of this more often

Last year I convened a round table of stakeholders in my constituency to explore joined up solutions to tackling the scourge of violence against women and girls

Over the last two years, the Prime Minister has made that central to his government's mission

He has ensured that spiking and sexual deep fakes have been criminalised

that police forces have been mandated to have rape and sexual offences teams

and it has embedded trauma support for victims across all services. Does he agree that the government absolutely must stick to the pledge

that the Labour Party put in its 2024 manifesto to halve violence against women and girls over the next decade

Yes, I do. Can I pay tribute to her campaigning on this issue

Mr Speaker, yesterday I was with John and Penny Clough, who I first met nearly 16 years ago

They lost their daughter to domestic violence of the most extreme sort in appalling circumstances

And in many ways, my journey campaigning on violence against women and girls

started with them 16 years ago. this year. I pay tribute to them and everybody else who campaigns on this

That's why we set the mission to hard violence against women and girls in a decade. Whatever role I do next, I will continue to campaign for that for as long as I've got breath in my body

Sir Ed Davie, Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I associate myself with so many of the Prime Minister's comments today

but particularly his remarks about Anne Whittacombe. She devoted her life to public service and her murder was truly horrifying

and I support his campaign now for a memorial in this chamber to her

Can I also thank the Leader of the Opposition for her tribute to Anne

and to remind the whole house and the whole country that we need to remember Anne for the way she lived her life

I have to make a confession. I've always been slightly jealous of Anne for appearing on Strictly Come Dancing

It's still time. It's still time. Mr Speaker, but can I... Can I join the whole nation and hopefully every nation in wishing England well against Argentina tonight

After their superb win against Norway. And it's the last job of the Prime Minister to make sure we win the World Cup

But can I also pick up on a remark from the Leader of the Opposition about the by-election we're about to see in Clacton

I have to tell her, I cannot back joke figures with ridiculous policies, which is why I'm supporting Count Binface

Mr Speaker as the Prime Minister finds himself with more time on his hands

can I recommend the new Toy Story film for those of you who don't know Toy Story

its main character used to be in law enforcement but was mainly known for being

a little wooden but was replaced by a shiny new action figure from far away

who thinks he can fly and the name Andy on everyone's lips

Perhaps, Mr Speaker, maybe the Prime Minister should give that a miss

But does he share my fear that when it comes to Britain's national debt

the right honourable member for Makerfield's plan is to infinity and beyond

Prime Minister. Mr Speaker, can I first... so it's very he's clearly angling to go on Strictly Come dancing and no doubt he'll be

very good at it and I have some good news for him because he is fittingly the right honourable

member for Chessington World of Adventures and I'm supposed he talks about the economy I'm pleased

to tell him that thanks to our summer savings his family can save nearly 20 pounds when they visit

This summer. Sir Ed David. Mr Speaker, can I invite the Prime Minister to join me at Chessing the World Adventures

And we haven't always agreed across the floor, but can I pay my own tribute

I disagree with you on Europe, and I disagree with you on Europe. So shall I say to the Prime Minister that although we've not always agreed

I always admired the way he has led his party. I've always admired the way he's been a true

patriot and I always admire the way he's worked with so many people across this house to do the

best for the national interest and we thank him for his public service. Mr Speaker one of the

Prime Minister's qualities that people most underestimate comes from his experience as a

carer. He's spoken powerfully about looking after his mother through her battle with Steele's

disease and the love and care he gave to his brother Nick. And I know the Primus agrees that

we can and must do more for family carers. So as he leaves number 10, will he join with me and

other carers across this house to speak up for family carers, to be their voice and to get them

the support they deserve. Yes, and can I thank him for everything he's done

in relation to social care and the importance of providing care. And he does it with very real human experience

that we all know and we all respect. And no doubt he will continue to champion that

as everybody should. He asked me about joining him at Chessington World of Adventures

I will, can I suggest 12 noon on the first Wednesday in September

Rachel Muskell Thank you Mr Speaker It's just coming up to 12.28

almost time for the news Here's a word I don't think I've ever used in the context of Prime Minister's questions before

that was pretty close to perfect I have to point out Natasha

that you were wrong I was so wrong And I was forlorn

I hoped, against hope, that Cemi Bader not would show grace and decorum

And she showed it in, I mean, on levels I've never seen from her before

In fact, I'm so taken with the idea that that's what she would be like if Twitter didn't exist

It's almost like she prefers that version of herself. She was charming. She was funny

She was warm. She was kind. She was measured. She was decent

She was insightful. She was thoughtful. she was all of the things that she worked so hard most weeks to pretend that she isn't

Yeah, I agree. I couldn't really put it better myself. That was a very pleasant and soft kind tone from her

It was more than pleasant, wasn't it? It was lovely. It was really lovely. Yeah, it was very fitting. And Keir Starmer obviously responded to that really well

And I think actually, you know, we spoke when Keir Starmer first became Prime Minister

and Kemi Baden-Hop first became Leader of the Opposition. and I very much was the impression with talking to people around them

that the pair didn't really like each other very much. I think that's probably changed. And I think, you know, when talking

when you refer back to what Keir Starmer said about she's reached out to me over when my brother died

when my home was attacked, and I really appreciated that. I think that as, you know, they have clearly been brought together

by having to work together over the last two years. No matter what happens at the dispatch box

no matter what happens on the telly screens, at debates, in elections, behind the scenes, politicians

I'm afraid to say, there's far more in common than they have

than that divides them. And they are far nicer to each other behind the scenes than you ever see and you ever think watching PMQs between the pair of them So yeah a very nice final PMQs for Starmer I think that was the right decision

for Kemme to not go hard on his record and allow him to talk up all of the achievements. You know

it's his final time. He's not going to be doing that again. And he was keen to talk about defence

NHS waiting lists, the economy being more stabilised, the world stage, all of the things

that we thought that he might talk about and, you know, portray what he thinks is his best record

and others will of course disagree and others will say that they didn't think

he had a brilliant two years as Prime Minister but it's his final PMQs, it's his final outing

that he can put across his case and we can I'm sure dissect that

over the next few days as we make this transition to a new Prime Minister

Who gets installed on Monday Who gets installed on Monday He'll be Labour leader on Friday

and new Prime Minister on Monday but the House as it stands is going into recess

I'm not sure exactly the day but it's later this week, early next and we won't have any more Prime Minister's questions

so it will be a while, Andy Burnham will have a... Good, because that leaves a lovely taste in the mouth

or in the ears, doesn't it? It does. That's a little reminder of what things can be like

and of course they have to bite chunks out of each other but perhaps not..

We're quite the vitriol that has been witnessed and deployed in recent..

well, for most of the last couple of years, to be honest with you. No, I'm quite emotional about that

Yeah, it was fun, wasn't it? It was light-hearted and fun, little jokes, you know

I know how much he enjoys me and calls me a little ray of sunshine, says Kemi when he comes up talking about Keir

The line I liked as well from Keir Starmer about advice, I will not give it publicly when not asked for

on advice for his successor, which crafted a good laugh. And I think that's probably fair

Keir Starmer, I think of any prime minister recently, has been more at risk of getting unhelpful advice

from so many of his predecessors. Nicely put. A couple of people asking where Farage is

Of course, he's not at any... He's not an MP anymore, so we can't even chastise him, but we can

I think the technical term is that he has taken the Chiltern Hundred

He has indeed, yeah. There's no Member of Parliament for Clacton as it stands

Just to be clear, the Chiltern Hundred are not like the Harbourn Millions. It's a completely different principle and political tradition

It is 12.31, and the main difference between the two, of course

is that he'd probably answer questions about the Chiltern Hundred, but he's yet to really answer any about the Harbourn Millions

Here's Amelia Cox with your headlines. James O'Brien on LBC. Few awards in British journalism more prestigious than Private Eyes' Paul Foote Award for investigative journalism

And I cannot lie, I shed a metaphorical tear last month. Or was it indeed earlier this month when I read that Peter Gagan had won it

Congratulations, mate. Thank you very much, James. Incredible stuff. I should have gone

You know how I operate. I had it written down in my diary a week later. it's a good job I didn't turn up

I'd have turned up if I hadn't seen your post about winning I'd have turned up a week later and wondered where everybody else was

but congratulations remind us what it was for thank you very much it was for an investigation with my colleague Khadija Sharif

looking at Labour Together and how Josh Simons and Labour Together had paid a PR company to investigate journalists

they were investigating their dark money that story possibly not over yet and you're always at great pains to remind us

that you work with colleagues from Democracy For Sale your investigative newsletter, and it is indeed with another colleague, Lucas Amin

that you have been looking into Palantir. So, confession time, none of us can, well, maybe you can

but most normal mortals can't keep up with everything. So, Palantir has been appearing in my inbox with increasing frequency

and people who I trust and respect and admire, including some colleagues, I think Carol Cadwallader has been, and she's, you know, turning into a clairvoyant

when it comes to things that we should all be concerned about if she isn't already. But I haven't got my head properly around it, and I'm glad that you're here today because A, you can tell me why it does matter and B, you can tell me about the latest work you've been doing with Lucas into Palantir's proposed association contract with the NHS

Yeah, and I think in some ways, James, I'm probably a bit like you too. Palantir is a name that felt like it was all over the place

Lots of people talking about it. A lot of heat, but in some ways I felt like a lot of light

I didn't really understand. The big issue, I think, and a lot of people talk about this

back in 2023, Palantir was given a £330 million contract for the NHS

to build what's called a federated data platform. What does it mean

The idea is there's lots of data in health services and hospitals and doctors

surgeries and trusts in pharmacists etc the idea is to pull a lot of that data into a centralized

place and use that the idea is to improve it which i think everybody listening to that thinks

it's a good idea it'd be better if our data was connected we could use it better and what we

started hearing myself and lucas a couple of years ago actually we started looking at palantir we

started hearing reports from people within the nhs effectively saying like a lot of this software

isn't fit for purpose it's not doing the jobs we want it to do the way it's designed one of the big

issues is proprietary software. Palantir owned the software. It's leased out to the NHS

The people using it can't edit. There's a lot of struggles with things like that

And we started looking into it, Scott, actually, what's going on here? And I think what we wanted to do, we've written a very big piece in Unreview of Books

It is very big. It is, I'll admit that. It is a wonderful, wonderful place for proper, proper dig, deep digs, isn't it

And you've certainly taken advantage of that space. Yeah, and what we wanted to do, I think, was ask two questions

One was how did Palantir become such a big company in Britain

Because it's not just the NHS contract. It's got hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of pounds

with the government contracts, MOD contracts. It works for the Financial Conduct Authority

It's worked for the Home Office. It's done lots of work. And I want to understand how did that happen

And what is the software? Because it basically is a software company. When you peel away some of the great big threatening language

that Peter Thiel and Alex Carr come out with, it's a software company. How does the software operate for the people in the NHS

and how's it going? And that was effectively what I wanted to do, what myself and Lucas wanted to do, setting out doing this

And what did you find? I think we found on the two bits of that. The first bit, I think, was how did Palantir get into the NHS so successfully

The answer, frankly, is a very old story, which is political access, bought political access

Back in 2018, they hired Global Council, the now defunct firm, lobbying firm set up by Peter Mandelson

They became probably Global Council's biggest client. we talked to people who had worked on the Palantir contract for Global Council

they managed to avoid, you know, an age-old tale for someone like me, right, so lobbying

Our lobbying laws are so weak, they were able to avoid having disclosed Palantir as a client

but they were able to get Palantir to meet, you know, very, very important people in the health service

And we were able to kind of trace how, with the help of Global Council, Palantir was able to meet more and more important people

and get into a position to be given this £300 and to win this £330 million contract

and then what happens when the FTP gets rolled out and I think there's a really telling piece in our story

about two months after the FTP gets launched all the NHS heads are called into Palantir's office

to discuss its rollout and a lot of data ysts we spoke to who were there

were saying we have problems with this they were putting up their hand and saying we have problems

and they say NHS leadership just haven't really listened to them and time and again you see complaints

it takes a very long time to load the FTP We can do the things we want to do in it It not very responsive It very one And the complaints that we heard from a lot of the sources we talked to was that they felt like it just wasn really working for them

So this is a story about efficacy, not a story about some of the more excitable claims

I've seen regarding what might be done with our data. Yeah, effectively this is, you know, there's been, the government, the health minister

last month actually had to apologise because there was reports the penalty was able to

access, Palantir staff were able to access health data in ways they shouldn't. So the

Health Minister apologised for that. But what we looked at, and it's interesting, we looked

at a lot of the statistics the NHS England have used to support Palantir, and I think

a lot of them just don't really stand up. And it's not just me saying this. Since we

wrote the piece, the UK statistics watchdog has launched an investigation into NHS England

potentially over its misuse of data to support the FTP, support Palantir software effectively

It's owned by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, who was his classmate at Stanford University

who do have, and this is where perhaps some of the concerns about data protection come from

who certainly in Thiel's case, he does have interests and ambitions that extend far beyond

software? Oh completely and I think it's it's there's a couple things that are important the

context in which we write the story and it is in the piece too it's like you know Palantir has been

working very it works for ICE in Donald Trump's administration on you know very very hard-nosed

immigration and detention surveillance it works for the Israeli defense forces it's been accused

of human rights abuses which it denies but this is a company that actually in some ways has been very

front and center and actually one of the things it's actually got a self-image as being a kind of

evil geniuses. That's what they're trying to put forward. And I guess what I'd argue is that

in some ways, you know, that's part of their sales pitch. But there's also, I think there's

reasonable concerns, given what Palantir have done in other countries, about its level of

involvement in the UK. And lots of other countries, it should be said, have actually started moving

away from Palantir. The French security services, the Danes, the Swiss have decided not to take it

on at all. And Sadiq Khan as well chose initially to step back from further involvement

Yes, there was a £50 million contract with the Met Police that Sadiq Khan effectively blocked

Palantir have taken a judicial review against it. They've signed a much smaller deal with the Met Police

I think it's about £2 million, and that's going to work out through the system. So your essential thesis is that the software deployed in the health services is too expensive and therefore poor value for money

You've demonstrated, through Freedom of Information requests, low levels of uptake. authorities that don't want to be involved at all

We put most of this to Palantir and they sent us 26 testimonials

from people within the NHS who say that they're satisfied with Palantir's software

And that apparently included some senior NHS managers. How have they responded to the bigger piece

to the bigger picture contained within your reporting? Yeah, Palantir, they have told us

that they've helped deliver 110,000 additional operations, a 15% reduction in discharge delays

an increase in patients finding out that they have cancer, that they deliver value for money

And they say rightly that they're a software company and it depends how the NHS trusts take up their software

And also in their defence, and we point this out in the piece, I think what's striking is for those trusts

who basically had very poor data services already, I think Palantir has helped

They've given them a system that they can use. The issue I think is actually in those trusts

that were doing quite well, that had developed their own data service. and I think really importantly had a lot of trust with their patients

Palantir's service I think hasn't worked as well. And there's a really, I think there was a

we got some internal documents from NHS England showing that one of the big concerns was that

just the use of Palantir was reducing trust in the health service. And I think that has been replicated

in the kind of calls and emails you get about Palantir in some ways do speak to that

Two separate select committees now also calling on the government to exercise a break clause

when the FDP contract comes up for renewal next year. Yeah, and we're going to report on Democracy for Sale later today

a number of MPs, including the chair of the Select Committee on the back of our investigation

saying that the break clause, again, should be exercised and others cross-party people saying that they're concerned about the statistics

So I think there is... It's a big question, I think, for Andy Burnham when he comes into office

I think this is a big question. One of the earliest big questions

I think it is because of this break clause. So effectively, that does mean you can end the contract in 2027

But if that was to happen, there's a lot that has to happen before then because there's a big issue about the fact whether the NHS is locked into Palantir software

and what could replace it. Peter, as ever, thank you, not only for joining us today

but also for explaining this relatively complicated stuff with such clarity. You can see why he has just picked up with his Democracy for Sale colleague

the Paul Foote. And just on a personal note, that must have been a moment for you, mate

Oh, thank you very much. I have to say, as someone who's grew up reading Private Eye

and actually my 10-year-old stepson is a big Private Eye reader too, so when I came home the next day..

He's not, you know. He's not. He just reads the cartoons. He likes the cartoons. That's exactly how I started when my dad brought it home

It's the cartoons for now. You have to get them early, James. Yeah, I know. Well, they do. It works. It works

So it really did reach the parts that other awards perhaps cannot read. Well, you deserved it all, Peter Gagan from Democracy for Sale

You can, of course, go to his website, or you can read this incredibly detailed article in the London Review of Books

Or there's a sort of taster, isn't there? There's an easy access version in today's Guardian newspaper as well, which you can access online

But I guess that we're all going to be hearing that word, Palantir, a bit more in the near and quite possibly distant future

I don't think it's going anywhere as a story. Peter, thank you. It's 12.46. James O'Brien on LBC

49, continuing our sometimes fruitless ambition to bring you more detail on stories

that you are not receiving anywhere else. This story has, for the record, been reported

but I would suggest in a country where an awful lot of very bad actors like to use the phrase two-tier

to disseminate lies and dishonesty, I suspect that had the story that we're about to discuss with Fraser Knight

involves the targeting of other faiths, other religious faiths, I suspect you would have heard rather more about it than you have currently

I refer to an event in Ipswich, in Barham, near Ipswich this weekend

at which thousands of Muslims would come together to pray in public, I guess

so presumably something that Nick Timothy, Kami Bader-Knox minister, would be opposed to

I'd have to check. and celebrate their community and learn more about their faith

It is a peaceable and peaceful gathering. It lasts for an entire weekend

It started on Friday, but it was shut down. And Fraser Knight is here to tell us why

It was shut down early, James, because police had received a credible threat

that there was going to be potentially an attack on this event

This was the Ishtima gathering of Muslims in the Barham village, which as you say is near Ipswich and Suffolk

And to give you an idea of the scale of it there was up to 15 people there Now this is a tiny little village no more than 1 people live there But on the grounds of Shrubland Hall an old country estate

there were sprawling white marquees where this gathering was taking place. As you say, it started on Friday, was due to go through until Sunday afternoon

But overnight on Saturday, the organisers received a call from the police

to say that there was a credible threat of a potential extreme right-wing terrorism-related attack

And so they had agreed to close that event down early. Now, over Sunday and Monday

counter-terrorism police made 12 arrests. And what we heard just yesterday is that for eight of those people

who were arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, police have now been given extra time to question them

So they can keep them in custody for up to seven days to question them while they investigate and try to work out what has happened here

The youngest of those people arrested, there were two 27-year-old men. The oldest was an 82-year-old man

And there was a woman arrested as well on suspicion of assisting an offender

And also a few others, three other men who were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder

So there is a huge investigation now underway to work out exactly what happened here

But this, you know, just to give you some context about the Ijtima event

this was going to be the first time that one of these was held on this scale in the UK since 1985

with Muslims from 50 different countries encouraged to come and attend. but that credible threat that the police say

that they are now investigating an extreme right-wing terror attack closing it down hourly and starting this huge investigation

Do we have any insight into the nature of the attack that they believe may have been under consideration

that was being planned? So there's not a huge amount of detail that's been given to us

about the nature of the attack But when you look at what these people have been arrested on suspicion of, I mean, conspiracy to murder, terrorism offences, you know, it gives you an idea of what may have been planned in this attack

Police have said that they are now searching 10 different residential properties

The people who were arrested as well from many different areas, from Suffolk, Stoke, Surrey, Ipswich, Essex and London

so you can imagine the scale and the complexity of the investigation that's now ongoing

Well, and indeed the scale and the complexity of shutting it down early

I mean, on a trivial note, while some of the further detail remains unknown

an awful lot of businesses around Barham and around Ipswich would have been expecting quite a lucrative weekend

but by 7 o'clock on Sunday morning it had been completely shut down and presumably 15,000 people bused out of the area

Yeah, a huge operation. And you can imagine the armed response, the road closures around this very, very small village

I mean, we've heard from some of the business owners, some of the neighbours there

obviously in shock that something like there's even a suggestion that something like this might have happened on their doorstep

But then the response from those armed officers. And when you look at the different areas of counterterrorism policing that have been drafted in to help with this investigation

they're bringing them in from the north of England to help with the questioning of those suspects

with the looking through devices I think they've said they've got something like 35 devices

that they're having to look through there have been vehicles seized there have been those properties searched

it's massive and I think there was one pub owner who had said that they were expecting quite a busy day

on Sunday in their pub but had to stay closed. Right, if they're observing Muslims, it might not have been that busy

Well, the event itself was actually on the grounds of Shrubland Hall

But I think they were, you know, for a small village, you've got a pub right in the middle of it

They were expecting quite a few people there. Of course, you can go for a meal in a vimto as well. They don't have to be consuming alcohol

And, you know, the context of this is, you know, just a few days ago I was speaking to the head of counter-terrorism policing

who was talking about their workload being larger than it's ever, than it's been certainly in the past few years

And a large part of that, he said, is that the extreme right wing is growing

They are seeing those threats and certainly some of the content online

that might be radicalising people. That is growing exponentially for them alongside the threats that they have

of Islamic extremism and of hostile state threats. So that's the context that we're looking at here

organizers had said of this event they were expecting you know a small protest outside

perhaps even a large protest outside they said they would have welcomed that but then to have

this suggestion that actually people may have been looking at killing some of the people who

were going to this event it's a whole other scenario i think some of the attendees were

in that local pub on the saturday night to watch the england norway match which um

i don't know speaks to something rather warm during such a cold conversation such a chilling

conversation. We've heard from the organisers, as you mentioned. Profound shock, no doubt

moving through their ranks and indeed through the people who were present. What happens next

So the investigation will take some time. As I said, four of the people who were arrested

have been released on bail. They have really strict conditions on them. Eight of those

who have been held and who are still in custody. The police have got up to a week to interview

them before they decide whether to charge them or not but certainly as i say you've got counter

terrorism teams from all over england really being brought in to support this investigation

and there will be a lot of work going on in terms of the searches of those devices of those homes

to try and piece together exactly what's happened here and and what happens next in terms of the

criminal justice system indeed um and as i mentioned at the outset this was essentially

done and dusted the evacuation by 7 o'clock on Sunday morning. It's now Wednesday afternoon, and I can tell from my inbox

that an awful lot of people listening to this conversation are hearing this story for the very first time

It's also curiously absent from front pages. I'll leave you to speculate for yourself on why that might be

or indeed what kind of coverage you might have expected if, say, a Christian festival had been called off early

with 12 people arrested in connection with a client crimes or on suspicion being held

on suspicion of offences including terrorism offences conspiracy to murder and indeed assisting

an offender but remember it's two-tier justice in this country according to the usual suspects

Fraser Knight thank you keep an eye on this for us I know that you will that is it from

me for today if you missed any of today's well hang on apart from the football I wanted

to end with something, but Swalbrick smashed it this morning, absolutely knocked it out of the park with his

little montage. I toyed with the idea of nicking it, but I thought on reflection it was more important

to make sure that you were properly across that story than it was to just pass off

some of the excellent work by the producers of The Breakfast Show as my own this morning

So, come on, England. You haven't heard my three o'clock yet. No, I don't want to tread on your toes either, Sheila

No, I know my place. Anyway, I did my world-exclusive football story

with a tangential link to Jude Bellingham yesterday. If you missed any of today's show

you can listen back on our free Global Player app or the LBC app, where you can also stay up to date

with all the latest news, videos and opinion. You can listen to a range of podcasts, including James O'Brien Daily

the best bits from my LBC show every day. So do download the official LBC app for free

from your app store now. Coming up at four, Simon is in for Tom Swarbrick

and Sheila Fogarty is with you next. James O'Brien on LBC