Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast

00:00 Fundei a Ornota em 2013. Fabricamos vestuário para ciclistas. Para mim, a melhor parte da Shopify é a possibilidade de gerirmos o negócio mesmo não tendo conhecimentos técnicos. Conseguimos gerir tudo, do back-end ao front-end e fazer vendas online, sem complicações. Se a Shopify fosse um equipamento de ciclismo, eu diria que seria a própria bicicleta. É aquilo que nos permite chegar onde queremos. É na Shopify que gerimos o nosso negócio. Comece a sua avaliação gratuita em shopify.com 00:29 Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast. 00:32 Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name's Andrew Hunter-Murray and I'm here in the iStudio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Jane McKenzie. We're here to discuss all sorts of things that have been going on. Been quite a busy news summer so far. I haven't entered the doldrums yet, which is thrilling. So first of all, I think we should come to one of the big stories and the one which is on the cover of the latest issue of The Mag. 00:54 How could Nigel Farage have possibly seen this coming, that this might be a problem for him? 00:58 I want to start off by saying, how could Ian possibly have seen this coming? That cover went to press on the Monday, and then the story, his big everyone has wronged me speech was on the Tuesday. 01:09 2pm, exactly the same time as the Prince Harry judgment, which we'll be talking about a bit later on, came through. It was just like a newsmageddon the day after we went to press. 01:17 I did see the Farrar speech of him having his hissy fit and saying, I'm standing down, but I'm coming back and all of this. And I thought, oh, that's such a shame, because I hadn't seen the cover yet of the Mac, and I assumed they would have gone with something else. 01:28 No, we've got some cracking night. Where's your lolly from, Joe? Was it fake? I want to say it's fake ice cream, but that's not a pun on fake news. 01:34 Flake news. 01:35 Flake news, there we go. You watched that speech live. I did, because I've got problems in my life, apparently. But it was fascinating because it seemed to me a genuinely emotional outburst. He first of all wanted to take on the fact that people said, you know, people have been saying I've been looking ill very recently, like, you know, I'm fine, I'm absolutely fine. And then he seemed genuinely, personally very upset about the idea that reporters had been to his daughter's house, which was later explained was the house he was registered a voter at the last election. He was trying to put the allegations to him. But it was an extremely personal outburst. 02:08 It didn't seem actually particularly strategic, although everybody immediately tried to portray it that way. 02:11 He's definitely taken this to heart, hasn't he? There's none of the sort of bonhomie or anything. It was a couple of days before when he was approached by a Sky News reporter at an airport and he was absolutely furious. He could have came back for another go as well and said, you keep away from our family. And they pointed out they hadn't approached any of his family. None of his family were there at the time. He was there with a load of reform guys. But yeah, he does. He's definitely taken this one to heart, hasn't he? But there's the thing. 02:31 I mean, there's a very... Eu não sei, se eu fosse no topo da polha e eu ainda estava por um ano, e ainda estava, eu acho, até mesmo depois disso, eu vou tentar manter isso light. Mas parece que perguntar as perguntas vai te dar um grande problema em Farage's Britain. 02:46 Immediately depois de anunciar, nenhum dos outros partidos iriam ir contra ele. que não é sem precedência, o que as pessoas falam que David Davies resignou da Holton Press e de Houdon, e foi um civil liberties, e então todo mundo falou, ok, obrigado, David, nós vamos ter seu momento para falar sobre isso, mas isso é para você, não é para nós. E uma das coisas que eu estava particularmente interessado é o Restore, a muito mais forte parte da Rupert Lowe, eles não estão trabalhando, mesmo que isso tenha sido um freebie media hits para eles, eles dizem que isso é o Nigel Farage Circus. Então, apesar de uma valiante tentativa de dizer que todos os outros partidos estão olhando para nós, é o Unipart, não se importa, Então, praticamente todo mundo acrílico da política pensou, vamos deixar Nigel... Laurence Fox is in there, não é? 03:25 Ele tem que pegar um pouco. As é o cara que dressed us up as a fox, então vai ser um dois fox race. Oh, great! No fox given. 03:30 Eu acho que o muito engraçado é que Farage claramente pensou, nós vamos ter uma by-election, eles vão estar ali contra mim, todos os outros partidos, nós vamos poderámos a conversa sobre isso, nós vamos poderámos a conversa sobre isso, nós vamos poderámos a conversa sobre isso, nós vamos poderámos a conversa sobre isso, se podembrar, se podembrar, se podembrar, se podembrar, se podembrar, se podembrar, se podembrar. E agora, finding himself completamente alone in the race, he has managed to find a magnifying glass on him and the five million quid he's been given and the million pounds from the mother of the convicted fraudster, George Cottrell. The retired stylist. 04:01 Retired stylist, yeah. 04:03 Now under investigation by the police over the source of that donation, which is unknown. 04:07 More regime investigations, you know. 04:09 I thought he's done this in order to do a kind of like Trump's second election victory, right? Which is to say, well, look, obviously the voters don't care. You know, I've gone to the Court of Public Opinion about my donations and they don't care. This is just an establishment stitch up. However this plays out, I think he's been deprived of that ability to say, well, this is a ringing endorsement that they like me, not you, because the choice isn't really there. 04:30 Because they're like me or Bimface. 04:32 Well, yeah. 04:32 Being liked more than Lawrence Fox is not that much of an achievement. We should come on to Bimface. 04:38 A declaration of interest, I've certainly met several times with Bin On and Off. 04:43 I see what you've done there. I've been on Count Binface's podcast. Have you? Yes. 04:47 Wow. 04:47 Which is quite difficult because, to be honest with you, I went on it without having researched the lore. So he started going on about which planet he was from and I was like, I'm sorry, what? 04:55 Oh, the lore. The lore, like Lord of the Rings lore. 04:58 There's a whole very well filled out backstory for Binface. 05:00 Okay. 05:01 I think that regardless of your feelings about joke candidates, and I'm generally pro them because they add to the gaiety of the nation, it was very funny to see that all the people in reform have basically only one setting, which is the establishment is against us. And seeing whichever one it was who said, who funds you? 05:19 Pai por isso, Ben. 05:41 também bem-feste-ed-in-the make-a-feel-by-election. E guess what? Andy Burnham just shrugged it off, took it, which is the way that you should play it. Just defuse the joke by saying, what a good joke, rather than, who funds you, bem-feste-if-that-is-your-real-name. 05:57 É rúbis para o povo de Clacton que Farage é just willing to stop being their MP to get himself out of bother. They're kind of one of the country's most poor areas. Because of having Farage as their MP has been the butt of a joke for a couple of years, rather than anybody trying to say, well, actually, what can we do for the people of Clacton? There's a large area of Clacton which is doomed by sea flooding. E nada está sendo spento no fato de que esses homens são worth nada. 06:31 Ninguém vai investir em eles porque eles estão indo muito mais rápido. E, sim, é muito difícil ser o povo de Clacton porque o MP é útil para eles. 06:43 He's not held a huge amount of constituency surgeries, he's not seemed overly interested in them as a... Because this was one of the things was like, actually, I know that the prospect of bin face winning is extremely remote, but I sort of thought you could parachute in any random person to have a crack at being their MP, and I don't think they would necessarily do worse as a constituency MP, just on average. 07:01 Just give us a small amount of constituency casework and they're already ahead. Yeah. 07:07 A lot of reform's heartland, as it were, is coastal and often quite deprived constituencies. Richard Tice, the party's deputy leader, is Boston and Skegness, I believe. And so there's a lot of that. And Clacton is where Douglas Carswell of UKIP defected from the Conservatives about a decade ago. E tinha uma eleição para ele, mas que era porque era um change of party. 07:28 E tinha uma horrible fallout com Nigel Farage, então líderes de UKIP, que era extremamente graceless e cross about that one, too. 07:35 Tem razão por que as pessoas lá ficam perdidas por qualquer outro partido, porque ele tem real, deep problemas. 07:43 Sim. Are there early indications de o que as pessoas em Clacton pensam sobre o circo que é sobre o descanso, ou o fato de que Farage forçado isso em eles, como eles? 07:53 I think that the people of Clacton are sort of more invisible than anybody thinks they are. Because it's such a poor area, they're the most offline people in the UK that kind of aren't getting their voice heard or out there. 08:08 I mean, he won a really resounding majority at the 2024 election. He won more than the second and third place, which was Labour and Conservatives combined. So there is also, we should acknowledge, the fact that Conservatives didn't run in the seat because they think they would lose to him. And also Restore didn't run in the seat because they think they would lose to him. Everything says that he... You'd expect a very low turnout in a by-election anyway, even if there were other candidates. In that case, it's going to play out, I would say, in a very straightforward way, all the indications are. But you're right to say about the polling, because actually the headline polling nationally is that the majority of people do think the donations are whiffy. 08:41 It's not a situation in which it's only... Exatamente. 09:03 I think anything which has a concrete noun is much easier to make real in people's minds. So free glasses and suits is a perfect example of that. When it's just finance, I think it is harder because people sort of know that there are political donations and they sort of know that there's a bit of access for... para o dinheiro de trading. Mas, o que é? Quedas 5 milhões de reais em sua personalidade. 09:25 É isso mesmo, não é? Quando você olhar para o último, muito grande barra de risco sobre esse tipo de coisa, e é o MPs expensos em 2009. 09:34 Right. 09:35 And none of the sums that were involved in that ever approached £5 million being claimed by anyone, you know, by a single MP. And then to be so... I mean, he does not have a leg to stand on, absolutely. However you look at the rules, that money needed to be declared. Just on a sort of moral and ethical way, it obviously was something that people deserved to know about. The people of Clacton, as we've been talking about, deserved to know that their MP was personally in hock to... ...to Christopher Harbourn... ...for that amount of money. I mean, it's just extraordinary... ...to try and blast it through... ...and say none of this matters... ...and none of the stuff about George Cottrell... ...who has been convicted of crimes in America... ...and wrote a book called... ...How to Launder Money, I believe. 10:12 ...was picked up in America... ...at an airport... ...with Farage. You know, when he was... ...picked up and arrested... ...to be banged up in the first place... Nigel was there at the scene. 10:21 I think America is a big part of this story because the other thing that Faraj said in that speech is I don't have to be here. I don't have to do this. I could be earning some real money. I could go to America. And that was both an ill-advised thing to say in my view and also extremely true. Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... Se ele fosse... 10:51 Mas o que me deu é que ele deve estar olhando para o dinheiro que Trump está fazendo. Trump está ficando com o Air Force One, você sabe, com o Qatari. Trump's sons have made these milhões de cripto, e ele tem mais de 5 milhão de quidro de um cripto. Em sua mente, não é muito muito dinheiro. Mas, como você diz, em sua mente, o average British working person, é muito muito dinheiro para alguém que você tenha um presente para não ter nada. 11:17 Yes, a lot of the stories we've covered in Private Eye about politicians getting payouts for lobbying stuff are really small amounts of money and people are still cross about those, £20,000 here and there for representing corporate interests in Parliament. We're always outraged about those and people generally think MPs shouldn't be doing that. 11:42 These are the ones we know about as well, aren't we? We had the five million from Harbour and was broken by the Guardian sort of a month, six weeks ago. And then the Sunday Times revelations about all of the cash and stuff coming in from George Cottrell is an entirely new thing. Farage's only defence of this is it's none of your business. None of you need to know about this. For all we know, there are millions more coming in from all sorts of other people. Mas é por isso que isso precisa ser declarado. Eu acho que há um motivo para a transparência em política. 12:06 Mas há uma coisa muito bem estabelecida que o Nigel gosta de dinheiro. Eu acho que seus expensos quando ele era o MEP, seus pensamentos, eu acho, do que o Parlamento do Europeu, eles têm tudo ido em um pouco de detalhe. Antes de ele ser um MP no ano de 2024, havia muitas coisas sobre o que ele tinha feito... 12:22 It's not an OnlyFans, it's a Cameo. Sorry, it's a Cameo. It's so hard to get those cleared up. 12:28 Yeah, but anybody who will take essentially to what to him is pocket change to do, you know, hello Mr. and Mrs. Shipman, I'm here on the site of your son Harold's birthday. Like all those joke things that he's been doing on Cameo. That's somebody who is thirsty for cash. 12:41 I mean, I should declare another interest here, which is that I'm a donor, because I make that Radio 4 show The Naked Week, and we paid Nigel 75 quid to read out the credits one week. He didn't know he was doing it, but we were saying thank you to Jason and Katie and John. 12:54 Anyway, so, you know, I'm up to... It's also, to then try and use the defence, I can't be bought by anyone, when you've literally been flogging cameos for 85 quid a pop. 13:04 Não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, não, 13:26 Mas isso é o que faze-se, porque eu estava tentando pensar em coisas como perguntas para perguntas e coisas assim. Essentemente, nós temos esse modo de fazer uma forma de que publicismo é o que faz você não fazer essas coisas. Eu senso que isso é um tipo de tópico quando se trata de Farage. Mas a ideia de sanção por o Parlamento Standards Commissioner do existe, certo? Ele tem agora... Isso vem do que você estava dizendo a última vez, sobre o fato de que talvez becoming um MP tenha sido uma coisa difícil para ele. 13:51 Então, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá, vamos lá. 14:10 turn over the entire table and destroy this whole regime, destroy the idea you have to declare anything. That's the only way he can bulldoze through to power, in my view now, which is exactly what Trump did. Trump said, go on, enforce all these rules. Oh, no, you can't. They don't functionally exist anymore. 14:25 Right. And I think people don't really care about the... If there was a judgement and he was banned from Parliament for three days, or whatever, you know, suspended from Commons for three days, that's a story which I think doesn't quite catch enough interest to make it a serious and lasting block of damage to him. But this, because it's so... 14:44 É tão grande e tão publico. Eu acho que faz muita gente que pensam, sim, ok, reforma, isso parece reasonable, nós temos um problema, os outros dois partidos não têm tautado isso. Tem gente que pensam assim, que são além da reforma base, mas que reforma do need para ganhar um voto. Eu acho que esses pessoas são os que vão estar olhando e pensando, isso é engraçado. 15:04 I'm going to interject my normal note here, which is to say that reform are nonetheless still the top polling party. Labour have had a bit of a bounce, the burn and bounce, which I suspect will be about as long lasting as an ice cream. But, you know, it is entirely possible that Nigel Farage will stay the leader and will contest the next section and will make huge electoral gains nonetheless. Que é por isso que eu acho que temos que falar sobre isso, porque se você enforça e controla esses bairros, eles degrados. E isso não vai ser bom para a política política se torna mais como a política americana, em que associações de dinheiro são chukadas para os políticos para que eles servem corporal interesses. 15:39 Can eu falar um pouco sobre Restore? 15:41 Sim. 15:43 Então, uma das coisas que eu acho que tem sido um problema para Farage é que o right-winging media online ecosystem, o fascismo boomer Facebook pipeline, se você for, ele tem sido severely challenged por Rupert Lowe e Restore. E um pouco de really key players em isso, que são americans que dabam em British politics, são muito mais enthused sobre o que eles veem como o full fat coke. . . . 16:25 Desculpe, é um verdadeiro dark web, bless-me. Eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro. 16:29 Eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, mas eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, eu não me lembro, So you had lots of Scottish MPs saying, actually, it was more than a dozen children and their teacher. 17:00 There was a reason. Also, the other thing is, I don't think there is any massive pro-gun lobby in Britain that sees this as a terrible injustice, actually. And then he said, my father had to give up his shooting pistols, which he shot at Oxford, very man of the people, and said it's very, very hard to get guns. I thought, it's actually... I've got a relative who owns several shotguns. If you've got no criminal record, it's quite... They're quite... 17:22 Eu vou dizer que ele não tinha problema porque, famously, ele got his assistant to shoot his own dog, didn't he? Rather than... I'm sorry, what? This was Nadine Doris's great argument at Makerfield, was that Rupert Lowe had his own dog shot and got an assistant to do it. The dog would have had to be put down by the vet, but he does know. No, shotgun out. Now we're saying about no challenge. I'm taking this directly from Nadine Doris in the Daily Mail. 17:44 Ele disse que ele fez uma fake acusação que ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, ele era, 18:13 O band? Sting? 18:15 Sting, pessoalmente. E quem é o outro que os outros policiais turnaram a ser. O Judiciário, porque eles estão tentando escrapar júri trials para que eles possam rigar trials. Right. O World Economic Forum, clássico, você era expectativa, não era você? O Builder Burgos, Retro. 18:30 Eu já conheci por um pouco, sim. 18:32 O Fabian Society. 18:34 Ok. 18:35 Sim, Jane, o correcto look. O Fabian Society... 18:38 Isso não é o fãs do modelo Fabio? 18:42 They're always getting each other's posts. 18:44 It's a nightmare. 18:45 Can you just remind our listeners who the Fabians are? 18:47 Yeah, Labour think tank. He says every Labour MP is a member. It's actually about a quarter of them. Kistama is a member. But it's essentially, it's like, it's a Labour think tank. He says their logo is a wolf in sheep's clothing, which it's true. It's from the 1920s. They also thought it was kind of autumn. But he presents this as being incredibly sinister. Oh. 19:06 I love a conspiracy theory that's like, they're hiding in plain sight, they put something evil there and only I have spotted it. You wouldn't, would you? You wouldn't have the wolf in sheep's clothing if you were trying to do your work. You'd have a fluffy bunny, wouldn't you? You'd have a sheep. Yeah, no wolf at all. 19:22 Just a sheep, okay. The nudge unit. 19:26 Oh, yes. 19:27 Oh, yeah. This is a Cameroonian thing, isn't it? 19:29 Cameroonian era, and it was designed to encourage people on things like, was it diet and exercise? And it was encouraging healthier... Why not try eating apples? 19:37 Some of these were more elevated policy propositions than that one, albeit useful. But his theory was that the COVID, they sinisterly nudged people towards getting the COVID jab, which Rupert Lowe didn't have because he is, quote, a pureblood. 19:51 Ok... After having a long riff on immigration, I probably wouldn't have described myself as a purebub, but you do you. Baby Boomers, based, agreed with him on that one. Rory Stewart's wife. 20:05 Ok. 20:06 Porque a charity que ela trabalha por took money from USAID, que é, obviamente, como todos sabemos, um grande funnel para money. C.F. Elon Musk, I put it in a wood chipper. Right. Ok, mas good to see some accountability. 20:19 Just Rory Stewart's wife, not Rory Stewart. 20:21 No. For once, he got away scot-free. Feminist thinking, I suppose. 20:25 He's angling for an appearance on The Rest is Politics, I'm sure. 20:27 Are we all? Tony Blair, because, quote, he looks like Beelzebub with his white hair now and his piercing blue eyes. Is that what Beelzebub looks like canonically? Please write in. The public sector. There's too many of them sapping our society. And here we go. Here's one I never heard about before. Have you ever heard of a conspiracy theory about the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers? No. I want to. It's a socialist law society, which Keir Starmer belongs to, given that he was both a lawyer and a socialist. 21:00 He calls them, Rupert Lowe calls them, the Fabian Pabloist Haldane Society, which has a malign philosophy. Do you know what Pabloists were? 21:08 It's what Starmer was, wasn't it? Briefly, as a young man. 21:11 It's a type of Trotskyist. Mas eu estava tipo, esse é um deep cut de Rupert Lowe aqui É só que eu tinha... Ele falou de conspiracy theories sobre a deep state que você não tinha nem ouvido, como eles são primeiros álbuns É muito exaustante holding this many villains em sua cabeça em um tempo Well, it's also really interesting because he was really there to talk about his rape gang inquiry report, which I've read. It runs through some really disturbing testimony, but most of it anonymous or pseudonymous, no attempt to corroborate it, some incredibly over-the-top exaggerations of the type that if someone came to you and any of you were doing the story on them, you would go, this is an extraordinary allegation, I'm going to need extraordinary evidence, like people being raped by dogs, someone opening a van and there being 15 women in cages in the back. 21:58 It's like Carl Beach all over again isn't it? 22:21 E aí, não é? 22:22 E aí, Rupert Lowe começa mais como um político, que você vai ser feliz de ouvir, como um homem que tem um set de interesses que não tem necessariamente... Algumas coisas que não tem que ter coincidido com public views sobre o imigração e coisas no momento, e não no grooming. Mas, como você disse, a gun law é uma verdadeira coisa. Para um Americano público, isso funciona. Mas para o Brasil, isso funciona. Mas para o Brasil, isso foi um dos grandes sucessos, não é? Mas é tudo libertário. 22:50 É tudo libertário em um Americano, que é que eu não quero dizer o que eu quero dizer o que eu quero fazer. Mas é tudo à piece. No-one can tell me to get a Covid jab, even though it will help other people. No-one can tell me to put my guns away, even though it will stop schoolchildren getting shot. Nobody can tell me what to tweet and what not to tweet. That's the kind of connecting thread through all of these things, and that's part of the worldview. But you're right, his affect is really interesting because it is very British. He reeks of a guy at the end of the bar and the golf club having a martini and telling you some stuff. It is not Tommy Robinson... 23:22 sort of street thug. And actually Tommy Robinson has done things like the Jordan Peterson podcast, like on a class basis, he's going to find it harder to get a hearing in those American podcasts where they love what they see as a kind of British toff, essentially. So Rupert Lowe has been doing the, he's been working the circuit. And again, like Nigel Farage, he might decide that actually that to him is a more receptive and congenial audience than British electoral politics. 23:46 Well, what Farage doesn't like is having to take the responsibility and the accountability, isn't it? I mean, it's much, much easier if you can't just go on podcasts and... 23:59 Fundei a Ornota em 2013 e fabricamos vestuário para ciclistas. Para mim, a maior parte da Shopify é a possibilidade de gerirmos o negócio mesmo não tendo conhecimentos técnicos. Conseguimos gerir tudo, do back-end ao front-end e fazer vendas online, sem complicações. Se a Shopify fosse um equipamento de ciclismo, Eu diria que seria a própria bicicleta. É aquilo que nos permite chegar onde queremos. É na Shopify que gerimos o nosso negócio. Começa a sua avaliação gratuita em Shopify.com. 24:26 Jane, você escreveu um pouco sobre a defesa e a procuração. 24:31 Sim, por muitos anos, sim. Então, obviamente, foi no news recentemente, porque o último investimento de Defensos plan foi anunciado, que, em seguida, vamos gastar mais. É uma questão interessante, gastar mais em Defensos, porque o que a gente pede a gastar em Defensos, principalmente no equipamento, a gente sempre enda gastando muito mais, porque a gente é tão pobre em comprar coisas. 24:59 Yes, there are all these weird things going on when you think about defence expenditure, which is we seem to be spending these huge amounts. We seem to have fewer troops, ships, planes, all of that than we've had at any point in our history. It doesn't quite match up. Does the overspending count towards our NATO commitment? Can we say, well, actually, we've massively overspend on this? 25:22 Yes, we went massively over budget on this project, but what it does help with is that it adds to the percentage of our GDP that we're spending to help us with NATO. 25:32 Yeah, so that's not helpful in a way. 25:34 We have entire projects where they make such a cock-up of buying things that we managed to spend... 25:42 E aí That by the time that we had them, they were out of date. 26:07 Wasn't there a vehicle that rattled so much that it really affected people's hearing? It was kind of dangerous to use. 26:13 That's right, the Ajax vehicles. Which, yes, a couple of times now we've come close to saying, right, let's cut our losses. And although we've spent hundreds of millions on them already, let's just not. Because they're injuring people without anybody having to go to war. Just the testing phase is causing really quite serious injury to... 26:33 Extremely lethal vehicles, but unfortunately only if you're into it. To our side. That's right. I wanted to actually quote a letter that we had, and this was off the back of a defence story, because I think the really interesting thing that you write about, Jane, is that there's a lot of debate about percentages and 3.5% versus 3% and 2.65% versus 2.66% and all of this. But you often write about the actual things that are being bought and where the money is being spent. This is from a correspondent and subscriber, I hope, Julian Page, who wrote about the new class of dreadnought submarines. 27:06 And the process started in 2016. 27:09 The first ones won't enter service until the 2030s and the last of the, I think it's four that are being bought, won't enter service until the 2040s. And Julian Page wrote, this is equivalent to starting to build a class of four ships during the First World War and not seeing them all in service until the Second World War. What is going on? I think that's what you have insight into. What is going on? 27:31 It's an interesting thing because in some ways some of our greatest military successes have been by people with a map and a pair of scissors and no budget at all. I mean look at things like the early SAS, they were stealing their equipment so that was very cheap. 27:47 There's the kind of small drones that we're working with Ukraine with, cheap and cheerful and great. But when it comes to very big spends, everything gets caught up in a sort of defence procurement, lovely dinners. There's a great deal of the budget, I think, goes into the... Sim, sim 28:33 Oh, I see, but we're out of the money. We're paying them to build the things. 28:36 And there's also quite a lot of the other guests on the other side of that are ex-military people themselves. And we're constantly doing stuff about revolving doors. So presumably quite a lot of it goes to salaries for these guys as well. 28:45 Yes, I mean, defence ministers don't tend to take the agreeable dinners, but they do, after they leave working for the government, quite often take agreeable jobs in defence. So... It's not always dinners. 28:59 In the most recent quarter's list of hospitality, one person from the Air Force who's just received what the list just says pastries from Saab, who are currently bidding to build the new advanced jet trainers. What's the amount that it has to exceed for it to be declarable? Is it like you have one croissant? Does that triple? 29:22 Or has this guy been like someone's loading up a truck full of declares? 29:26 I think it's got to be a fair few pastries to make the list. 29:29 I respect that. It's an entire branch of Greg's. 29:32 So another of the issues tends to be constantly changing and buying very bespoke things, but then changing your mind about exactly how bespoke the thing. 29:41 But that's so interesting because that then sounds a bit like what's been the problem with HS2. Exactly. Which is like, we could have built just really cheap railway, like in the way that other countries have done, but no, we must, not only must we respect the bat and the newt, but we must also have like the most amazing new bespoke stuff. Yes. 29:56 Put it in a tunnel for the first 50 miles, but the tunnel has to be a one-of-a-kind tunnel we've never built before. 30:01 Made of bats. But that's interesting that that's the same disease, procurement disease, that's sort of plaguing our military procurement too. 30:08 So, it's possible a lesson has been learned, because we had a story in the current eye, which we in fact headlined with positive defence story shock, because, well, this could still go wrong, but at the moment, the army has bought 200 and odd Toyota Hilux vehicles off the shelf, and they'll make some modifications to them, but they actually just have gone shopping and found a vehicle that works for us. 30:36 So, is this like the pickup truck style? Yes. Sim, então você pode colocar um pouco de tonne de stuff em cima, os bigos, heavy things. 30:42 Eu acho que eles são usados globalmente por um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... um... 31:06 Notoriously, one of the most unstoppable vehicles. And also, because it's so global, there's spare parts everywhere. So if yours breaks down, you can just kind of, you know, fight some militia and get the parts off them. 31:20 But you're saying this is genuinely a good idea. It's not that we're retreating to the state of militia power. 31:25 It's unlikely to quadruple in budget because there's a price for an off-the-shelf vehicle. So hopefully it won't kind of 10 years' time be going, oh, well, you know, they were never delivered and they only have three wheels and... 31:43 I mean, in preparation for this episode, I listened back to an interview that we did with Square Basher, Vickers. I mean, this was nine years ago. 31:52 Yes, it would be. 31:53 And all the same problems were there. I mean, back then it was the Type 45 destroyers, which had been built even then. And I think Britain has six of those, HMS Dragon and so on. And they, at the time, were known, it was known that they couldn't E aí E aí E aí We have the war in Iran breakout and they're all being repaired and refitted and things and it takes nine days to get one of them out of Portsmouth. 32:23 So the problems, they go way back. 32:26 Yes, and the mine hunting mothership that we can send is not specially built after a massive procurement exercise. It's a second hand ship that we bought from an offshore oil and gas exploration company. 32:38 Wow. HMS Stirling Castle And I believe there's been an announcement of a bit more money for drones and seeing what's happening in Ukraine just the unbelievable speed at which the Ukrainian military get their drones into service into testing into the field they try them quickly if it doesn't work they change it is there anything that we can learn here it feels like we must be able to 32:59 Partely because we're doing work with the Ukrainians for this. There's, for instance, the new brake stop drones, which are partly designed by the company that designs Formula E cars. So it's not a conventional defence company, it's a tech engineering company. But yes, they're kind of, again, relatively cheap and cheerful. They want to turn out hundreds of them for Ukraine, but the tech will be available for the UK military. 33:26 Se você for put in charge of Procurement, ou se você for made Defence Secretariat, e nós provavelmente vamos ter que ir a go. 33:32 Eu vou estar vendendo a lot of maps and scissors. 33:37 Mas do você think Procurement just needs to change completely? I mean, it sounds like it's just so bedeviled, and it has been for so long. 33:44 Yeah, I think they need to seriously consider who we buy from and why. There's a lot of... 33:53 Decisions that are about, well, if we can give this company a £200 million contract, then they'll build a factory in Wales. But not quite pinning that down. So the factory in Wales doesn't necessarily even happen. But we spend a lot of money on kind of courting these very big defence and engineering companies. 34:14 Is that because so much defence has to be in-country for obvious reasons that you can't outsource it to the other side of the world? It's a national security thing, so you have to have it here. 34:22 Well, you would think, but then when you look at just how much we spend with the US and how badly some of that's worked around things like the fighter jets and so on. 34:34 I mean, obviously, we have to really spend with our allies, but it's not so much the case that we do all our defence spending within the UK. 34:43 I guess just supply chains are much more global and it's very hard to have a completely in-country supply chain, of course. 34:49 There's a sort of early idea goes into it that, well, if us and the Italians and the Japanese, for instance, all club together to buy a thing, then it'll be cheaper. But then it works out that you've kind of constantly got to deal with the competing wishes of three different governments, all of who want to change the specs slightly. 35:10 Well, that's interesting because one of these new drone programmes has been announced this week and it's giving three suppliers a grand total of three million quid, better, smaller, to develop low-cost interceptors to shoot down drones. But I think that is a five-country thing, but it feels like quite a small thing. 35:25 Yes. 35:26 Que, again, feels like a step in the right direction. 35:29 We seem to be better at doing innovation on a small scale. But as soon as the resources get very big... This is your map fetish again, isn't it? 35:40 All you need is a pair of ladies bloomers with a compass sewn in them. 35:44 It sounds like Scrap Heap Challenge is basically the model going forward for the British Armed Forces. 35:50 I mean... If you look at what's happening in Ukraine, scrappy challenges. I mean, things that you can repair are very important. So, yes. 36:03 Regular listeners may know that Adam specialises in harriology, harriography and the Daily Mail. I never meant to. I just got dragged in. 36:15 It's that and the sale of the Telegraph, which finally is concluded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 36:19 Huge week for you. All over. So the Harry trial, Harry, sorry, et al. trial against the Daily Mail group has come to a conclusion. For any readers who might have not been paying attention, how'd it go? 36:32 Not good for Harry and the others. It's officially Lawrence and others versus Associated Newspapers. Lawrence in question being, of course, Baroness Lawrence, mother of murdered Stephen Lawrence, who was kind of pulled into this case by Harry. Specifically, he sent her a text at the Suggestion of the lawyer David Sherbourne, who he had met on holiday at Elton John and David Furnish's house. They're also in this case as well. So it's got all human life is here. Yeah, I have ploughed through all 436 pages of Mr Justice Nicklin's judgment, which came out last week, sort of desperately combing for a single crumb in there that might have given some comfort to Prince Harry and his fellow litigants. 37:14 There really isn't one. It is the most comprehensive dismissal of all of their claims I've ever seen, I think, in a legal judgment. 37:22 So they were claiming in their lawsuit that all of these stories in the mail over a very long period of time had been based on illegally acquired information. Whether that was phone hacking or other methods, it was improperly acquired. 37:35 Unlawful information gathering is the phrase that they use. So it covered a bit of phone hacking, voicemails. At the start of the trial, when it was first announced, or the start of the case when it was first announced back in 2022, there were allegations of burglaries to order, of recording of landline phone calls, of microphones being stuck to people's windows to eavesdrop on. All of that dropped away in the course of this trial. It's extraordinary. What they were left with, essentially, was testimony, witness statements from a load of ...possibly repentant phone hackers and private eyes who had done very dodgy things on behalf of other newspaper groups. 38:07 Or possibly, it then turned out, when they changed their stories partway through the litigation, hadn't been at all. So a lot of it depended on the testimony of a guy called Gavin Burrows. A witness statement appeared at an early stage in the litigation in which he said he'd been doing all sorts of work for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, all sorts of the dodgy stuff that we've heard about from the News of the World and from Mirror Group before. 38:28 Então, ele disse que ele nunca trabalha para o Daily Mail e Mail no Sunday nunca em sua vida, e que a testa foi realmente uma forgeria, que foi feito por um paralelo, ou um paralelo que estava trabalhando no caso, um cara chamado Graham Johnson, que é um dos repentant phone hackers. So what, he turned from a prosecution witness to a defence witness? Well, in the end, neither of them wanted him at all, because he turned out to be such a liability in court. There was a lot of debate, which I wrote about in private at the time, over whether he was going to be allowed into court at all. There was an application part way through to turn him into a hostile witness, and he would be treated as that. 39:03 And what Mr Justice concluded in the end was that his credibility was... Compreensively undermined. His evidence was argumentative, evasive, internally inconsistent, and at times extraordinary. And it was. I mean, there were claims of he sort of darkly hinted at working for MI6 and the secret services and all sorts of things. 39:24 Can I just say, Gavin Burroughs is an unbelievably good name for an investigative hack. I don't think we've ever made that point before, have we? 39:30 It's like a full sentence. 39:30 He's a sentence person. 39:32 Ele era um private investigador, rather than a jornalista. O que ended up, o que really comes through in the Judgment, é que, essencialmente, eles começaram com a sensação de que o seu privacê tinha sido horrível invadido, que, em alguns casos, realmente tinha sido. Eu me lembro de uma história. Eu me lembro de uma história, muito sympathetic, de Sadie Frost, que, você lembra, foi parte da Primrose Hill set. Ela foi matada de Jude Law. E aí era o tipo de senanagens e a break-up de uma margem e a messiness. Ela era bem com Kate Moss e todos esses tipos de pessoas. E aí era uma história intrusiva, eu acho que todo mundo tem a dizer, sobre a vida dela. 40:06 Interessante, mesmo na época, a história mais intrusiva foi sobre a história de uma casada ectopada. 40:12 e sendo fronted-up sobre isso por um jornalista que Katie Nichol. Fronted-up? Fronted-up, as em contagi e asked to comment on it. This story was felt to be too intrusive, never actually appeared at all, and none of us would be any the wiser about it had this litigation not occurred 20 years later. But then in other cases, I mean, the allegations on which... Claims of unlawful information gathering were based seemed so slight as to be almost non-existent. And one of Baroness Lawrence's cases turned on two words, literally. So this was a report of... There was going to be a full public inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a story which turned out to have been given to Paul Dacre, then editor of the Daily Mail, on very, very good sourcing. 40:49 It was the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, told him privately. They were old mates from university. He told him that. But there was a line in it which said, the family will decide soon whether to bring a second private prosecution for murder. 41:00 E o Claiming Court foi que a palavra decida-soon significava que eles deviam ter uma voicemail interception ou algo em que eles sabiam que isso ia acontecer. Agora, o juiz disse que não era o resultado de blagging, ou era muito mais unlikely que ele era o resultado de blagging, ele disse que era uma perfeita reasonable, assumida timescale de inferência e priori reporting. Essentially, havia sido outro reporting dizendo que eles estavam considerando isso. And decide soon is one of those, I mean, it's those phrases we use like recently, which can cover a multitude of sins, isn't it? I mean, it's just a likely thing to happen. 41:29 We don't have a timescale for this, but they'll have to decide soon or they'll run out of time. 41:35 Can I ask about the... Porque eu acho que uma das coisas que came out foi que, você sabe, em um custo, essencialmente, o male e o Harry tem um dos Lourences, então, Stephen Lourence's dad wrote a peça para o male, dizendo que eles estão ficando estourados. Obviamente, a forma que o male sees isso é que... Doreen Lawrence was recruited by Harry to be essentially a much more sympathetic claimant than him. And this wasn't celebrity tittle-tattle, this was the mother of a murdered son. Is she on the hook for costs? Because there was this suggestion that the judge's ruling was so critical of Harry et al. 42:09 That their libel insurance or their court insurance wasn't going to cover them. And they were actually on the hook for essentially punitive costs, which the mail said about like £50 million. 42:16 It's not quite punitive. I mean, the next stage of this, because it ain't over yet, is a cost hearing which is going over two days at the end of the month. That is going to involve not punitive damages, but... I love this. Mr Justice Nicklin describes it's not as the cost hearing, but the consequentials hearing, which is really like, there will be consequences. 42:32 It does sound a bit, from what you were saying, that Justice Nicklin was not impressed with Harry's legal team, Harry's advisers hacked off. 42:40 He was absolutely not impressed with them. I spent a couple of days in court covering this, and he was the... 42:45 O atitude foi David Sherborne, que era o barrister que era leading o celebritismo, vamos chamar eles, a case. E foi muito, muito espiky. Ele foi muito criticado. 42:57 Essentially, and this wasn't tributary. No, this was the judge sitting on his own. He's incredibly critical of the way that they prosecuted. He said, essentially, it started off that the accusation was that all of these private detectives working kind of at arm's length for the male group had been doing the unlawful stuff. They had various ledgers, which had been acquired by Graham Johnson, one of the paralegals involved in the case, who also runs his own. E aí Quando we talked about this before you were saying you're not allowed to pay witnesses and the argument by the claimants was they weren't paying for the witness statements they were just paying for these accounts in various books and articles for this internet site that just happened to coincide exactly with what they then said in their witness statements before in some cases they said no we never ever said that at all and it's a forgery. 43:55 Mas então o que ele foi tão impressionado com eles, que ele poderia então simplesmente dizer que você não deveria ter broughte-se, não que você é um exatio de litigância entirely, mas que você tenha tomado a piss, essencialmente, e eu vou fazer você pagar um monte de dinheiro para o Daily Mail, além do que o que o insurance vai cover. 44:11 You've taken the piss essentially is in slightly more legalese what he said. He said that eventually when all of that fell away there was a case when journalists were actually on the witness stand talking about how they'd acquired these stories where they were, Sherborne put direct accusations to them that they had been involved in phone tapping or voicemail hacking. E ele disse que isso era uma declaração de serios não apoiada por um propelido caso ou evidência capaz de sustentá-lo. Agora, isso é, eu acho, judespeak, porque você está tomando a piss, essencialmente. 44:43 E isso vai voltar a eles em termos de custos agora. Porque a Mail, a briefing que eles têm, o total custo para esse caso era R$50 milhões. Eu, isso é o tipo de dinheiro que vai fazer Nigel Farage's bairro, não é? They are also now applying for not punitive damages but an indemnity order which essentially says there isn't a cap on the cost they can charge to the other side because it's such a comprehensive loss. This is just the straightforward rule in the British legal system that the losing side pays the costs of the other side. as well as their own. What that means, an indemnity audit will allow them to secure compensation to as full an extent as possible for the outlay and trouble of litigation. 45:20 And that was enormous. I mean, essentially, there were several members of staff, senior members of staff at the Mail who carried on kind of in their jobs just to deal with this litigation, including their head of legal, Liz Hartley. E Paul Dacre também, que é um em um balefrio, em cima do Daily Mail. Muito bem, muito feliz, no momento. 45:39 Recordou um vídeo em que ele tomou a oportunidade de slag-off Max Mosley, agora que ele está morto. Você pode realmente dizer que... Muito assim Farage e sua filha, isso foi muito pessoal para Paul Dacre, que, como eu disse antes, ele tinha a fronteira na página da walla de sua office por anos. Isso, para ele, foi um signo que, você sabe, que tudo isso disse sobre o Daily Mail é racista, mas aqui eles foram embora para um jovem, morto-murderado, com um jovem, morto-murderado, com um jovem, morto-murderado, com um jovem, E ele era tão orgulho de isso. Eu acho que é parte da razão que eles lutaram so hard. 46:07 E ele foi realmente que, e o reportagem de Stephen Wright, o crime editor, no Lawrence case, todo o tempo todo. Isso foi anos antes antes de haver um pouco de successeful prosecutions. Ele foi então diretamente acusado, e ele falou, realmente, muito bem no stand, sobre como isso foi para ser acusado de isso. O allegamento foi puto para ele que veio de racismo. He pointed out that he has a black wife and mixed-race kids and he found this completely abhorrent. And that is certainly the feeling. This was genuine emotion, if you can imagine such a thing, within Daily Mail Towers. 46:38 I can imagine Justice Nicklin at that point is more like... It's just sort of like, are you still beating your wife level kind of questions being put to people. This feels like a very... Deixar-me dizer, ill-advise litigation strategy. 46:50 Deixar-me de acusar os hacks themselves. 46:51 Você não pode realmente ir à court e dizer que você fez um phone-hacking, não é? Que é como você conseguiu essa história? Não sendo capaz de dizer que aqui é o notebook que tem o número que tem, aqui é o que aconteceu em alguns dos casos de news-of-the-world, certo? Eles têm um pouco de hard evidence behind it. A theory seems to have sido que é o tipo de coisa que as pessoas gostam de fazer, então você deve ter feito. 47:12 And in some cases there were actually, the names came up of freelance journalists doing bits for the mail and being the sources of some of these stories who have been mentioned in previous successful phone hacking litigation and the suggestion being that they must have been doing it for the mail as well. The judge was extremely clear that you actually, for every single accusation that was made, the claimants had to argue a specific payment and have actual evidence of it and nothing could be done by inference or what he called propensity, which is essentially that argument of, well, we're all up to this sort of thing. Does this change 47:41 sobre a forma que jornalismo vai ser feito ou sobre a forma que os assuntos vão ser fechados sobre isso? Porque isso tem sido um longo processo, desde quando o telefone hacking estava acontecendo. Agora, isso é o longo da lei de legal action. 47:54 É realmente, sim. A resposta para isso é não, mas porque isso tem mudado já, essencialmente. Eu não sei, eu estou dizendo, há histórias de Sadie Frost e a outra coisa. It doesn't really happen anymore. I mean, celebrities work in a different way. They're putting their own stories and curating their own lives out on Instagram, and it's much, much easier and cheaper for newspapers just to report things that way. There isn't that sort of... None of these stories were recent ones. This is going back to that sort of classic period of slightly Wild West pre-Leveson. 48:20 Você tem a classe agora de celebridades que são influências que, seguindo mais como a Katie Price model, sabem que tudo que eles fazem é for sale e que a única coisa que eles fazem é que eles saibam com os cabos e pensam que eles não conseguem anunciar coisas. Então, você acha que esse é o último... 48:35 I would be very, very surprised if any lawyer is prepared to work on a conditional fee agreement on any further cases like this. And essentially, there's no one else to go after now. I mean, we had the Mirror litigation. We had the litigation against the News of the World. We've had further litigation against The Sun, where we've had these bizarre settlements where Rupert Murdoch has just handed over enormous amounts of money for people who claim that they had their phones hacked by The Sun, but said, there's no admission of any guilt in this. I just like giving money away. That's another person who should contact Nigel Farrell. 49:03 Isso foi, essencialmente, a última dos grandes grupos que foram likely a ser acusados de esses tipos de coisas, e eles foram compreendentemente cleared por isso. 49:11 Can eu perguntar se há alguma coisa em julgamento sobre... Some pessoas lembram a private eye players e a dramatic reading da Facebook mensagem entre Harry e Charlotte Griffiths e o Mail no Sunday? 49:21 Charlotte Griffiths e o Mail no Sunday. 49:22 H-bomb. Parece que ela está em casa. 49:27 Eu tenho que dizer, que foi o momento que eu pensei, eu não acho que isso está indo muito bem para o Harry, mas foi isso? 49:35 Mas foi isso, porque os Facebook mensagens entre o Charlotte Griffiths e o Prince Harry não foram citados em court. Eles foram colocados em evidências, mas nunca realmente... Nós não havíamos dado a dramatic reading de eles, que era tão absente, que era tão absente. 49:46 Eu não vou colocar para a costeira. 49:47 Mas eu tenho que dizer, no Daily Mail, eu acho que foi o dia após o julgamento, nós havíamos ter Charlotte Griffiths's own account ... ... ... ... ... 50:09 That is in the greatest tradition of, and then I made my excuses and left. And I'm absolutely sure it was paracetamol. 50:15 So I think that gives you a sign of the sort of treatment which Prince Harry, and I have to say, a lot of the other litigants in this case can expect from the Daily Mail titles in future. Well, you'll be hearing about it on page 94. 50:26 Thank you very much, Adam. Thanks to Helen and Jane. Thank you to you for listening. If you would like to get a copy of Private Eye with many stories about Toyota Hiluxes, about Type 45 Destroyers, about Prince Harry, about Rupert Lowe, about many, many more things, all the things our colleagues brilliantly write about, it is available in shops. It's also available at private-i.co.uk where subscriptions are even more reasonably priced than a single issue of the magazine. That's it for now. The only person remaining to thank is Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing. Thank you to Matt and bye for now. 50:57 They're so cheap, you could also afford to pay to have Nigel Farage read it out to you on Cameo.