The Antisemitism Spectrum - Private Eye's local election roundup

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.You join us at the very end of the local election campaign.So much of it is focused on what we would think of previously as the edges of British politics on right and left, reform and the Greens.It seems increasingly quite hard for the Conservatives and Labour.traditionally quite big players here.

You've missed out the Lib Dems again.I'm sorry, I'm sorry.Which is the theme of the campaign.Literally the Lib Dems are complaining.Our polls, they were consistent.No one even mentioned us.

Yeah, it's very unfair.So I just thought I'd mention them.Is that a fair summary, Helen, or is it?

I think that the Greens and Zak Polanski have taken up a vast majority of the oxygen in these campaigns for a very good reason.A lot of the seats that are being defended are Labour seats that are kind of Green facing.Some of them are Reform facing.They expect to lose a huge number of seats.So that's almost been kind of factored in at this point, right?The story, if Labour even do slightly better than you think, everyone will kind of fall about themselves with shock.

I'm bracing myself for a both Reform and Greens saying the mainstream media underrated us, but look how well we've done.This will be a lie if they say this.Everyone expects them to do incredibly well.And one of the things I found most interesting, I was reading Jim Wharton's very good newsletter, London Centric, in which he referred to the fact they'd got their hands on last year, Reform's local elections playbook, their canvassing handbook.And one of the things they'd say to their candidates are, let Nigel deal with the national issues, you just focus on on you layers or whatever it might be on potholes on the housing estate that no one wants built, whatever it might be.That's one thing.

And the other thing is don't post anything on social media at all.Don't think that this is now your time to air your thoughts about the Middle East peace process.And so I think having been through that mega storm of lots and lots of reform candidates being found out to have unpleasant views, that's something the party is very aware of as a problem.The Greens are further back on that learning curve, I would say.So we have two people who've been arrested on allegations of anti -Semitism.one of them seen campaigning out for the Greens after that.

You have the Greens deputy leader, Morfin Ali, saying to people who've been accused of anti -Semitism, you know, think about challenging the party on this, you know, we shouldn't give in to these smear campaigns.So that fight that the Corbyn -era Labour Party went through in the years 2015 to 19 is now happening in very different ways.much the glare of publicity for the Greens.

We should say, of course, this is in the wake of the Golders Green stabbings and, you know, renewed focus on anti -Semitism in British society.public life.

It was prior to that as well.I mean, it was very obvious even prior to the stabbings in Golders Green last week that there was a concerted kind of campaign of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community.So there were firebomb attacks on most notoriously the ambulances, but also a couple of attempted arson attacks at synagogues in North London.So it was quite clear that that sort of stuff was going on.And even prior to the Golders Green stabbing, Zak Polanski came out and said one of the most idiotic things, that we needed to be wary of whether this was Jewish people feeling unsafe or whether it was just a perception they had of unsafe.which I mean there's quite a lot of clear evidence in there and firebombs attacks I would feel quite unsafe.

Yeah and the stabbing outside Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester as well.I mean if you look at the figures the Jewish community in Britain is very small and it is enormously disproportionately affected by hate crimes.There isn't a synagogue or a Jewish school out there that doesn't have security around it that doesn't have walls you know and I think this is a community that has felt that it has been living in fear for a really quite a long time now.

Now every party I would say has had its own problems with anti -Semitism in its ranks.I don't know about the Lib Dems actually.They may have managed to dodge it, I'm not sure.But certainly this was a problem in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.There seemed to be lots of credible evidence that this is now a problem in the contemporary Green Party.

Again, one shouldn't forget that the leader of the Reform Party had quite a well -publicised incidentduring his school days, which 24 people gave evidence about and which has now been dismissed.And it's considered bad taste to bring it up.So I thought I would.But it's not entirely gone, has it?Reform candidates mostly now are being discovered to have Islamophobic or whatever you want to call it tendencies.

there was a period where they were pretty anti -Semitic.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting insight into the evolution of anti -Semitism in Britain is that it was the casual prejudice of choice, well, one of them, on the right in the 60s and 70s.And since then, it has been, yeah, there are still neo -Nazis out there, but it has also now become associated with a particular left -wing form of anti -Semitism, which bleeds into some things that are legitimate.I mean, this is always the problem with everybody draws their line in a different place.But it bleeds into criticisms of Israel, particularly the Gaza war.and also some of the tropes on the left about you know a global elite or a 1 % or billionaires and some of those are perfectly legitimate and then some of those go into Rothschilds, you know, Illuminati, Protocols of the Elders of a Zionist -controlled government, and then it gets closer, you know, and closer and closer to over -rank anti -Semitism.So I think that that is, you know, there has been an evolution in where you would imagine the prejudice would come.

And for the right, as you say, and the people who are now to be afraid of are Muslims, and you will hear all these tropes about a Muslim invasion of Europe, you know, this idea of kind of armies of rapists overtaking us.And so the kind of poles of the kind of The far right are very keen on Israel now.

So alongside the St George flags, you had demonstrations where there was St George.Oh, and the State of Israel.That's a long way for British fascism to move, which has been, you know, pretty solidly anti -Semitic right the way through.Now it isn't.

Tommy Robinson was invited over to Israel, wasn't he?By, I think, the president's office, which is,an extraordinary kind of fusion of people.But there's another thing I've noticed that's really interesting is the sort of bandwagoning by the right onto this anti -Semitism and blame that all on Muslim communities as well, which goes along with it.You know, they are being made the scapegoat for absolutely everything by the right.But the idea that anti -Semitism in this country has somehow been imported in on the small boats and it's another migrant, it's a migrant community who are completely to blame for that as well, which is sort of equally inaccurate.

I mean, Keir Starmer, I know, is trying to make the point at the moment that this is itself evidently a massive problem for society, and it's something we should all be ashamed of.And to kind of move it on into just trying to scapegoat someone else seems to be as useless a reaction to it as any other, really.

Right.Now, I wasn't on the podcast last time.So can I just check, is this all just an attempt by you three to have another go at poor old Zach Polanski who is doing his best under very trying circumstances to offer hope and change?Just facing this sort of sneering cynicism from the media.

Just to give you a glimpse behind the scenes, while you were away, probably doing something actively green rather than the stuff the Green Party is more into these days.We got criticised by Zak Polanski for not understanding the appeal of the Greens.And Ian stands indicted of the crime of saying they don't seem to talk about environmentalism very much.They are more a left -wing populist party.Ian, how could you?I know, and I remember this.

I live in Lewisham, which is a contest between Labour and the Greens.As the Green leaflet, big picture of Zak Polanski on the front, dropped through my letterbox.Can you guess how many times environmentalism was mentioned in that leaflet, Andy?

I'm going to say double figures at least.

You're going to say none, because it was none.It was about their populist economic proposals, the £15 minimum wage, for example.And the way that Zak Polanski phrased this in his interview with the Times, essentially, well, paraphrase by decorating it for him,was everyone knows that they're in favour of green issues.That's sort of taken as a given.So actually, they're going to talk about cost of living issues instead.

One of the things I found quite unpleasant was the fact that Rachel Millwood, the other Green deputy leader, apart from Moffin Alley, was on Question Time.She was asked about the Golders, Green stabbing and the rise of anti -Semitism, and she attributed it to the cost of living.crisis.And I think that is, yeah, I know.

Another random scapegoat.

But it's basically like austerity's made a lot of people feel, you know, very angry.And what struck me about that is that is a mirror image of things you will hear from reform supporters who say, essentially, it's very hard not to be racist these days because, you know, all these people coming over and taking our jobs, right.And in both cases, there is this idea that economic insecurity is is kind of gives people a sign off essentially for finding a scapegoat and I was quite surprised to hear that the Green party deputy leader signing off that something that they would attack very heavily when the right use that same language.

Can I just say at this point I would like to be unpopular on all fronts and say that there is classically a problem with Islamism and anti -semitism.I made a documentary about anti -semitic precedents and ended up, you know, witnessing the Cairo book fair a couple of years ago where they're actively selling Mein Kampf.And a lot of cartoonists in Arab newspapers literally would not get published anywhere else on the grounds of anti -Semitic tropes.So we can't ignore it.And I think it is it is worth saying that the eye has tried, which is usually a failed policy of saying we are against Israel's behaviour in Gaza, but we're not very keen on anti -Semitism.after our Gaza cover there was nothing but letters saying you know the eye is absolutely anti -semitic despite the number of literally every issue we write about anti -semitism online Elon Musk

all of those things.But we do run pieces saying, guess what's happening in the West Bank?It's not great.Dr. Grimm runs those pieces.So attempting nuance is unacceptable in the new bipolar world.And that makes this issue even worse because everyone deliberately, you say, you know, the borders between the two get confused.

I think they're deliberately confused by people who want to play in that space.

And you've had experience of this a lot over the years because of the acid test of the letters page.Yes.And whoever's complaining most, and it's normally when someone is popular, someone is new, as Zak Polanski undoubtedly is at the moment, someone that seems to be offering something different, before mass disillusionment has kicked in, as Happens in every single political career.

It's part of the process You experience that in real time, you know, yes, and people are furious They write letters and and it used to be the Scots Nats They would they were easily the most prolific and bad -tempered letter writers about any mention of Nicola Sturgeon at all Any suggestion that anything in Scotland had gone wrong in any way was just you know, sassonak whinging and you know sort of what you want Boris then.UKIP originally you've never seen so many letters.Tory's briefly the Boris cult any mention of him particularly the overflowing lavatory suggesting that was his legacy I think there was a staggering number of letters.

That was the cover with a literal toilet on it.

I wanted to complain about that.It was so horrible.Yes it was horrible.But the volume is and the greens are out now.They are very, very offended by any criticism of Zak and any criticism of themselves.And I think it's when you get this rush of popularity, it doesn't occur to you that the thing that comes next is accountability.

Yeah.Because you might be in.And by the time I say this, he might well be in charge of a party that's running a lot of councils.People are going to ask you things.And if they ask you things that you don't like or you don't particularly want to answer, that doesn't mean they're mainstream media smear merchants.I mean, you've just got to get beyond that.

Otherwise, you know, you end up saying, I don't want journalism.

I think about all the people we've had in politics in my lifetime, there has been a real difference between what you might call the populists and the mainstream.The mainstream just moan a lot less about journalism, right?And that's one of the things that I think is very different about them.

Well, there was a very fun piece last week, I think in The Economist, analysing 35 ,000 likes by Zak Polanski on Blue Sky, which is his social media platform of choice.I mean, he's filming all the time, he's writing all the time, and he's on it all the time, clearly.And he will like anything that mentions him positively.And he will also like quite a lot of stuff that's incredibly rude about anyone who's been even slightly critical of him.And it's just, I don't have time to like 35 ,000 things on Blue Sky.I don't know how someone running a major political party But that speaks to what he's very good at, which is content creation.

He's very visible, he turns up, he's pushing out his message.These are the things I will give him credit for.That is part of the role of party leader now, something that Keir Starmer is obviously failing at and terrible at.What does Keir Starmer think we're going, or how do you think we get there?Very hard to tell you now, even.He's just not communicating those things.

Zak Klansky is. I mean, I think it's all completely different to what he believed 10 years ago, and he's never really accounted for how he's changed his mind, but we certainly know what he's promoted.

He's apologised to Jeremy Corbyn.

That's the one thing that he's apologised for, is essentially the Labour Party being too tough on anti -Semitism.

And he was fooled by the propaganda.

What, the Lib Dem propaganda?

No, the propaganda around Corbynism.

Oh, I see.

The idea that there was anti -Semitism.-Semitism in the Labour Party.Yeah, that's the bit he's apologised for.Suggesting that might have been the case.

Go on, stick your fingers in the socket.No, I'm going to stick my finger in the socket because one of the things that has been really interesting with the Greens, that they were very good at expelling people for, was expelling gender -critical feminists.So Shahar Ali, in fact, took the party to court where he felt that they had discriminated against his lawful views.I would say yes, I would take the fact that there has been a huge intake of new candidates and their vetting has been delayed by that.However, I would say it is also reasonable to say you had a very bright line about what views on sex and gender you were not permitted in this party.And as a political party, that is your right.

There's not an imposition of free speech.People who hold those views are just not compatible with being in the Green Party, sure.However, you are, I think, more reluctant to do this on views about anti -Semitism.And I think the rest of us are allowed to comment on that and disagree with it, actually.

And when you talk about vetting, I mean, when Farage said, I don't have time to vet these candidates, I thought, well, you could knock off two hours in the pub and read the list.He's got spare time now.He's not doing his cameo videos anymore.

He can get up at 5 o 'clock in the morning and do a bit of vetting instead.

And the same with Zak.Rather than dress up in green clothes and pose for the Sunday time green photoshoot, you could have had a coffee and looked over the list.

Here's an idea, Olly Robbins is looking for a job at the moment, isn't he?He's got some experience of vetting, they could get him in.

Before we move on from this bit, we should say just a little bit about exactly why Nigel Farage has been able to afford to give up doing videos on Cameo for 75 quid a time.

It's because he's on Celebrity Traitors.

He's the only person who isn't.Which is that in the last week we've learned that he received in 2024 a gift of £5 million.which was not taxed, from Christopher Harbourn, who is a Thai -based crypto businessman and, I believe, billionaire.I did a little calculation, just in case you're interested.Keir Starmer could have bought 2 ,000 pairs of nice glasses and still not come up to the level...Surely Maheen Ali could have bought that many pairs of glasses for Kirstein.

Sorry, in fact, that is the total in the whole glasses gate.It was many, many more pairs of glasses than that you could get.This does not seem to have attracted the attention that I think it ought to.Farage got in very early with a defence.You know exactly how that happened, didn't you, Helen?

Well, so the Guardian, who had this story, according to them, went to them for comment on it.And according to the Guardian, the reformed press office stalled them and said, we need more time.Then they said, oh, you've directed it to the wrong press officer, actually.And in the meantime, a very sympathetic piece, I think written by Gordon Rayner in The Telegraph, appeared with the headline, I was firebombed.And this was lots and lots about - By Farage.By Nigel Farage being fired.

firebombed and this was lots and lots about Nigel Farage's security issues with then very long way down going and in order to resolve these security issues I accepted this gift.One problem with that, I think you spotted the problem didn't you Andy?

Yes, it's a timeline thing which is that the firebombing, the attempted arson attack on Farage's home which we don't need to say, probably should say, is deplorable shouldn't happen.

Yes, I'm against it.

Yeah, we're all against it.That happened one year after Farage accepted a £5 million donation, which is apparently something to do with his security.So either Christopher Harbourn is a psychic, or crypto really is so good that it can predict something that's going to happen in a year's time, or that actually doesn't really stack up.And it was also, again,made when Farage was not an MP.So they're saying, look, this is completely irrelevant to Mr. Farage's political career.

But I love this.This is always the argument with donations that aren't declared, isn't it, is that technically it didn't have to be declared.And in this case, the excuse is it was the point where he said he was never coming back as a reform leader and he was done now and Richard Tice was going to take over.And it's just so clearly, I mean, to use a parliamentary term, complete bollocks, isn't it?Because if you're in hock to someone for five million pounds, if someone is giving you five million, clearly, on principle, that is something you need If there is a register of interest, that is an interest.I mean, this is the same argument that our old friend Peter Mandelson made first resignation time around, when he said he didn't think it was relevant that he owed £373 ,000 to another cabinet minister at that point, because he'd been lent it by Geoffrey Robinson to buy a house in Notting Hill.

Clearly, it's an interest.It's a relevant interest.You don't need to parse it and go into accountancy terms of exact technicalities.

And if it comes a few months before you announce not only that you're going back into frontline politics, and also that you think this crypto stuff is fantastic and there should be much lower taxes on crypto transactions, and later on Farage has said that he's invested nearly 300 grand in a company that buy and hold Bitcoin, Yes, you're suggesting that two and two equal four.Yeah, I am, which I'm sure in crypto world is not true due to something clever, but they do.

And I love Nigel Frodger's phrase, he's never lost.Crystal Harbour has never asked me or anything.He gave you £5 million, personally, and £17 million to the party.He doesn't need to ask you.You know what.You know what you're doing then, don't you?

And also, there is obviously the amusing irony that the leader of a party that complains about foreign people having influence over British politics is now the largest recipient of the largest amount of money ever by someone who's resident in Thailand.He probably loves Thailand, but he's also there in order to run a business there without all the encumbrance of British tax and British regulation whichagain, doesn't seem hugely patriotic.

Yeah, I think Nigel Farage is recreating the worst bits of MAGA.Involvement in crypto, which is just a deeply scammy industry, I would say any serious politician really should stay away from it.They should stay away from prediction markets.They should stay away from gambling.There's all of that.

And organised crime and those sort of things, I would say.

Running a sex ring.All of these things I would recommend that they often turn to shade into dodgy business and I'm against them.

You're so radical.

I'm so right wing.But the other thing is that Zia Yousaf announced on Bank Holiday Monday, He sent this sort of weird prisoner's dilemma where he said we're going to do mass deportations, we're going to build migrant hotels and we're going to put them in places that vote green to punish them.So if you don't want one in your place vote reform.

This literally comes with a website as well where you can put in your postcode and it will tell you where it looks like you're going to vote reform so you won't be getting one or it looks like people are going to be green in your area you will be getting it on your doorstep.I can't think of another situation in an election where there's been a sort of outright threat with menaces like that.Can you?I mean there's the usual sort of bribery and kind of we will cut your taxes.But an absolute if your area goes the wrong way then you're in trouble.

If you vote Green, you're going to get more potholes, and we're going to cause them.

But they think it's very clever, right?They think it's a trap that the left has walked into, which is like, oh, I see.You don't like migrant hotels.I thought you thought refugees were welcome.Now, that is very true of a tiny subset of the Green Party who do believe in completely open borders.But actually, there's a lot of people voting Green for a lot of other reasons, including cost of living and economic reasons, who don't feel like that.

But this, again, I think is the MAGA trap.Donald Trump, no squish on immigration, has pulled back from pulling crying children out of the streets, right, like just bundling people into cars, bundling them off to El Salvador or wherever it might be, because actually it looked cruel and unpleasant.people didn't like it.Even his supporters were not, you know, Stephen Miller gung -ho about it, his effective Chief of Staff, well his effective Prime Minister, but mostly this was not a popular policy.

And he sacked the person in charge.

And Greg Bovino, who was swaggering around in a very reiky coat, I would say, got his marching orders.So, you know, this just, I think that was a really unpleasant announcement.Obviously there's a million ways in which it didn't work.You know, the places that Greens are going to win will be inner cities.If you think you can build anything in those places that elect Greens.Also, if there's one thing that unites every part of the political spectrum in Britain, it's NIMBYism.

People just hate anything being built in Britain, like good luck with that.But it was also, it was just an odd, punitive Yes, you say like a sort of punishment beating for not voting for us in a way that I think you're right, crossed a line that I hadn't seen crossed before in British politics.

And there is a long tradition in British politics of telling the voters you're going to give them free money.Hogarth onwards, you know, our satirical tradition is rich with just politicians saying, would you like something?I'll give it to you.They don't usually say vote for me or else.That's different.

Right, now we come on to the state of the media.And there's been a report about the Press Freedom Index, which is a global report about how free the press is in all sorts of countries.Normally, you're used to seeing it, if you do see it, in the context of a lot more people banged up in Uzbekistan this year.Journalists, I mean.But Obviously, Adam, it also features the UK, because the UK is part of the global community.It is.

It is one of the 180 countries that were recorded in this report.The World Press Freedom Index, which is issued by Reporters Sans Frontieres, which older readers will remember is the international version of It's a Knockout, for the kids there.And obviously, there was an awful lot.I mean, generally, it wasa bad view.It was the lowest average score they've ever recorded across the globe in terms of press freedom.

A lot of that was down to journalists being killed in various conflict zones and other places around the world.220 journalists, more than that now I think, killed in Gaza by Israeli forces.A lot in Sudan and South Sudan as well, they noted.But I thought, you know, Because we're very parochial, we are UK based, we could have a look at what they said about the UK.Now, the UK fell two places.It's still recorded as satisfactory rather than good.

It's the 18th most free press in the world, according to reporters on Frontier, which is not bad.That doesn't...Sorry, coming in 18th and it's still not good?Satisfactory.Do you want to know who's good?I can tell you.

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Scandinavia are doing fantastically.Ireland...Very good.Estonia and the Netherlands were the ones who were graded as good, but we came in just as satisfactory.Is there anywhere graded outstanding?There is not.

OK, I'm just testing the ratings.Good is as good as it can get.

OK, so satisfactory is pretty good.

So did you say we've slipped a couple of rungs?Slipped a couple of rungs, yeah.Not doing as badly as the US, which has fallen seven places, specifically because of Donald Trump and his kind of MAGA movement's constant attacks on the media.But the specific reasons they gave for the UK deteriorating slightly, or problems with the UK, One of them very specific, attacks on exiled Iranian journalists who are broadcasting from over here and threats to their families back in Iran to try and stop them putting out what the anti -regime news.But they also noted a few other things, the rise in online abuse of journalists and the government's failure to act as promised on SLAPs, which of course are Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, which any iReader will know we've covered in great detail along the way.So we've gone in specifically on Mohamed Mursi's extraordinary range of legal threats

against Charlotte Leslie, the former Tory MP, who he pursued through the courts, as I say, in several different ways over several years for having the temerity to put a memo out to 11 people containing some information about him.

So those are generally rich people shutting down journalists through the courts?

In a lot of cases, yeah.Another one was Tom Burgess, who was actually the journalist who in The Guardian last week exposed the Christopher Harbourn donation to Nigel Farage.We mentioned him earlier.But he put a book called Kleptopia.This case was thrown out as wholly flawed by the judge in the end, but it was brought by a Kazakhstan -based mining company.So, you know, these are the sort of people with a lot of money behind them who really don't want any of their activities written about.

So there have been lots and lots of those.Now, the government did promise ahead of the election that this was going to be one of their priorities, that they were going to bring in legislation to stop this kind of thing.There was a kind of phalanx of media lawyers.The Society of Media Lawyers was created, which is lots of people from firms that iReaders will know and love, like Schillings and Carter.Ruck.Ruck.

Yeah, I'll get it right.And various others who said, this is absolute nonsense and this would be terrible, a terrible, terrible thing to restrict our clients' right to legal representation.And their right to shut down journalism.

Yes.Which, if you are a very, very rich person, it never seems to occur to you that that isn't one of your fundamental human rights, that any criticism of yourself should stop.And there's always lawyers who are prepared to do that.But it did look as though this battle was being won.And there were brilliant books about, you know, Russian autocrats that managed to survive, you know, really good work, really good journalism.And suddenly we seem to be rowing backwards again.

And the Labour government, which I know I shouldn't take seriously what they wrote in the manifesto, it's just silly of me, but I think I believed they might do this.

Yes.And they did.say that they will do at some point.But unfortunately, what's happened is they've put in a working party, which involves a lot of these same media lawyers who are lobbying very, very hard against it.And it's sort of got kicked into the long grass as being something that's a bit difficult.I would say it was one of the most popular things they could possibly do if they want to curry favour with newspaper editors.

It's a slam dunk, this one, isn't it?

And boo foreigners, you know, it goes down pretty well.I mean, why not extend it to rich foreigners?

Yes.Who is pro -Kazakh billionaire?What is the constituency for that in Britain?Quite small.The other thing, Adam, I wonder if it came up.I was judging the Paul Foot Awards this year and really great entries as ever.

And we'll see who wins.But one of the things that struck me again was particularly with the local papers, the regional press, there's been some brilliant diversification onto Substack and these sort of small start -ups.But it is still people are on shoestring resources.

Yeah, that absolutely was one of the other things that came up in this report in the Press Freedom Interest.They said the budgetary pressures have left many outlets to close their newsrooms or drastically reduce staff.And at the same time, you're absolutely right.There are these sort of independent outlets which are coming out and still doing fantastic journalism, a lot of which is recognised every year in the foot of the woods, as you say.So Mill Media, who is one of these independent outlets who are doing a lot of very, very good journalism, faced down all sorts of legal threats.Most recently, in the last week, they had a threat from a spad to Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, over a story they were doing about her, which was very definitely in the public interest, threatening them with an injunction on the grounds of libel, which, if you know anything about law, that's not how it works.

Libel, the very principle is absolutely there, publish and be damned.So the story went ahead anyway.

It stops people following up the story, right?That's the reason I always think for those legal threats.If someone small does a story, they get this heavy handed legal response and everyone else who might follow it up then backs off a little bit.

Well there is an absolutely classic method which we've seen millions and millions of times with stories that we run in the Rotten Boroughs column, which then local papers try to follow up.up and are told by the press office or the council concerned or wherever, oh yes, no, that was very inaccurate and we're taking legal action against Private Eye.And occasionally they will phone us up and say, are they?

And we say, no, we haven't heard a dicky bird from them at all.But that threat is enough.Can I just ask, Adam, the press freedom people, do they have anything to say about who owns the Telegraph?I just, I've been so worried about it.

They did.Did they?Well, no, what they did point out was that one of the problems with the UK media, as far as they're concerned, is that there are just three companies who dominate the market.There are, of course, News UK, Reach and the Daily Mail and General Trust.Now actually that would have been even more of an issue because it looked for a while like the DMGT were going to take over the Telegraph as well but in fact we have now put more plurality in the UK media so we're going to go up the 2027 index presumably because Axel Springer have come in from Germany and taken over the Telegraph so yes it was in there.So this is a win for press freedom?

Oppressed diversity.Ah, yes, OK.Yeah, yeah.Slightly different thing.

Every time you've said Axel Springer, my brain has supplied Axel Foley, of course, the protagonist of Beverly Hills Cop, who I'm choosing to think that Eddie Murphy has taken over for The Telegraph.

That would be much more entertaining, wouldn't it?Cool.Yeah.That's interesting, because another thing we haven't mentioned is the BBC have just announced this huge cut of their own headcount.I mean, 2 ,000 people losing their jobs, about a tenth of the overall figure.workforce there, that's going to have a substantial effect as well.

There are going to be a lot of journalists on the jobs market, basically.

And there's no clear rationale for why these journalists have been suddenly culled during an interim between director generals.And it may just be convenience.But there was no warning.There was no build -up.There was no narrative.It was just, yeah, we need the money now.

We're not going to salami slice, which is the traditional BBC way, we're just going to cut.the only thing offered was well with the license fee where you know no one's paying it we're not collecting it right I mean there is a remedy for that I mean I get it attempting to lock up very, very poor people for not paying their licence fee doesn't look good.But arguing as the government that you have put this licence fee in place because you believe it is worth it might be worth trying.

Do you know what, I've never felt more pro -BBC than, I don't know if I've mentioned any, but I've just been to the Galapagos.Sorry.Once again, I think that, yeah, the BBC did loads of stuff I don't agree with, but actually no one is doing work of that quality and so much of it.

And on the international spectrum as well, you know, there are now Starlink terminals being smuggled into Iran so that people can get the BBC World Service and the BBC Persian service because they are reaching a huge number of the adult population.And I think it's something that all of the BBC's trials and tribulations here don't really reflect is what the BBC is still managing to do around the world.

So I went to an event organised by Hostage International, which offers support to the families of those who've been kidnapped and tries to sort of make their life better in whatever they can do and offer help and advice.And this event was about the kidnapping of John McCarthy, who was very famously kidnapped by an Iran -backed group.in the Middle East and he spent five years as a hostage.But he was talking and the number of references to the World Service involved in his account and the others account should have made everyone in the audience ashamed, both for the hostages, you know, they denied them radios when the Americans got a radio.John heard his friend talking about him the first time in two years.He had proof that anyone cared that he was still alive.

But the effect on the warders, the jailers, the other people in the region listening, the idea that the BBC World Service is some embarrassment.I mean, we've got aircraft carriers that don't work.We've got a soft power radio station that works unbelievably well.We're going to cut that.

I mean, it's Extraordinary.And very noticeably, that has been noticed elsewhere.So what floods in to fill the gap is Russia today, it's Sputnik, it's those things that come to directly Kremlin front funded propaganda outlets.And China has similar operations of news going around worldwide.So with the World Service being cut back here, Trump cutting funding for NPR and the Voice of America and all those kind of things.You know, this stuff does matter.

Yeah, tough times for all the people who are being funded by Viktor Orban in Hungary.Like the people on the right very well aware that it is a good idea to fund friendly media organisations.And then maybe Britain should say, well, we've got some values of our own, actually.And one of them is this idea of objectivity, which we aim for.Maybe we should fund that.Anyway, here concludes the party political broadcast in favour of the BBC.

Is there any particularly Good journalism that could be highlighted at the moment, for instance, by looking at a long list on the Private Eye website.

Will we be redoing our very successful series of little interviews with people?Yes, I will.

Once the shortlist is out, I'm going to be interviewing the shortlist and you'll hear it on this podcast channel.

Great.

I'm hearing a lot of pro -journalist propaganda here.I love it.I know, read Street of Shame next issue to find out how awful they all are.Now, having been so nice about journalists.

We're going to be nice about you.

No.We're going to be nice about parliamentarians, aren't we?Yeah, I just thought it would be worth doing a little section about one of the bits of the British political system that works.Which bit is that, Andy?The campaigns.

it cross -charging pavement solutions?

Don't even get me started.I go away on holiday for one week and the government makes a big announcement saying we're going to make this a permitted thing and look out for legislation coming later in the year.I'm gutted.

I hear they're calling it Andy's Law.

It is a win though, Andy, isn't it?Well, I'm not going to get too excited.I'm keeping the carver on ice.Because if this government promises it's going to happen, boom it happens exactly and then there's a quick u -turn at the end of the cold attack and they come right back the other way look it looks like it might happen that's not what i wanted to talk about but the bit that has been working and i think is worth highlighting is something i've been um trying to go along and look at which is the um the transport select committee so For those listening who don't know, there are all sorts of select committees on major issues in British public life.They are made up of MPs whose job is to run investigations, look at the issues that is their particular patch, and eventually come up with a report and recommendations.So I've been going to the Transport Select Committee.

One of their running investigations is called Supercharging the Electric Vehicle Transition, about is it working?is it not?So they take evidence.And just for anyone whose normal experience of politics is seeing the occasional snippet of Prime Minister's questions, it is a completely different side of the experience and so much more interesting and constructive.

Oh I love a select committee.Do you remember that some of the great select committees around the time of the phone hacking for example they were behind drama and Margaret Hodge used to do I think the Public Accounts Committee one of the ones that scrutinizes finance and it was incendiary sometimes and what you tend to do is yeah okay so there are some idiots who just sign up to them for whatever reason they want to grandstand and there is a bit of this isn't so much a question as a commentwhich is the plague of public life.But normally you get MPs who are genuinely enthused and interested and knowledgeable about a topic, and they're getting in front of them people who are also enthused and interested and knowledgeable about the topic.

This is it.The thing I found really interesting is the difference between the bit where it's the committee of MPs interviewing just sort of subject experts.You might get someone from a big charging company, or you might get someone from a local council and say, what are you concerned about all what's going well.And then the political bit, because in the last session you had the minister responsible, who's Keir Mather MP.You might recognise that name.He's a child.

Yes.He's 28.And that's 12.He's very young.He was very impressive, you know.

But he had to change his name to Andy Mather soon, because he obviously came.It's going to be quite...Anyway.

Yeah.But that slightly changed the nature of it.But even then, I mean, this committee is mostly Labour MPs.MPs, because most MPs are Labour MPs.

Well, select committees, the membership is reflective of the state of the parties in the House, isn't it?Reasonably proportional, you know.

There is a Tory, there are a couple of Lib Dems on this committee.But the interesting thing was they were not noticeably kinder to him because he was a minister in their party.I mean, some of the toughest questions about whether this thing is working or not came from the other Labour MPs on the committee.There wasn't too much grandstanding or party dicks, one or two, but mostly it was very collaborative, you know.I mean, there are fun things about it.Like the first session I went to, 10 minutes of it was completely inaudible because Angela Rippon was running a dance class outside with the Speaker of the House.

Oh yeah, I saw the pictures of that.In Portcullis House?

It was in Portcullis House.What you didn't see was all the committee rooms around the centre of Portcullis House where people were just saying, well, we don't know what's being said here.and maybe it's relevant, but we're not getting it.

So would you say the transport committees were better than the select committees that looked into the Mandelson Gate saga?

Well, I...That was the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, wasn't it, which is chaired by Emily Thornberry, who really not very happy at not being put into the cabinet at the last election and made that quite apparent.

Oh, OK.She was giving diva, I think, is the way to describe that.

There was very little diva given on the Transport Select Committee.Maybe when these things are a bit further from scrutiny, you know, they're allowed to just get on with the job.

No, because I felt, you know, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee had identified some of the big problems, such as Peter Mandelson shouldn't have been appointed, which I wouldn't have had a clue about unless they'd had at least 12 sessions.

Are those helpful?That comment?

That comment, not very.

I think you need to go back to travel.Those select committees where it's a big public thing, all the phone hacking ones, are they Doing a different thing?There is quite a lot of grandstanding.

Famously Keith Vaz when he was in charge of the Home Affairs Committee was very into a celebrity guest so you would tend to get Russell Brand turning up back in the day and pontificating for several hours.Well Keith tried to get himself in the camera frame as well.So there are a lot of criticisms to be made of this process as well.But there are in fact so many of these select committees that a lot of them still are doing a lot of good business.I would say just say well we're on this congratulatory thing, just slightly self -congratulatory.I think Gavel Basher, one of our parliamentary correspondents, does an absolutely brilliant job of not focusing on the chamber and the Prime Minister's questions and that kind of thing, and getting along to a lot of these select committees and along to the House of Lords chamber as well, which is another of the areas that's sort of overlooked and ignored by the general daily coverage.

Right, because the Lords, as far as I see it, they were the ones who really ended the Assisted Dying Bill.Absolutely.They just ran into the sand in Lords consistently.But I think I think it is actually quite useful occasionally.to restore your faith in democracy.In the same way that every year I find that judging the poor footballers restores my faith in journalism.

Because yes, there are a lot of show ponies who are very irritating and in everything and do much better in their careers than me, which is wrong and shouldn't be allowed.But also there are people who are doing just unglamorous Heavy lifting work.And that's what you see at the select committees too.

Yes.And it does not get less glamorous, I can tell you, than maybe half an hour of questions about the electric vehicle excise duty.Which, you know, you've got to be interested to be...

Presumably absolutely vital in the sense that we could be having a flood of cheap Chinese electric vehicles here and they are sort of essentially barred from coming over, right?

Oh, they're not barred at all.

They're not barred at all?No, no, no.

Tell us what's happening.One of the most revealing comments made was, does the government have one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake when it comes to this?They've decreed that by 2030, all new cars have to be electric.in some element, whether that's full electric or with a bit of hybrid.That's coming up quite soon.You know, it's coming up within a few years.

Is the country ready for it?Are we ready for petrol taxes to drop off as people make the switch?There is a range of opinion on display in the committee.You know, experts are saying slightly different things depending on what they want.You know, someone who runs a big charge point company obviously wants more big charge points.Someone who's trying to represent electric vehicle drivers is saying, well, we just want to make it convenient.

So maybe we just need You know, to make home charging easier, even if you don't have a driveway, all of this stuff.There is one MP on the committee who quite clearly has a big coach business, because she only asks questions about electric coaches and whether, you know, coach tours are going to be able to electrify, which I would say is not the main element of the committee, but that's not for me to say, you know.And the thing of whether it's paid for is a potential stumbling block by this E -VED.which is you're going to be charged 3p a mile to drive an electric car that's going to be done it seems like in quite a laborious way with having to take it infor an MOT, declare your mileage, get that checked.It sounds like faff the way it's currently being pitched.

The government's response is, well, we think we have to replace petrol duty with something, which is true.We're giving lots of notice so people can get ready for it.And there are various projections about whether it will stop people going electric or not.All of these committee sessions were happening before the evidence has come in from the war in Iran.Petrol is suddenly becoming very unaffordable.So it's quite hard to tell what is going to happen next without that.

Your feeling was that MPs were going making themselves better informed.Yeah.And increasing the amount of information about this issue they had on hand, which does sound good.It's really good.

A hundred percent, you know, even when there were opinions being given that I you know, I disagreed with, that the MPs are asking and drilling down into the details of all of it and, you know, trying to get to the bottom of it before they issue their report.We've got to get away from this drilling down metaphor.It's not helping.Charging up, I'm not sure.They were really plugged in.They were plugged in, there we go.

Can't wait to read the report.I'll be staying up late, you know, on the night before it's published.And I can't wait to read your report, of that report, in private eye.So much more, if I can stress that, including the Paul Fudd Awards shortlist and so much else in the next issue of the magazine.That will be out on newsstands soon.You can just buy it in your local shop, or you can go to private -i .

co .uk and get a very reasonably priced subscription.That's it for this episode, though.We'll be back again in a fortnight with another one.Until then, it's thanks to Helen, Adam, and Ian.Thanks to you for listening, and thanks to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.

Bye for now.