What will the King's visit really achieve with Trump? | The News Agents

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Is there a chance in hell?that the law is going to change as a result of this latest episode.Not a cat's chance.

The sort of coverage in the US press, like, this is not who America is.And it's like, I don't know how to tell you this, America.If you're a Brit, this is exactly who we think you are.There was someone there who intended to kill the president.And this idea that, you know, political violence has no place in America, wake the f*** up.

And I'm afraid, America, it's your same old story of too many guns and too many people who will resort to violence when anything else fails.

Going to a couple of other locations because he's here for a few days.He's a great guy.Oh, they called and they are so looking forward to being here.

So looking forward to being here.Well, up to a point they are.They've got a job to do with the so -called special relationship in such a parlous state.But looking forward to it, I think there's a sort of dread and anticipation of what could go wrong.

Will the King manage to reset the political relationship between Starmer and Trump?Or has he actually got his sights on something much bigger?Welcome to the News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's Jon.It's Maitlis.And the King's Plane will be touching down at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and there'll be a motorcade and there'll be all the brouhaha that surrounds a royal state visit to the United States.And this one in the 250th anniversary of the founding of the USA.And I just go back to the press notice that was put out by Buckingham Palace confirming that the visit was going ahead.And it started on the advice of His Majesty's government, as if the palace was already putting a little bit of distance, saying it wasn't our bright idea that we should be going over so soon after Donald Trump was here for an unprecedented second state visit.

This was the government's idea.And you can see why, given the state of the relationship right now between Donald Trump and the person who isn't Winston Churchill?

Yes.We are told that the King's trip was never in doubt, notwithstanding the events of Saturday night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, of which more later.The palace has said minor adjustments have been made.But what I am learning from somebody deep in the King's inner circle, who actually was dining with him a few days ago, was that the whole sort of keep calm and carry on thing works to the monarchy to perfection.You know, the idea that whatever the chaos going on, he just has to sail forward and get on with it.And there was never really a question of this being pulled at all.

But I was told that the king himself was full of reservations.And then this was actually changed whentalking to me said, no, no, not reservation, apprehension about getting the tone right.And What I understand is that the King is particularly focused on the address to Congress that will come tomorrow.He's not worried about the Trump visit.He's met Trump a few times.

They know what's going to go on, as it were, behind closed doors.But the tough bit is going to be getting this tone right in his speech to Congress.We've learned it could be up to half an hour long.It's much longer than when the Queen last addressed Congress.But what I was told, and I couldn't sort of help dwelling on this line, was that they imagined this speech will be full of lines that will, this is a direct quote, go over the president's head, but will go down beautifully to legislators and to us at home.And when I sort of pressed to understand what this meant, obviously, I was just being guided in certain directions with no specifics.

But I was told that actually culture and civilisation is very important to the king.And yes, he is there to celebrate 250 years of the American Republic, the United States of America.But this person said to me, Iran is a civilisation that is 2 ,000 years old.So Perhaps we can expect a gentle nudge towards that excruciating tweet that Trump wrote about destroying civilisations.Not a direct hit, but something that speaks the importance of other cultures, of other civilisations, of other peoples, of other religions, in some of the words that the King will use tomorrow.

Look, you could draw up an easy list of problematic subjects for the King over this period.with Donald Trump.I mean, you know, where Britain has clashed, the Chagos Islands, not sending troops to Iran, support for Ukraine, NATO.I mean, the list goes on and on, where Donald Trump is clearly pissed off with Kirstarma.Oh, you haven't mentioned the Falklands.I haven't mentioned the Falklands.

God, no, I forgot the Falklands, which was a kind of more recent one that popped up after that Pentagon memo.And so, yeah, you know, look, there's a lot of fraught difficult issues.I suspect Donald Trump is going to be on his absolutely very best behaviour, which he can do.I suspect that he won't try to ambush the king in the Oval Office, as he has done with South African presidents and, you know, the Ukrainian leader.I don't think any of that will happen.But then you're left with the question, well, OK, there'll be this kind of grand ritualistic loving between the king and the president and the closeness of the relationship.

And as you say, in that speech, it will dwell on the long historic relationship between the two countries, which is, you know, for the most part, true.But a week later, what will be different?Will Donald Trump go back and saying, Starmer, you're no Churchill, Starmer, you're an appeaser, Starmer, you're more like Chamberlain?You know, all those things that we've heard.Does the reset really make any difference in any long term sense?

So I think this is when you have to reach to that old Afghan quote about clocks and time.So in the king's mind, and obviously, you know, as you've said at the beginning, the king doesn't choose to go.he is sent and he's sent at his majesty's, I can't say pleasure because that sounds like he's going to prison, but you know what I mean.Starmer decides that he wants the king to go and that's what happens.But this is about the 250 years.The king is not going as some junior spad to sort of smooth the waters.

He's not even going as Yvette Cooper, who isthe foreign secretary, he'll be at his side throughout this whole thing.The King is going in the spirit of this long stretch of history that the two countries shared.And somebody said to me, you know, there may be those looking at the King sort of up there speaking and thinking, oh, 250 years ago, you know, perhaps we had sort of less of a madman in charge than we do now, right?It's not inconceivable.So I don't think that we will be able to judge.

I mean, I know we as daily journalists want to judge what happens next week, right?I don't think that that is the spirit in which this visit was ever conceived.Although it's interesting, he's also meeting Mamdani in New York, right?So I think there is a sort of, and About a week later, there's this big sort of trip, which is full of cultural and sort of business people that is going to LA, to the West Coast, which is a, I think it's called the Great, you know, it's called sort of like the Great Campaign, exactly.500 people on a BA flight going to the West Coast.So I think this is meant to sort of say, this is not about Trump.

And it's not even about a reset.It's about us speaking to them.It's about Britain speaking to America.It's about British business people speaking to American -British people.And it's all the sort of cultural ties in between, which I suppose has to have more of a longevity than whatever Trump says about Starmer next week, which frankly, he could contradict the week after.

Yeah, look, so in one way, there is an obvious comparator in terms of state visits.And that's the Queen going to the United States in 1957, a year after the Suez Crisis.And Eisenhower, then the President, who'd been the Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War, so a good friend of Britain's, was furious that Britain went on this last madcap imperial venture with France and Israel to re -nationalize the Suez Canal.Eisenhower stopped it dead in its tracks the special relationship was in tatters and the Queen soothed it over and at the end of that visit Eisenhower said don't worry fences have been mended the special relationship is back on track now I suspect Donald Trump will say something similar at the end of this visit by the King the difference being that do you trust Donald Trump's word as much as you'd trust President Eisenhower's word.

And I think the second point on that is that Starmer does quite well here when Trump's hating on him, right?The more backbone that Starmer shows to Trump, the better his poll ratings are, as we saw over the kind of, you know, the Iran stuff.And he needs that, and he needs that right now.They're not great poll ratings at the best of times.But actually, you know, when Trump is on a downer with Starmer, Starmer tends to be, you know, put in higher regard by the Brits.Another fact that I was told over the weekend was that the King's own disposition towards Keir Starmer is very favourable.

When somebody had suggested to the King that there might be a change of leader in the coming weeks and months, I was told he rolled his eyes.In other words, That's partly about stability.Obviously, as a monarch, he wants stability, but it's also that he thinks that he's got a good rapport with this man.On a personal level, he thinks Starmer is a good man doing a good job.And I guess there is, for Keir Starmer, much more of a danger from those around him at home, those closest to him at home, than there ever is from what Trump himself says about Starmer, right?

There's something else, though, that I think is kind of, we're looking at this as though the king is going as a supplicant to Donald Trump and saying, oh, please forgive us.Please, you know.reputation burnishing right now, it's Donald Trump.Donald Trump needs to have the king there.All through last week we were doing endless reports on Mandelson and whether this was going to be the end of Starmer as Prime Minister.Did any American network get in touch with me to say, oh my God, you might be about to lose your Prime Minister?

No.I've had all the American networks saying, could you comment on the king's visit?Because they love the royal family.And so the royal family and Donald Trump standing next to a real king, who doesn't have to paint the Oval Office gold.I mean, a lot of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace are in gold and have been for a very long time.Whereas Donald Trump gets the real thing.

Donald Trump is the pretend king who wants to be a king.He's got the real king going to be standing next to him.over the next three or four days.And that is good for Donald Trump, because his ratings are in the toilet.They've never been so low as a result of the Iran war, as a result of affordability, as a result of the excesses of ice, as a result of the misbehaviour of some of his cabinet members.So Donald Trump could do with a little bit of burnishing right now, and the King can give that.

The one area we haven't talked about was the petition by Epstein's victims, abuse victims, that the king spend, you know, a few minutes, 10 minutes coming to see them.And the message that we had from the palace was a very firm no, wasn't it?It's like, we don't want to get involved in the legal proceedings.I'm not, I don't know how much that stands up to scrutiny that a visit from the king or word from the king would necessarily, you know, bring him into sort of legal jeopardy.But what I do know isthat certainly up to two weeks ago when this story was first fermenting, the Queen, Camilla, was very keen to meet with Epstein's victims and she wanted to do it alongside Melania.

And she said, I've spent my life fighting for women's voices and spent my life fighting for victims.We will find a way to do it.So, I mean, It sounds as if they've ruled it out, but I was told, you know, never say never.There might be a moment in which Camilla manages to at least make some gesture towards Epstein's victims.And initially she wanted to have Melania at her side.So we'll kind of be watching to see if she pulls that one off.

If the two women manage to pull that one off, that will be quite a moment.

I think if you're a Buckingham Palace courtier, you are doing everything you can to minimize the risk of something that has the potential to be a snafu, a moment, kind of, you know, where it becomes viral as a result of something that you happen.And so this is a heavily manicured and orchestrated trip.I mean, all royal visits are, but this one even more so because of the potential for kind of, you know, explosions to go off when you least expect it and least want it to.

Totally right.I think you're absolutely right.Nobody wants a moment.And this is all about sort of, you know, as we said at the beginning, keep calm and carry on.But just to go back to that, I keep on half quoting this Afghan line, which is, I think it goes back to the 80s.It was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

And the line that came from the Afghan leaders was, you've got the clocks, you know, you're in a hurry.We've got the time.In other words, you do whatever you want.We're just going to sit here drumming our fingers because we always win the wars in the long term, right?

You think the Iranians are looking at that playbook right now.

Absolutely.And I'm not at all putting the King in the position.of being the Afghan warlord in this metaphor.But what I am trying to say is, maybe Trump is a complete irrelevance, right?On the stage, in a wider picture, whether the Queen manages to kind of reach out to victims of sexual abuse, which is something that she obviously feels incredibly strongly about and her life's work has been, you know, focused on women in a very sort of proper way, is going to be far more helpful to the monarchy than whatever the King has to say to Trump for two days.

Right.And also, I mean, you know, Emily, you were a minute ago talking about the businessmen who are flying off to L .A.The wheels are continuing to turn.I said business people.Business people.

I'm so sorry.I am going to go on that diversity awareness course straight after this recording of the episode.No, absolutely right to point that out.But the relationship goes on as normal.There is still the intelligence sharing between Langley, where the CIA are based, and GCHQ, which is our listening post.There are still British servicemen and women integrated into the US armed forces, as there are US servicemen and women integrated into our armed forces.

On all sorts of levels, none of this has made any difference at all.It is atmospherics.And that kind of to me goes to show that the special relationship is kind of something of a chimera because you know realistically there are areas where there are very very close links and the idea that Donald Trump says well you're no Winston Churchill and we all get an attack of the vapors because oh my god the special relationship is over no the relationship will go on because there is common national interest to keep it going on and so the king will do much in terms of the atmospherics to repair things but actually things have been carrying on pretty muchas normal, despite the spat between Starmer and Trump.

I mean, I still think, actually, and I don't decide these things, which is a good job, I still, I would still prefer the King not to be going, frankly.I still think it is, for all the reasons you laid out, it is an endorsement of a man who started, you know, an illegal war.It is an endorsement of, you know, all the stuff that's been happening on America's streets and the ice and the shootings and the arrests.And I know that we say, well, the king has to deal with all sorts of, you know, crazy dictators and totalitarians and, you know, shooting things, and all the rest of it.Yeah.But you can choose your moments.

And if it is about the two countries, I don't know.I don't think you have to do it.

So I've gone back and forwards on this.I am now I initially thought, oh, for God's sake, don't go.I mean, why are we rewarding a bloke who is being so vile and so unpleasant and obnoxious?On the other hand, I think it's juvenile.I think that, you know, given the state of relations and given the historical closeness between the UK and the US and the vital role that the US has played in the 20th century in bailing Britain out twice in the First World War and the Second World War.To deliberately cancel because you've been nasty to our man, I think would look petty and small minded.

No, it's nothing to do with Kiss, Tom.No, no, no.I think I'm saying if the King cancelled the state visit on the basis that Donald Trump has been nasty.

No, but it's nothing to do with that.That's what I'm saying.It's not.It's to do with, you know, America is now in the middle of a war that nobody understands with Iran and you're diving into that and you are somehow sanctioning it.

You're not giving an imprimatur by going.

Well we're not going to Russia, we're not going to Moscow, we're not meeting with Putin.

We don't have a historical close relationship with Russia or Moscow so he wouldn't be going but I mean you'veit's the 250th year.If you want to plant a flag and say, this is the perfect opportunity for us to reassert that there is a very close relationship between the US and the UK, if the king then didn't go, I think it would look like a real kind of poke in the eye that really would have consequences.

Yeah, I just think that works in every other context, but one in which Donald Trump is at the centre of it, for all the reasons you said, that he just waves that flag.He waves the flag of acceptability, he waves the flag of the UK monarchy and he's got away with it again.

Sure, and I think that, you know, as I say, I have every confidence that within a week or two weeks or a month Donald Trump will say something very disappointing again about our government and its failure to send naval vessels up the Strait of Hormuz even though America hasn't dared to put a vessel into the Strait of Hormuz yet.

That's why I'd quite like her to meet with Epstein's victims.It's about something bigger than Donald Trump.

We'll be back in a moment with what happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

You could hear what sounded like gunshots or commotion.People nearby could smell the gunpowder.Everybody hit the floor.How worried were you that there were going to be injuries?

I wasn't worried.I understand life.We live in a crazy world.

Donald Trump accepting that yes, we do indeed live in a crazy world after that attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC on Saturday night.the Hilton Hotel. AndAnd I think it's fair to say that over the last sort of 24 hours, we've been trying to analyze our own reactions and our own responses to this, haven't we, as a team.And they've gone from the sort of, you know, oh, my goodness, to, oh, not again, to, oh, Oh, why are we being asked to believe something that feels like we've sort of been there before?To sort of how big a moment was this?Right.

Well, what gives it so much oxygen is there were 3000 journalists to report on it in the room.I mean, made for TV moment.Totally.I mean, I've I've been to the White House correspondence dinner five times, I think, when I from when I was out there six times.And the I can't begin to describe this extraordinary space, the basement of the Washington Hilton, which is I think it seats two and a half thousand people.So if you imagine your wedding of 10 tables of 10, well, this is 200 tables of 10.

OK, so just it's vast.I mean, it's just massive, this room and all the tables are really tightly packed and it's virtually impossible to move around.And in fact, You know, Donald Trump says he wasn't scared.The gunman never got into the ballroom.

He's on the floor below.

I mean, so you say about all the reactions you go through.So I was woken up on Sunday morning with someone asking me to come on and talk about what it's like at White House correspondents dinner.And then I kind of read what had happened.I thought, oh, my God.And then you kind of he didn't get through security.The security system worked.

So you wouldn't be that panicked by it when there's no gunman in the room.I mean, the thing that amazed me And this sounds a terribly dark thing to say.draw their weapons and fire.That's what the gunfire you could hear.And it seems like every shot missed.And so it's remarkable that there is a guy in custody at the end of this who is going to stand trial, which is exactly how you'd want it to be.

So that is, you know, that's a great thing that he wasn't killed.But, you know, the security operation worked.And you think, you know, this is what Americans go through all the time.on a daily basis with a shopping mall, with a cinema, with a school, with a university campus, with whatever it happens to be.I'm afraid to say, horrifying as it is, and political violence has been part of America's story since you know, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Yeah.I mean, I had the same.I was awake about three o 'clock on Sunday morning and was just sort of scrolling through my phone and saw it all sort of unfolding in the story being told.And a lot of people there were saying, oh, the security was very lax and nobody checked our bags and the security scanner didn't work and all the rest of it.Actually, it turns out that, you know, when there is an active shooter coming towards the room, the security detail do know how to act pretty fast.And I think it was eight seconds between them apprehending him and getting Trump out.

But I think it does ask a bigger question, which is, so many things were legal up to the point where he pulled the trigger on that gun.He checked into a hotel with his arms.you know, with knives, with guns, and that was completely legal.He owned the guns, completely legal, came by them through legal means.And so we are back to the biggest, the oldest age -old question of America, if you don't want this stuff to happen, then change your sodding law.right?

Which will never be a question that's asked by anyone on that side, because we just see the repetition of it.And I went back and I was actually checking to see how many other fatal shootings there had been actually in that city on that weekend.And I couldn't find any record of another one on that night.But if you look through an average, so I went back to 2024, an average year, there are 148 fatal shootings in Washington, D .C.So if you imagine that in sort of weekends, it's almost three a weekend.

So your point about the shopping mall, your point about the parts of Washington, D .C.that we never cover because it's not the Hilton, you know, this stuff is going on the whole time, right?

It's going on the whole time and it's still remains completely legal to check into a hotel room with a gun.It's the Washington Capitol Hilton.In Washington, we all know it as the Hinckley Hilton because it was named after John Hinckley, Jr., the person who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981.And Reagan was injured and had to be taken off to a hospital.And the guy who was his press secretary, James Brady, was paralyzed and ultimately died of a heart attack.of his injuries as a result of Hinkley opening fire outside the Capitol Hilton.

It's now the law was passed called Brady's law as a result of that.

And the press room is the James Brady room.

And the press room is now the James Brady room.And the law was changed after that, which goes again, underlines, as you were saying, Emily, the difference in the age we're living in.The Brady law required background checks before you could buy a weapon.Is there a chance in hell that the law is going to change as a result of this latest episode?Not a cat's chance.Instead, Donald Trump and his acolytes, and it's been quite well organised, are using this as a means, I don't blame them for them, you know, everything is a political opportunity if you're Donald Trump, is a means to sell his ballroom that he's building in the east wing of the White House, this massive gargantuan ballroom that he wants to build.

Because he's saying, well, if it had been held there, there would have been no security risk, because at the White House, we've got fantastic security.

I mean, look, he's got a point.If you want to have complete security, then keep people inside the White House.Although, I guess if you compare it to Mar -a -Lago, guests are coming and going the whole time there, right?And he uses Mar -a -Lago, essentially, as a southern White House.I think, you know, One of the points that you were talking about, which is the sort of coverage in the US press, which I find a bit grating, actually, which is this stuff saying, this is not who we are.Like, this is not who America is.

And it's like, I don't know how to tell you this, America.If you're a Brit, this is exactly who we think you are.We think this is who you are every single week of the year.And this idea that, you know, political violence has no place in America, wake the fuck up, you know, where do you think this comes from?It doesn't happen in a vacuum.It has been happening throughout your 250 year history.

And it's been happening with greater acceleration, it feels like in the last few years, and it has happened on both sides.But, you know, and I don't want for a moment to condone the what this alleged shooter was trying to do in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel.I don't, for a moment, want to continue.what he might have done if he'd got Trump or one of his cabinet.But if you look at the manifesto, the stuff that he's talking about, he left this manifesto apparently in his bedroom saying this is why he was doing it.And he said, turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed.

I'm not the person raped in a detention camp.I'm not the fisherman executed without trial.I'm not the person he goes on to talk about you know, some of the other things that we can recognise as Trump -era policies.This is not about saying, oh, he was fine then to go and do what he wanted.But it is about saying that actually we can't talk about political violence when it's just on the part of the people who come in on the part of the assassin.Political violence has been going on in America all this time.

Political violence was affected on the streets of Minneapolis when ICE agents shot dead two people who were not doing wrong.

It's also something about truth which i've been thinking about a lot since i've kind of you know heard about this on sunday morning which is we've had 10 years now of you know, in Kellyanne Conway's words, Donald Trump's, you know, first sort of press adviser and pollster, you know, we have alternative facts.We've been had 10 years where we've been told that up is down, that black is white, that in is out, that the crowd was the biggest, the crowd was the biggest ever.And, you know, routine stuff where you just know things are not true.And now we've got something that we know to be true and in some ways is utterly untrue.unremarkable.I mean, of course, it's remarkable and horrible and hideous and grotesque that someone should try to kill the president and the cabinet.

But it's not shocking.But it's not extraordinary.I mean, this is what we got used to.And yet the conspiracy theories online saying, oh, well, this isn't a real thing.This is staged, just as people were saying thethe Butler Pennsylvania shooting was staged.

No, it wasn't staged.You know, there was someone there who intended to kill the president.But because we've had 10 years now of being lied to so repeatedly, we tend to think, oh, well, there must be an alternative explanation.And we've stopped being able to believe our own eyes with some of these things.And I think that that is the corrosive effect of what has happened over the past decade.where even though we see it before our own eyes, even though there are reporters, you know, 3 ,000, 2 ,000 reporters in the room recording it, we think that there must be some other explanation to this story than there is.

And I'm afraid, America, it's your same old story of too many guns and too many people who will resort to violence when anything else fails.

So do we think that anything will change if we had to have a little sweepstake or a bet on this?Do you think that the Hilton Hotel in Washington will shut down?No.Two guests before next year?No.Okay, no.

Do you think that background checks will get passed through legislation?

Background checks are already there and very lax anyway because there are all sorts of loopholes.

Will they stop anyone checking into a hotel with guns?

No, because there's no means of, and you're allowed to carry a gun, so that would be an infringement of the Second Amendment if you were having checks.I've seen people on, you know, I've gone to airports where people are checking in their guns.Seriously, let's go through the metal detector and someone had their gun.He goes, oh Christ, and he had the ammunition with it.Now, what you're meant to do is you're meant to separate the gun from the ammo, and the ammo can't go in the plane.So, you know, There are these things that are just absolutely nuts, which is normal.

And so, you know, you said the number of homicides.I think you look at the number of gun deaths in Britain, and it's probably about 80 a year.I think I'm right in roughly 80.America I think the latest figures are around 50 ,000 now okay America is five times bigger we have the most tiny fraction fractional of number of gun deaths compared to America.And they say, but this is the strength of America.This is our Second Amendment, the right to bear arms.

And they think that we're the nutcases for not having that.

One little coda just before we leave this is that because of the government shutdown, which obviously suspends the pay of federal workers, I mean, we've seen it in all different walks of life, not least in the airports, in the TSA, in the checkings, the immigration, all the rest of it.The secret service agents We're not getting paid.Their salaries are on hold.I mean, they've been frozen for, I think, 70 days now.So can you imagine working in a situation where you are tasked with going to save the life of your president and you haven't even got money to put food on the table at home?

We will be back in just a moment.

And I noticed this the other day when you can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes and everyone's going in to vote.Some people have been drinking in between.There's a room where I walked past and I dug my back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink.But again, that's a job.I can't imagine if a cleaner did that or someone working in a bank.like, had a few drinks and then went back to work, like, a bit, you know, like, smelling of alcohol, like, that wouldn't happen.

And I think there's been so many cases recently of, like, questionable and dangerous behaviour from, you know, allegedly from MPs, but staff, like, because this culture of a really unprofessional and worrying setting where people can just drink alcohol.And then while they're in work, it's like, life doesn't work like that.And when I say that, that is what I find very out of touch about that place.It's things like that that I mean, because I just think the vast majority of us that have come from backgrounds of normal jobs, that's not how the world works.

That's Hannah Spencer.She's a Green MP and she's appearing on Politics Joe to talk about drinking in Westminster.And I guess we know the laws about drink driving, but there are no votes, but there are no laws about drink voting, right?And so she raises the question, which is not just should people be allowed to drink on the job in Westminster, but are the votes being skewed by what people have had to drink?

No, I think I think that the You know, I've seen the Farage comment, which I think is kind of just predictably over the top, which is the Greens are happy to legalise heroin crack.But now we learn they think an afternoon pint is a step too far.I mean, I think that's going over the top.The fact of the matter is that in most normal jobs, you're not hanging around for hours on a three line whip waiting for a vote to happen, which you don't know.But you need to be there because the chief whip won't pay you with someone else.So you've got 600 people sitting around waiting for the vote to happen.

knowing that they have to be there to vote, but they've been given instructions on which way they're going to vote, and it is the herd mentality.Look, it is Parliament.Actually, the culture has changed massively since I was reporting there, where there are far fewer bars and there is much less drunkenness.You know, it would be amazing to meet anyone who didn't smell of alcohol back in the day, because all the bars were absolutely full of MPs, and certain MPs would spend the whole day in the pub.in the bar and there was a drinking culture that had gone mad.So do you think she's sounding mad there or do you think she's actually raising a good point which is like, well maybe it does skew how you vote, I mean maybe it does make you...

But you're shepherded, no one goesthe wrong way because they've had a pint of bitter or a glass of wine.They're told by the whips, right, you're voting for, you're voting against.You know which division lobby to be in.You don't vote with your conscience anyway, you're saying.No, you're voting under orders.

And for a three -line whip, you know what the process is.And I bet you've been at lunches where you've suddenly been, you know, they get a message on their phone saying, you've got, I had a lunch the other day where the person I was having lunch with just suddenly had to dive out because the division bell had sounded and he had eight minutes or however long it is to get to the House of Commons to vote.and then they can come back and finish off their dessert.I mean that is the way Westminster works.Now you could, you know...

And do you think that's the same?I mean you've been like in and out of Congress for eight years.

Is it the same?Yeah, there are congressional votes that are just the same.

But do they drink?That's what I'm saying.

Oh, no, but there's a different drinking culture because of prohibition.But there's a completely different drinking culture in America compared to the UK.

But you wouldn't touch a drop in Congress?

I remember going out to eat and we'll have the bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon.Bottle?This is what the waitress said, a bottle?Like, you know, there were two of us.Yeah, a bottle.They don't drink in America.

I remember a friend of mine brought a white wine to a potluck supper.Yeah.And the hostess just looked aghast.It's like, it's a potluck supper.

Can I tell you, so I went to a dinner and there were eight of us and we go down, sit down, a bottle of wine comes on the table and we, you know, glasses filled.I drink mine.And that is it for the rest of the evening.It was one bottle for the whole evening between eight.And at the end of the evening, as I'm saying goodbye, and thank you very much for having me, the person says, are you going to be OK to drive home?I'm thinking, OK to drive home.

I could do brain surgery now.What are you talking about?You've barely fed me.barely watered me.We'll be back tomorrow.See you then.

Bye bye.With a drink for John.With a drink.Bye.

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