0:10

Welcome to Oh God What Now, I'm Dorian Linsky.

0:12

On Friday's show we are in the awkward position

0:15

of wondering if David Cameron, the podcast punching bag

0:17

who gave us austerity in Brexit, is in fact

0:19

a good foreign secretary. Is the man who broke

0:21

Britain now the only competent Tory? In

0:24

the second half, how important is trust in a democracy

0:26

and can our institutions get back what they have lost?

0:28

We'll unpack Ross Taylor's new book, The Future of Trust.

0:31

And in the extra bit for Patreon supporters, how

0:33

did cinema bounce back from the existential threat of

0:35

the pandemic? Following the BAFTAs, we'll discuss some of

0:37

the movies that have got people out of the

0:39

house again. Let's meet the panel.

0:41

First up is journalist for Time magazine Yasmin

0:43

Sahan. Hi Yasmin. Hello. After

0:46

we record, the comments will vote on

0:48

new calls for ceasefire in Gaza following

0:50

a kind of baffling dust up about

0:52

which one speaker Lindsay Hoyle would select

0:54

and lots of briefing and counter briefing.

0:57

I mean, are you left wondering if

0:59

this is really about Gaza or partisan

1:01

game playing? Unfortunately, I

1:03

think domestic politics has kind of inserted

1:05

itself and it's not just here. I

1:07

think also in the US you're seeing

1:09

that there's definitely a domestic aspect at

1:12

play where there's concerns both countries have

1:14

elections coming up. There's growing

1:16

disquiet I think over the scale of

1:19

the carnage that we're seeing in Gaza

1:21

and the extent to which

1:25

our governments are seen to be underwriting

1:27

them. This is certainly more of

1:29

a conversation I think in the US where

1:31

of course we have a very close relationship

1:33

in partnership with Israel and send billions

1:36

of dollars in aid. But yeah, I think politics

1:38

certainly is inserting itself and as we're seeing in

1:40

the commons, there's all these semantics

1:42

over, we want a

1:44

sustainable ceasefire versus we want immediate ceasefire

1:46

versus we want an eventual, a temporary

1:48

ceasefire to lead to immediate ceasefire. I

1:52

would forgive the average Brit for thinking, what

1:54

is it that you will want? What's going on here? Is

1:57

this about point scoring or is this about

1:59

people? dying. Well also you

2:01

know of course because this is not like a

2:04

list of demands that one hands to Benjamin and

2:06

then that's that so the wording has to be

2:08

precise because otherwise you won't do what you want.

2:10

There is also a sense of like well are

2:13

we arguing about semantics without

2:16

it actually having any tangible effect.

2:18

You know everyone from Joe Biden the Prince of

2:20

Wales is in some degree you know

2:24

changed their position or speaking out particularly around

2:26

the Israel's plan defensive on

2:28

Rafa. Why do you think that why

2:31

do you think that that's changed after four

2:34

months now? Why is it that the Rafa

2:36

offensive is the one that seems to have

2:38

got you know pretty much

2:40

everybody speaking out some way? Well

2:43

because Rafa is literally

2:45

and figuratively the end of the road for

2:48

the more than half of

2:50

Gaza's 2.3 million population that is where

2:53

everyone's gone because they were told that that's where it would

2:55

be safe. Now Israel

2:57

is saying that this is the last

2:59

bastion of Hamas that they need to go

3:02

in to achieve what Prime Minister Netanyahu

3:04

calls total victory but the trouble is because

3:06

there's nowhere for these people to go and certainly I

3:09

mean the humanitarian crisis I

3:11

mean the situation is just so dire in Rafa.

3:14

You know if there was anywhere else for them to go

3:16

they probably would have by now. There is nowhere left for

3:18

these people to go so the prospects of you

3:20

know just already nearly

3:22

30,000 people have been killed since the

3:25

start of the war in Gaza and of course you

3:27

have the 1200 that were

3:29

killed in Israel but if the incursion

3:31

were then to go there happened that's not

3:33

just dying via bombardment and

3:36

there has been bombardment in Rafa already but

3:39

you know disease is rampant. Conditions

3:42

are just horrific and so I think for

3:44

a lot of people it's just prompted a

3:46

kind of hang on this has gone so

3:48

far we need to you know hit pause

3:50

quite literally and have us think about the

3:52

long term because at the moment that also

3:54

hasn't been articulated neither by the Israeli government

3:56

or I mean you know the US and others

3:58

have stated they're preferred. Goal for

4:00

the future and I think that's why you're seeing

4:02

not just in the UK in the US and

4:04

in Buckingham Palace But you know across Europe with

4:07

the exception of Hungary Australia Canada, New Zealand Everyone

4:09

seems to be this seems to be the tipping

4:11

point. I think Rafa is very much the tipping

4:13

point Next up its

4:15

host of Jam Tomorrow and author Ross Taylor.

4:17

Hi, Rose Hello, Dorian Starmer's chief of staff

4:19

Sue Gray has said that labor will introduce

4:21

citizens assemblies to thrash out tricky policies like

4:24

assisted dying Now the idea

4:26

of getting members of the public involved in

4:28

lawmaking seems very democratically appealing People as the show

4:30

probably quite keen on the idea What's

4:33

the catch? Yeah, it's a

4:35

great vibes based policy, isn't it? Let the

4:37

people have their say. I'm not I'm not entirely

4:39

convinced by it to be honest, I think there

4:41

are a certain number of very Discrete

4:45

really difficult issues like

4:48

assisted dying like abortion as the

4:50

Irish had a systems assembly on

4:52

it And I think in those

4:54

instances it can be useful But and

4:56

most other things it is not I mean

4:59

a few years ago France had one on Let's

5:01

say road climate trade-offs and

5:04

look at the country now You know I'm not

5:06

saying a country that is speaking with one voice

5:08

about the what we should do about About

5:11

the climate and how much we should spend on it. It

5:13

does sometimes seem to be a substitute for

5:15

actually informed public debate It's almost an acknowledgement

5:18

that we can't have a good public debate

5:20

about this So what we're going to do

5:22

is pluck out 100 odd

5:24

people and pay them not very much

5:26

in France it was 11 euros an hour Not

5:29

very much really to talk about it

5:31

and then have a professional write-up what

5:33

they said about it and try and

5:35

come to a few Conclusions and I

5:37

just don't necessarily think that's the best

5:39

way what I would like to see

5:42

is a More

5:45

like the belief that we could actually stimulate

5:47

inform public debate perhaps You know god forbid

5:49

by commissioning say the BBC to do a

5:51

couple of really good documentaries

5:53

or series on assisted dying and then

5:56

you might get some great cut-through that

5:58

would enable people to start talking about

6:00

it but without this this

6:02

sort of tition kind of approach which I

6:04

don't particularly like. And finally it's

6:06

Guardian columnist author and broadcaster Raphael Bair.

6:09

Hi Raph! Hi Dorian! Now forgive the

6:11

length of this question there's a lot...a

6:13

lot happened! We had a big

6:15

discussion recently about Kemme Bedenock's leadership chances but

6:17

she is having a bad week and a

6:19

certain pattern is emerging. She accused

6:22

stat post office chair Henry Staunton of lying

6:24

about the Subpostmaster Compensation Scheme which Staunton denied.

6:26

She came she's having trade talks with Canada

6:28

which the Canadian Embassy denied. She claimed to

6:31

have received an insulting WhatsApp from Nadine Doris

6:33

which Doris denied and posted the actual WhatsApp.

6:36

Plus she earlier claimed to have met with

6:38

LGBTQ groups about self ID but Ben Bradshaw

6:40

MP his Freedom of Information request just came

6:42

in and he confirmed that she had only

6:44

met with two groups both

6:46

of them anti-trans. So

6:49

there's documentary evidence in most of these

6:51

cases. It's been not a

6:53

bit of a fantasies. That's a strong

6:55

word Dorian! Although a bit of as

6:57

I suppose leavens it to an extent.

7:00

Look I think what's

7:02

clear is that she has sort

7:04

of imbibed a certain way of

7:06

doing politics from the

7:09

conservative culture of recent

7:11

years which I think is pretty much in

7:13

the shadow of Boris Johnson. So you know

7:15

whether you call it phantasism or you know

7:17

looseness with the truth or not caring about

7:19

what's exactly true or not it's definitely it

7:21

has that element to it and which

7:23

I think is also a symptom of

7:26

the way the conservative party has

7:28

really mistaken

7:30

public debate for internal

7:33

party debate thinking that the other conservative party is

7:35

actually where you know is the be all and

7:37

end all of what a public discussion is and

7:39

you know you saw that I mean yeah otherwise

7:41

they wouldn't have made Liz trust Prime Minister right

7:43

I mean in that contest between which

7:45

you see that can Liz trust the fact that trust

7:47

won so clearly whereas actually from the outside it seems

7:50

self-evident she was a sort of preposterous candidate to be

7:52

Prime Minister. That's a party that's got this kind

7:54

of arrogance of power and forgets that there's a

7:56

world out there so I do think Baynock

7:59

is sort of channeling that to a certain

8:01

extent. I don't know her personally, but I

8:03

know people who have advised her and worked with

8:06

her say she is someone who kind of shoots

8:08

from the hip. She's quite impulsive, but also she

8:10

has made a decision

8:12

or is sort of vulnerable to the

8:14

logic of thinking you can get profile,

8:17

you can elevate yourself within

8:19

the sort of selectorate that will choose

8:21

the next conservative leader by being quite

8:23

pugnacious, by leaning into cultural issues. But

8:26

she's also a Secretary of State and that involves,

8:28

and it is technically they are still the government,

8:31

I think it's sort of a zombie government now

8:33

anyway, but they do still have to act and

8:35

behave responsibly, ideally tell the truth to Parliament. And

8:38

I'm not sure she's managing that

8:40

boundary between what you have to do

8:42

to perform for a conservative audience and what you ought

8:44

to do as a responsible cabinet minister. Well, our

8:47

own Marie Laconte just wrote a

8:49

profile for the New European and

8:51

she's saying that actually Baden-Ot is

8:54

even more ill prepared to

8:56

lead an opposition party. Do you think that

8:59

her front-runner status will

9:01

be dented the more that people see

9:04

of her? Because it seems it's all

9:06

very well appealing to the base, but it

9:08

doesn't really seem like that perhaps she's got

9:10

the chops to speak to the people. I

9:14

think there are two things here. One is the great

9:16

paradox of the front-runner, which is if you're the front-runner

9:18

for long enough, you by default cease to be the

9:20

front-runner because everyone talks about you so much, you get

9:22

to say you're re-exposed, you end up sort of having

9:25

your chances sabotage, the David Miliband syndrome. I think there's

9:27

also another wider thing here, which is that an awful

9:29

lot of people, a long

9:31

incumbency promotes people way beyond their natural capabilities

9:33

in politics because you just get to rise

9:35

up, you get to be a junior minister,

9:37

you get to be a senior minister. A

9:39

lot of the good people get knocked out

9:41

by attrition, they resign, and you get really

9:43

mediocre people given quite big positions in government.

9:45

And then they think they deserve those positions,

9:47

they think they're really serious politicians, and they

9:49

are going to get a massive shock when

9:51

they're in opposition. They're completely irrelevant. No one

9:53

cares what they say, no one's listening to

9:55

what they say. And at the moment, she's

9:57

a secretary of state. She knows that they.

10:00

conservatives are in government. She's

10:02

held up, as you say, as this sort of the possible

10:05

heir to Rishi Sunak, which in her head probably

10:07

means of being a bit like the next Prime

10:09

Minister. And if they get absolutely butchered in the

10:11

next election and you're just, you know, you're in

10:13

the William Hague 1998 position

10:16

and no one cares, no one's listening and

10:18

you're a bit of a joke, that is

10:20

going to do with the ego deflation and

10:22

the readjustment to that. It's not just hurts

10:24

a lot of them. I mean Robert Jenrick,

10:26

for example, I mean how quickly is that

10:28

guy just going to look absurdly

10:31

irrelevant, you know, just a hard pub

10:33

quiz question answer and that's it,

10:35

that's nothing. But at the moment he thinks he's a real player, he's

10:37

touring America, he's thinking I could possibly be the

10:39

next big thing. Jenrick, you're not. I worry that

10:41

the, you know, the difficulties of opposition might dent

10:43

Baden-Ochs natural warmth. Before you started, I just want

10:45

to say a huge thanks to the influx of

10:47

Patreon backers we've had over the past couple of

10:50

weeks. Things are getting tight in the podcasting world

10:52

with advertising budgets being cut by the man and

10:54

unfortunately we're going to have to rely on you

10:56

more to keep Oglewat now in good shape for

10:58

election year. So really things are tough out there

11:00

but if you can find £3 a month or

11:03

more you will be helping us to stay on course

11:05

and of course you'll get our fabulous merchandise and bonus

11:07

content too. So it's Patreon Oglewat now or visit

11:09

the link in the show notes to find out

11:11

more. Let's

11:18

get started. When Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, the

11:20

artist formerly known as David Cameron, made a surprise

11:22

return to government as Foreign Secretary of the United

11:24

States last November, there was anger and disbelief. He

11:26

was no longer at MP and

11:28

his record as PM was not solid gold. On this

11:31

very podcast we've been less than

11:33

kind about austerity in Brexit. In the cabinet of fools

11:35

and mediocrity, he's the only

11:37

person who's attracting a considerable degree of acclaim

11:40

at home and abroad. What has he achieved and can we ever

11:42

forgive him? Raph,

11:45

given the state of the Tories and

11:47

the fact that he does not have long, why do

11:50

you think he took the job? I think partly he wanted to

11:52

launder his last

11:54

thing that people if they remember much, remainers

11:57

will remember him as the guy who delivered Brexit. will

12:00

remember him as a guy who didn't

12:02

want to do Brexit. It was the

12:04

last iteration of the worst kind of

12:06

conservatism. And anyone else who's paying attention

12:09

will remember the Greensill lobbying scandal, which

12:11

was really grubby. I mean, it wasn't

12:13

in pursuit of anything other than just

12:15

cash. I mean, literally, it was just

12:17

pure greed on behalf of someone who

12:20

has plenty of money already. So the

12:22

opportunity to then sort of make the

12:24

last paragraph in the Wikipedia page, something

12:26

along the lines of Elder Statesman did

12:28

series of foreign policy. I mean, you

12:31

can see the appeal, right? So I think

12:33

that's a large part of it. And also,

12:35

he was bored. Everyone says, once you've been

12:37

in those big government jobs, especially Prime Minister,

12:39

getting briefed by the security services, you're jet

12:41

sussing around the place, it's a pretty fancy gig.

12:44

And then, you know what, you're

12:46

sitting in your shepherd's hut and shipping Norton,

12:48

it's, you know, basically getting calls from lobbyists.

12:50

You know, whereas Foreign Secretary,

12:53

that's actually quite a glamorous gig

12:55

in terms of the lovely, I mean, I think you've ever

12:57

been in a Foreign Secretary's office, but it's nicer than the

12:59

office in number 10. And the Prime Minister gets it's a

13:01

really swanky pad. So I think, you know, he's a vain

13:03

man. And his vanity

13:06

was very obviously tickled by the idea. Well,

13:09

Guardians Patrick Winter calls him a man in a hurry.

13:11

He won't be government this time next year. I mean,

13:14

has that tight deadline, plus

13:16

vanity, made him a

13:18

more efficient Foreign Secretary, like the incentive to

13:21

actually do something is greater than it is

13:23

for a lot of people. I

13:25

think he genuinely has leeway as well. I

13:27

mean, clearly, we don't know what the conversation

13:30

was that Rishi Sunak had with David Cameron.

13:33

But I doubt Cameron would have done

13:35

it if it hadn't he hadn't had very clear

13:37

assurances, you know, that like, this is your gig,

13:39

you do it, you run it, I've got an

13:41

election to fight. Domestic policy is hard enough. We

13:44

don't get the impression Sunak is very interested in

13:47

foreign policy, he's certainly not interested in European policy.

13:49

You know, he's interested in

13:51

international stuff to the extent that you

13:53

know, tech bro, you know, West Coast conversations

13:55

about the world, you know, he did that

13:57

big AI conference, but geo stratified. Strategic

14:00

thinking is not his strong point So

14:02

I think we know what Cameron is

14:04

busy because he really is

14:06

quite an autonomous foreign secretary, which is unusual

14:09

I mean almost every prime minister sort of

14:11

ends up being their own foreign secretary So

14:13

I think from that point of view what

14:15

looks like busyness is actually someone Unusually

14:18

doing the job, you know with a fair

14:20

amount of autonomy in an effort Well, he

14:22

seems sort of semi-detached in the cabinet because

14:24

in the context of the post-bacitori party He's

14:26

you know, he's a bit of a centrist

14:29

softy I mean when you're sort

14:31

of you're looking at him writing

14:33

about him Does he does he sort of

14:35

seem fully part of this government or does

14:37

that autonomy? Sort of extend to

14:39

like I don't know. I don't I just don't see him

14:41

hanging out with The

14:44

others. Yeah, I mean the thing has to remember about David

14:46

Cameron is he is Incredibly

14:48

arrogant and he has been

14:50

Prime Minister. It's very hard to imagine him Actually

14:53

thinking he's subordinate to Rishi Sunak And

14:56

it's very easy to imagine him really patronizing Rishi

14:58

Sunak and thinking look, okay So I'm not the

15:00

Prime Minister anymore But I am actually the biggest

15:02

most important person in this room right now And

15:04

you know if the reason one the reasons he

15:07

was so deeply unpopular With

15:09

his own party with large sections of his

15:11

own party when he was Prime Minister It's

15:13

because he treated ordinary Tory MPs like dirty

15:15

smelly infantrymen Well, he was this so the

15:17

immaculately groomed cavalry officer Just complete some galloping

15:19

cars taking the salute and then going off

15:22

and having a final time and not caring

15:24

about What was happening in the trenches? So

15:26

I think yeah, it's very

15:28

hard to imagine him being Completely

15:31

collegiate, but also he's not going to be in

15:33

the business of undermining No, I cannot gonna say

15:35

things that we should see like doesn't necessarily want

15:37

him to say because also having been Prime Minister

15:39

He knows how really fucking annoying that is when

15:41

people do it I had a dream last night

15:43

that I was bullying Rishi Sunak and I was

15:46

like, I can't believe he's letting me get away

15:48

with this He's the Prime Minister and

15:50

I don't believe you have him in a headlock I

15:54

was just being really mean and he was just

15:56

sort of flinching. Yeah, it's weird because I don't

15:58

bully people But in my dream, I was

16:00

putting CNET. Roz, when CNET was asked

16:02

to cite one of Cameron's foreign policy achievements as

16:05

PM back in November, he could only name hosting

16:07

the G8 summit in 2013. Did

16:11

you come away from Cameron's term with much

16:13

of a sense of a foreign policy philosophy?

16:17

And do you see the continuity

16:19

there? What is his view of Britain

16:22

in the world? I think

16:24

CNET could probably think of some other things about David

16:26

Cameron's foreign policy legacy, but he didn't want to discuss

16:28

them very much. In

16:31

terms of philosophy, I don't think he does philosophy, David

16:33

Cameron. He's not a philosophical guy. I think he has

16:35

a vague vision of Britain in the

16:37

world trading a lot and somehow being a force

16:39

for good. And it doesn't really go much further

16:41

than that. It's interesting to look back

16:43

on 2010 to 2016 though, because

16:46

if you ask what was that period

16:48

like, because we don't think about it

16:50

very much, there was a

16:53

kind of a feeling that Britain still had a

16:55

role to play in the world, but it should

16:57

not involve boots on the ground. Because

17:00

we saw how that ended in Iraq and

17:02

Afghanistan. So

17:04

there was a feeling that there was still things we

17:06

could do, but not soldiers on the ground. And

17:09

there was also a feeling that we could

17:11

do some good through aid, which is why

17:13

the coalition put in that 0.7% of GDP

17:15

thing, which has now essentially been abandoned. But

17:18

in terms of what actually happened, of course, there

17:20

was Libya, which we'll talk about in a

17:22

bit. And then

17:24

there was the whole issue of first

17:26

strikes against Islamic State in Syria, which

17:29

Cameron found very difficult to get through

17:31

the comments. And it was ages. He

17:33

really struggled. And he was still

17:35

very secretive about them. We still don't

17:37

know the full details of what was

17:40

discussed around those strikes, because

17:42

he wouldn't release all the information to

17:44

the Intelligence and Security Committee, or rather

17:46

the Intelligence and Security Committee were told to

17:48

redact it. And

17:50

as a result, it's unclear what

17:52

all his thinking was at that

17:54

time. So it's funny, because every time

17:56

Tony Blair opens his mouth, people shout, Iraq.

18:00

I'm not so sure about Cameron and Libya. A

18:02

Foreign Affairs Select Committee report criticised his decision to

18:04

intervene in 2011 as not being based on accurate

18:06

intelligence and found that he did not have a

18:08

coherent strategy, which I think we could tell. How

18:11

much of this has stuck to him in his new

18:13

role? I don't hear people, you

18:16

know, flinging that at him. No, surprisingly

18:18

little has stuck. And that's because it's not a

18:20

part of the story we tell ourselves about the

18:23

last 15 years or so of British politics. It

18:25

has fallen out of public view. How

18:27

much do you destroy the public realm and

18:30

take us out of the EU? People

18:32

just forget about about intervention. Well,

18:35

I think they have done and it should

18:37

be remembered because it was very consequential. Libya is

18:39

not in a good way. I mean, top thing,

18:42

Gaddafi, which was what we

18:44

helped to do and we played a major role in

18:46

doing that at Bama was also very keen on it,

18:49

to be fair. Although he's later said that

18:51

he, you know, acknowledged that there were definitely

18:53

problems with it. And he also had to

18:56

go at Cameron for, as he put it,

18:58

the losing concentration and not

19:00

really keeping on the task.

19:02

But what we see happening in Libya

19:04

now and what we see happening more

19:06

widely in Africa is pretty much a

19:08

disaster. I mean, the rebels that we

19:10

ended up effectively supporting by getting rid

19:12

of Gaddafi had an Islamist element, which

19:15

we didn't want. The case for intervention,

19:17

as the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said,

19:19

was arguably very much overstated. We made

19:21

the same mistake as we did in

19:23

Iraq, in Libya. And

19:25

there were some terrible floods last

19:27

year in Libya as well, which didn't help matters. But

19:29

what we see now is the Wagner Group, which,

19:31

you know, Prigogin all that now, basically

19:34

the Wagner Group is now an arm

19:36

of the Russian state. Now that Prigogin

19:38

has been got rid of and

19:40

it is operating in Africa saying, we

19:42

will, we will secure your dodgy regime

19:44

and keep you in power, providing you

19:46

let us have access to

19:49

natural resources. And so you can exploit them and give

19:51

us some of the profits. It is

19:53

a bad, bad place. Yes,

19:55

I mean, Cameron was a

19:57

supporter of Israel, really unsurprisingly, but he

19:59

did. also make comments like

20:01

calling Gaza a prison camp,

20:04

criticising certain past Israeli military

20:06

interventions. And recently

20:08

he steps up criticism of

20:10

Israel before Stama did. How

20:13

much credibility do you think he has on the

20:16

world stage on this issue? I mean,

20:18

the way I interpret it is kind of going

20:20

back to what we were discussing with regard to

20:22

the fact that he's been Prime Minister and almost

20:24

kind of a separate entity from this government, even

20:26

though he's obviously very much part of it holding

20:28

one of the most senior offices of

20:30

the state. So I mean, it's

20:32

probably easier, I would imagine, for Sunak

20:35

to have him saying some

20:37

of the hard truths to a friend rather

20:39

than having to do it himself. Biden

20:43

has Blinken, but he also kind of has to

20:45

do a lot of that himself. Sunak, I feel

20:47

like I, not that I kind of follow his

20:49

every sort of waking moment and everything he says,

20:51

but I feel like he, I haven't heard him

20:53

make as many interventions on this issue in that

20:55

way, the way that Cameron has. Cameron

20:58

has the added advantage of if he knows he's in this

21:00

for a limited time. And as we were saying, wants to

21:02

have an impact. He can say things that, you

21:04

know, coming out with that comment about the UK

21:06

potentially recognising a Palestinian state. Now I imagine he

21:08

won't do anything totally untoward because to the point

21:11

that we made earlier not to completely piss off

21:13

number 10. However, this is not a man who

21:15

has to worry about losing a seat in the

21:17

next election, just about making an impact

21:19

now. And with two wars going on,

21:21

one in Europe, one in the Middle East, this

21:23

is the time to do it. Last

21:27

week, he urged the US Congress to pass

21:29

a bill, including support for Ukraine, which has

21:31

been held up by all manner of chicanery

21:33

and fuckery. And he brought

21:35

up the spectrum of pleasing Hitler. Republican lunatic, Martyr

21:37

Tader Green, responded, David Cameron needs to worry about

21:39

his own country and frankly, he can kiss my

21:42

ass. Now she's a

21:45

live wire. Do you think

21:47

that's a common view? Was that piece in the

21:49

Hill? Was that misjudged because

21:51

just Americans in general just don't want a

21:54

posh Brit telling them what to do? I

21:56

mean, he clearly decided to go for the

21:59

Hill to reach that target audience, right?

22:01

Funnily enough, this isn't actually the first

22:03

time that Marjorie Taylor Greene has told

22:05

off a Brit for poking

22:07

their nose, I guess, into what she thinks they have no business doing.

22:09

I don't know if you remember in 2022, I think Channel 4's Siobhan

22:13

Kennedy had asked her about gun laws, and

22:17

she told her to go back to your own country

22:19

and worry about your no-gun laws. You have all kinds

22:21

of murder, she said. I don't know

22:23

what she... Anyway, so David Cameron shouldn't feel

22:25

too bad, because not the first,

22:27

probably not the last Brit she's told to go back

22:29

to where you came from. I don't

22:32

necessarily think it's a common view,

22:34

though, if only

22:37

because I don't actually think a lot of Americans

22:39

are necessarily paying much attention to what David Cameron

22:41

has to say. I think Americans, to

22:43

the extent that they are aware of how

22:46

the world sees the holdup of

22:48

aid to Ukraine, recognize that

22:50

there's a lot of criticism, particularly

22:52

from America's European partners. That's

22:55

not true. Republican's resistance to helping

22:57

Ukraine is a taste of US

22:59

isolationism if Trump were to be

23:01

reelected. Trump recently seemed to give

23:03

Putin the thumbs up to invade

23:05

any country he fancied because the

23:07

other NATO members weren't paying enough. I

23:10

mean, it's a big, it's a sort of a

23:13

big topic, but how did the party of Eisenhower,

23:15

Nixon and Reagan just sort

23:17

of give up on the rest of the world? Because it's not

23:19

just Trump, it's the whole party, it seems. Yeah,

23:21

yeah, I mean, Trump's taken over the party effectively,

23:23

and for all intents and purposes will continue to

23:26

do so unless Nikki Haley makes a surprise recovery.

23:28

But there's actually, there is

23:30

a history of isolationism in the US,

23:32

but you have to go pretty far

23:34

back to after

23:37

World War I, this kind of idea

23:39

that America doesn't need to entangle ourselves

23:41

in world affairs, that we are geographically

23:44

isolated, and therefore the wars that

23:46

happen, we don't necessarily need to be a part of them. To

23:49

the point that you made, it wasn't really

23:51

until Eisenhower that this sort

23:53

of belief in this idea that

23:55

actually America's partnerships, America's

23:57

relationships, make America stronger.

24:00

richer, you know, that that's a good

24:02

thing. And that kind of when that

24:04

belief sort of held through all Republican

24:06

presidents until the

24:08

most recent one. But

24:11

that isolationist sort of strain didn't

24:14

die off completely. And I think

24:16

that the resurgence that we're seeing with Trump, that's

24:20

why we're seeing it. But I think

24:22

what's different about Trump than say, Senator

24:25

Taft, I think that's people a lot of people kind

24:27

of point to him as sort of this example of

24:29

isolationism is that Trump doesn't seem to

24:31

do it because of some, you know,

24:34

belief, like, I don't think he has some

24:36

sort of like philosophical belief. And

24:38

like, you know, the big

24:41

government is bad. And, you know, America's right.

24:43

I think he he more sees it because

24:45

he's like, if it's not benefiting me, then

24:48

why? Then who cares? It's very much

24:50

like he sees it like a protection racket, doesn't he?

24:52

Like, well, if you don't pay me, then I

24:54

let the bad Russian man beat you

24:57

up. Right. And if the strongmen that I

24:59

look up to and admire don't

25:01

like these things, then I don't like these things.

25:04

Yeah, it's worth remembering that in Trump's

25:06

first term, and hopefully the only one,

25:08

I mean, the America first thing, I

25:10

mean, that slogan actually came from the

25:12

early 1940s, late

25:15

1930s, pro-appeasement, slightly pro-fascist isolationist

25:17

movement in America. So I mean, there's

25:19

actually, you know, that that that strain

25:22

goes all the way through that. Two

25:24

times was very into that. Yeah, what's

25:26

interesting, I think, in terms of particularly

25:28

the NATO thing, and I think at

25:30

this point about Trump basically seeing everything

25:32

in this quasi kind of Matthew so view

25:36

of, you know, basically, if a negotiation

25:38

involves both parties feeling satisfied,

25:40

then I've probably been ripped off.

25:42

You know, everything is a

25:44

zero sum game, both in trade

25:47

and in diplomacy. And

25:49

that's actually a that's a very, you know,

25:51

Kremlin-y way of looking at the world.

25:54

That's exactly why Putin, he doesn't just

25:56

hate NATO, because he sees that as

25:58

a sort of a territorial or

26:00

territorial offense against the greater Russia. He

26:02

really hates the EU as well because

26:04

everything has to be done on those

26:06

zero-sum terms. And ideally, you'd have big

26:08

powers that see each other

26:11

from on high and then essentially crappy little

26:13

countries that belong to one of the other

26:15

blocs and do what they're told. And this

26:17

idea, which is central to all

26:19

of the European architecture of the post-war era,

26:22

that the little countries can

26:25

aggregate and amplify their power

26:27

and achieve something peace and

26:29

prosperity through communal

26:32

action, which is also in America's interest, as was

26:34

just said, that is so alien to the way

26:36

Trump looks at the world. Well, talking to the

26:38

EU, you wrote in The Guardian the other day

26:40

that Europe has to develop a plan B for

26:42

security without American help, even

26:44

if Biden beats Trump in November, because

26:47

that's obviously where the Republican Party is

26:50

going and they can still block things in

26:52

Congress. Do you think Cameron

26:54

gets that? And having basically

26:56

supplied Brexiters with a petrol to burn bridges

26:58

to Europe, is he trying

27:00

to rebuild any? I think he

27:03

would like to. I'm very reliably

27:05

told by someone who's had conversations

27:07

with the right people that Cameron,

27:10

until he actually got back into government

27:13

and after the Foreign Office had not

27:15

fully comprehended quite how rubbish

27:17

the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson

27:19

and David Frost did was. You

27:22

see it in operation in government and you think,

27:24

where are the levers that I can pull to

27:26

try and rebuild some kind

27:28

of European diplomacy? Wow, they're not

27:30

here and under the bonnet all the wires

27:32

have been cut and there is absolutely nothing.

27:35

And my sense is that he would

27:37

be slightly frustrated with that, but also

27:40

just the politics of

27:42

rebuilding the

27:44

kind of diplomatic relations you'd need. Look,

27:47

it's something that we've discussed on this podcast many times before.

27:50

Big picture, what is Britain's strategic

27:52

offer to the European project? You

27:54

could do a defence and security pact, but a lot

27:56

of that is going to be bilateral stuff with France,

27:59

which is the other big... military power, you

28:01

still have to talk about, you know, you still

28:03

then get into all the other questions of trade

28:06

alignment because there's all sorts of defence procurement

28:08

issues. You just very quickly get back into

28:10

that vortex of, wow, Brexit was a

28:12

massive mistake, how on earth are we going to sort of

28:14

unpack it? And I don't see him having

28:17

the license or the time or the

28:19

energy to get into that particular

28:21

box. Finally, Ross,

28:25

in history books, I

28:27

found that it's totally normal to say that somebody

28:29

was right about some things and wrong about others

28:31

and to acknowledge the difference between different phases of

28:33

a career. I mean, Cameron is

28:35

perhaps not a Churchillian figure. You know, if

28:37

you're reading Churchill, his bad patches were very,

28:40

very bad and we're allowed to sort of

28:42

accept that the career sort of ebb and

28:44

flow. Is

28:46

that harder to do in real time?

28:49

Because I'm sure that some people listening

28:51

to this will be quite annoyed by

28:55

the fact that it's not that we've showered

28:57

him in praise, but to sort of say

28:59

anything nice about Cameron in this separate phase

29:01

of his career in a different job is

29:03

to somehow whitewash his sort

29:06

of sins as prime minister. So I wondered

29:08

if you, do you

29:10

feel any differently towards

29:12

him? Not, no.

29:14

I think what we're

29:17

seeing with Cameron is a degree of basic

29:19

competence in the job, which is

29:21

a relief after what we've been through in the

29:23

last few years. Right. We

29:25

should note that he's not getting very much scrutiny

29:27

actually, because he's in the Lords. He

29:29

doesn't, so he doesn't appear in the Commons.

29:32

That means that he, as you said, he's kind

29:34

of freewheeling about doing his own thing, but all

29:36

the same, he's not making the weather. You know,

29:39

he's not really taking a lead on Gaza. He's

29:41

playing it very safe in that. This

29:43

role plays to Cameron's strengths, which

29:46

are that he's a networker and an

29:48

opportunist. And he's

29:50

great at sort of short term diplomacy. And he

29:52

has very little long term judgment, but he doesn't

29:54

need really long term judgment because he's only

29:56

going to be in the job for another, I

29:58

don't know. say eight months. I

30:02

see a man trying to rehabilitate his reputation

30:04

and doing it quite successfully, but I don't

30:06

think it will be more than a paragraph

30:08

at the end of Wikipedia, right? I

30:11

don't think we're talking the whole section. There's

30:14

something we'll recall, one thing actually, weirdly in

30:16

Cameron's defence, and I haven't said much in

30:18

Cameron's defence in my entire life. But actually,

30:20

if you remember, when he was in opposition, the leader of the opposition,

30:23

I think 2008, when there was a Russian

30:25

intervention in Abkhazia in Georgia,

30:28

he called it actually, he said something very hawkish

30:30

about Russia and Putin, and then ended up having

30:32

to sort of wind his neck back in, because

30:34

in those days, everyone said that's ludicrous, preposterous, you're

30:36

just the opposition leader, you have no idea what

30:38

you're playing with here, you can't go over saying

30:40

those sorts of things about Russia, it's a bit

30:42

more complex than that. Actually, looking back, I mean,

30:45

he was right. He's a really

30:47

useful person to have in the in the

30:49

cabinets deescalate tensions with China, because he has

30:51

such good business links with China. And

30:54

given that there are quite a few hawks in

30:56

the cabinet, and we don't want things

30:58

really kicking off. In that sense, I think that's the

31:00

main reason he's here to be honest. It's

31:09

a busy world out there. Once you've woken

31:12

up and got on top of all your

31:14

WhatsApps, your texts, your emails and your

31:16

DMs, then you've got another pile of stuff

31:18

to get through the news. Honestly,

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32:00

I do think that the way that

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32:40

Now let's have a question for one of our Patreon backers

32:42

in But Your Emails. If you support us on Patreon, you

32:44

can also submit a question for the panel and there's a

32:46

But Your Emails special coming next week where we can answer

32:49

some of the dozens of questions we haven't been able to

32:51

fit into the main show. For this week, Patreon backer Sarah

32:53

B says, given that every time I hear a Tory they're

32:55

warning us about the dangers of going back to square one,

32:57

where does the panel actually think this point in time is?

33:01

Yasmeen, they're very keen on this

33:03

slogan. What do you think they

33:05

mean? I first came to this country

33:07

in 2017, which was just before Brexit was

33:09

about to start, kick off in

33:12

earnest. So when I think of like the chapters

33:14

of like kind of UK conservative governance,

33:16

which is all I've ever known, I kind

33:20

of think of that Theresa May period, the Boris

33:22

period, and then gosh, how many

33:24

prime ministers we have in the chain trust,

33:26

SUNAX. So when they say back to

33:29

square one, it's hard because this is

33:31

one conservative government technically very

33:33

different phases. But at no point do you really want

33:35

to go back to the Theresa May one

33:38

because that was kind of seemingly shambolic.

33:41

And then you certainly don't want to go back to Boris because

33:43

even though Brexit got done, then there was all the COVID. So

33:45

I really don't actually know. And then Liz Trust was kind of

33:47

a blip. It's not long enough to go back to. So

33:50

I don't... Like the square. Yeah. I

33:52

don't actually really know where on the...

33:55

If this were some sort of like board game,

33:57

what square you would be going to. Yeah,

34:01

I mean, obviously, Raph, we ended

34:03

with the last new

34:05

Labour government, and that ended obviously

34:07

with the aftermath

34:09

of the financial crisis. So

34:13

I suppose one could

34:15

say, let's not go back to the financial

34:17

crisis might be something ... That's literally the

34:19

only interpretation I can think of, because actually

34:21

so many things have got a lot worse

34:24

under this government. So it

34:27

seems almost like don't let Labour ruin

34:29

it kind of message. What could Labour

34:31

ruin? Yeah, I don't think there is

34:33

a way of interpreting that slogan that

34:36

reflects well on the government. I think

34:38

it expresses this strange idea that Rishi

34:40

Sunak has acquired. You can understand

34:43

why he's got it, that you somehow get to become

34:45

Prime Minister and pretend that this is an entirely new

34:47

administration, and all the mistakes that Liz Truss made and

34:49

nothing to do with you, and all the mistakes that

34:51

Boris Johnson made and nothing to do with you. I

34:54

suppose what he's sort of got in

34:56

his head is this idea that he

34:58

and Jeremy Hunt are clearing up the

35:00

mess that was made by waves

35:03

hands vaguely at the past in a sort

35:05

of incoherent way. So

35:07

they've generated stability over what, like,

35:10

18 months or something, and that's

35:12

what Labour

35:14

would mess up. I mean, the reality

35:16

is obviously it's all Conservative government, and

35:18

I think you're right that conceptually, probably

35:20

if you wanted to think about a

35:22

square one to make it coherent, an

35:24

argument about the recent past, it

35:26

is that 2008-2009 point, isn't it? Because

35:29

that's when we were all saying, nothing can

35:31

be the same again, we can't possibly go

35:33

on like this. We have

35:35

to totally reimagine the way we do the political economy.

35:37

And then we just completely carried on. We did this

35:39

sort of pro-cyclical fiscal policy. You

35:42

got the coalition government that really didn't actually

35:44

examine any of the things that needed examining

35:46

about the way Britain is governed and the

35:48

way the economy is run. So yeah, I'd

35:50

say Lehman, probably square one. Ross.

35:53

This is a slogan that just makes no sense to me,

35:55

and it blows my mind why he keeps using it. I

35:58

have thought about a number of different options, and yeah. none of

36:00

them as Ross says reflect well on

36:02

the Conservative party. It could be for that one, even like

36:04

2010, you know, obviously that new lab

36:07

did not end well but you still say, well,

36:09

we didn't have austerity, a lot

36:11

more things were open and

36:13

we didn't have Brexit. You didn't have to wait more

36:16

than four hours to get to UN and A&E. Yeah,

36:18

I mean, people remember that stuff, right? Maybe

36:20

it was when, you know, Brexit really looked

36:22

like it was

36:24

in serious trouble and the government, and

36:26

Boris Johnson pruned Parliament. Maybe

36:29

that was square one. Maybe that it was

36:31

it's like in the when the French have, you know, different

36:33

republics and so on. And when

36:35

we came back after that, that was square one. I

36:38

don't know. It just no, it sorry,

36:40

it just there's too much. Perhaps regular

36:42

listener Rishi Sunak can

36:44

email us and tell us where square one

36:46

is because we literally don't know.

36:53

Next up, Ross has a book out this

36:55

week about and indeed called The Future of

36:57

Trust. Congratulations to us. Thank you. So

37:00

we can talk about that and the role of trust

37:02

in politics. So it's quite a it's

37:04

quite short book, but you did go sort of

37:06

deep on on the concept and actually what we

37:08

mean by it. Yeah, what

37:10

do we do need mean by it? I still don't

37:13

really know to be honest. I've been thinking about it

37:15

for ages and I'm still confused because it's just such

37:17

a hard concept to unpack. You

37:19

cannot really explain in any

37:21

rational way why you trust someone or

37:23

not or don't trust something. As

37:26

soon as you actually start to analyze what's

37:28

involved in it, it falls apart.

37:30

And so you can have endless surveys

37:33

and we do about how

37:35

much on a 10 point scale you

37:38

trust the NHS or Rishi Sunak or

37:40

Parliament or a bank. But

37:42

it doesn't actually get you very far because

37:44

where do you go next? It's

37:46

a very, very slippery concept. And that's one of the

37:48

reasons why it was so fascinating. But I don't feel

37:51

I've even got to the bottom of it yet. I

37:54

find you start with a dictionary definition. Yeah, I

37:56

did. I did. And you know, it's

37:58

a big it goes right back. to, you know,

38:01

it's right, it's in the Bible in

38:03

quite an interesting way where the Bible says

38:06

you shouldn't trust in worldly leaders, you should

38:08

only trust God, right? Because worldly leaders, they're

38:10

like a stick that if you lean on

38:12

it, it will break. And

38:15

that, of course, is the expression of a religion

38:17

that wants you to believe in it and

38:19

not some sort of passing king. But it's

38:22

nonetheless interesting as

38:24

a, as

38:26

a early on, an example

38:28

of how you really should be quite

38:30

mistrustful of people who tell you that

38:32

you should trust them. So

38:35

you write about interpersonal trust and

38:37

institutional trust, and the people with

38:39

lower levels of interpersonal trust are

38:42

less likely to vote for

38:45

the news to participate in democracy, essentially.

38:47

Are these things always go in tandem?

38:52

Or is it more complicated? No, it's much more, it's

38:54

more complicated than that. So people with

38:56

low levels of institutional trust are also

38:59

less likely to vote as well. But

39:01

they are very, very different things. We can

39:03

have interpersonal trust and experience that with people

39:05

we've never met. I mean, generally, we had

39:07

it with circles of friends and relatives and

39:10

so on. But it can

39:12

extend as far as a leader. And

39:15

of course, that's often the way politics

39:17

works. Politics isn't always about

39:19

institutional trust. Quite often when it comes to

39:21

voting day, it's about interpersonal trust. It's do

39:23

I trust Rishi Sunak more or do I

39:25

trust Kia Starmer more? And

39:27

that's one of the most fascinating things about it. The

39:30

thing about modern society, and increasingly

39:32

so, more so every single year,

39:34

is that you need more and

39:36

more institutional trust, because you are

39:38

effectively having to delegate more

39:40

and more of your life to institutions

39:43

whose workings you do not understand.

39:46

So that can involve getting on a

39:48

plane, banking, you know, getting on a

39:50

bus and using a smart card. There

39:53

are countless ways in

39:55

daily life in which

39:58

we have to rely on this institutional trust. and that's

40:00

why it's so important. So

40:02

okay, what factors are eroding it

40:05

now? Because there

40:07

has been, I'm from a

40:09

different angle, something I was researching, you know,

40:11

you just see this kind of like plummeting

40:13

levels of trust, particularly in government.

40:17

Yeah, started in the 70s, this

40:19

massive decline. All the surveys are

40:21

down, you never see a survey that says,

40:23

oh, people trust this more than they used

40:26

to. It is always down, down, down. Although

40:28

there are certain things like business that people

40:30

do trust more perhaps

40:32

than it deserves and

40:34

more certainly more than other kinds of institution,

40:36

which is an interesting question in itself.

40:39

But what erodes institution trust? Well, I

40:41

mean, in Britain especially, you can see

40:44

the institutions crumbling around you. And it's

40:46

not just obviously the NHS, although we

40:48

have, you know, are urged to put

40:50

our ultimate trust in the state in the UK

40:52

in the NHS. And you saw that during the pandemic,

40:55

it is the ultimate expression of

40:57

Britain's trust in their

41:00

state and their leadership, but also

41:02

in things like the courts and the way

41:04

the law works and who gets prosecuted for

41:06

crimes and who doesn't and who gets away

41:08

with it and who can afford to go

41:11

to court and who has not a hope

41:13

of getting their case heard. It

41:15

is all around us because

41:17

these institutions have been eroded

41:19

because it's quite easy often

41:21

to erode them without people

41:23

necessarily noticing in the early stages. And

41:26

how do we compare to other countries? I mean,

41:28

America is not, they're

41:31

not helping trust either. No, but

41:33

then America, yeah,

41:35

America has fewer state institutions in which

41:37

it has always tended to put its

41:40

trust. Of course, it's never had an

41:42

NHS. So there's always been a

41:44

greater suspicion in America of state

41:46

power. And so, I

41:49

suppose in a way that means that

41:51

when institutional trust in America breaks down,

41:53

it's even more serious because you've got,

41:55

but yeah, I mean, things like the

41:57

Supreme Court are very much

41:59

distrust. Oh yeah, something interesting

42:02

in that. Is it one of those annoying

42:04

cases where it turns out that Denmark or

42:06

whatever? Yeah, totally. Denmark or

42:08

Finland. I interviewed an academic

42:11

couple of years ago from Denmark and

42:13

he had this very interesting theory as

42:15

to why Danes trust

42:18

their state more, which I won't go

42:20

into because it's quite complicated. But essentially,

42:22

yes, it is countries that make

42:25

a clear offering to their citizens about what they

42:27

are going to do for them and generally follow

42:29

through on that. That is what is

42:31

not happening in the UK at the moment. Sounds simple

42:33

when you put it like that. Raph,

42:38

why has trust in Parliament collapsed

42:40

so bad? Is it halved over

42:42

the last three decades? One in

42:44

five people in the UK in

42:46

one poll have confidence

42:48

in Parliament? Yeah, I

42:50

think there's a number of different things, isn't

42:52

it? Cultural and just political events. I think

42:54

a general decline in deference is important. I

42:56

think some of the trust you might previously

42:58

have in Parliament, if you go back to

43:00

the Profumo scandal, some of that stuff was

43:02

pretty misplaced. People thought, fine chaps, you know

43:04

what they're doing, we trust them. And that

43:06

was a mistake. Probably just

43:08

as stupid, venal and

43:10

self-serving as they are now. So

43:13

that might be a healthy downgrading

43:15

in trust. But obviously, the

43:17

expensive scandal was pivotal, wasn't it? I mean, that was a point

43:19

where a lot of people just looked up and went, hang on

43:22

a second, we've had this unconsidered assumption

43:24

that there are certain codes and norms

43:26

and ways of behaving. You bought a

43:28

what, a duck island? What even is

43:31

that? I mean, it was, it

43:33

was colossal. And so that was very

43:35

important. Then I think you pile onto

43:38

that different natural crisis. Because that

43:40

was a case where actually there was way too

43:42

much trust in the banks. And it's like, I'm

43:44

sure they know what they're doing with collateralized debt

43:46

obligations. And when something like that happens, I think

43:48

the elected officers get some of the flak

43:51

and justifiably and then a pile

43:53

onto that breaks it. And that was very interesting,

43:55

because I think you had a

43:57

situation where you leave us. could

44:00

accuse remainers of thwarting

44:03

Brexit in Parliament. So because Brexit was so,

44:05

I mean, gosh, we talked about this so

44:07

many times in this podcast, it's not really

44:09

litigated, but they tried to do

44:11

something that wasn't possible. It made sense rationally

44:14

if you were a lever to blame Parliament

44:16

for pointing out the reality of how

44:18

hard it was. And also there were lots of people in Parliament who

44:20

genuinely did want to stop Brexit. And

44:22

people had voted for it. So that

44:24

was, you know, added another colossal level

44:27

of mistrust. And then finally,

44:29

I think the important thing, and this is another

44:31

broader cultural point, I

44:34

think the technology and the internet promotes,

44:37

and social media promotes this sense of

44:39

instant gratification, the kind of constant rolling

44:41

referendum of Twitter and other things where

44:43

you basically get to express what you

44:45

want. And you know, if you

44:48

put in any retail purchase, you click and arrives the

44:50

next day. And representative politics

44:52

through Parliament is so clunky and

44:54

analog. That's not how democracy works.

44:56

Democracy, you vote. Some people get

44:58

in. They're allowed to get things a bit wrong, make

45:00

some mistakes. And it's only four or five years later they

45:02

can turn around and go, did we broadly get it right?

45:05

If so, vote us back in. That's a really analog

45:07

way of doing things. I think people culturally just that's

45:09

not where we are. And that's one of

45:11

the reasons why businesses are more trusted now, because you

45:13

have this relationship which is

45:16

embedded in law where if there are quite

45:18

many instances where business rips

45:20

you off, you have some recourse and that of

45:22

course does not happen in democratic politics. But this

45:24

is one of the interesting paradoxes of trust,

45:26

because you'd think that trust would increase with greater

45:29

scrutiny. But often that is not the case. Often

45:32

you just don't want to know. And a good example would be

45:34

a play, right? Do you want

45:36

to look inside the engine before you take off?

45:39

No. You actually want somebody else

45:41

who's qualified to look at an engine and know whether

45:43

it's going wrong or not to look at the engine

45:45

and see whether it's working. But

45:48

what the internet allows, and

45:50

the parliamentary expenses candle was

45:52

another example, is immense scrutiny

45:54

of public institutions

45:57

and what's going on inside

45:59

them. And that opens them up

46:01

to degrees of criticism which they have

46:03

never had before. Yes,

46:05

I mean, I think you could say the same about

46:08

the media and you write for time, which is like

46:10

used to be the

46:12

magazine. I'm not knocking it, but it used

46:15

to be the magazine of record. Like when I'm

46:18

researching a book so often what

46:20

I'm going back to is the time

46:22

archive. It's almost like, well, what did

46:24

the world think about this event? And

46:27

trust in all manner of media

46:29

institutions, certainly in Britain and America

46:31

and many other countries has gone

46:33

down. And I don't think personally,

46:36

as a journalist,

46:38

maybe biased, but I don't

46:40

think that's because like, you know, journalists have

46:42

become like sneakier and

46:44

less trustworthy. So, I

46:47

mean, how does journalism like responding

46:51

to that and is it

46:53

limited what you can do if you have

46:55

leaders like Trump out there going

46:57

fake news, lying media? Yeah,

47:00

I mean, it certainly doesn't help when you

47:02

have world leaders, politicians, loud

47:05

mouth YouTuber talking about

47:07

how, you know, basically

47:10

lambasting the media and saying

47:12

it's inherently distrusted. And look,

47:14

I'm not saying that the media is perfect. I think

47:17

certainly with the advent of the Internet, I think it

47:19

added complications there, too. There's this, you know, things

47:21

like fact checking and getting things right. And

47:23

also there's just like the sheer quantity of

47:25

news and choice that you have. You

47:28

know, that all adds layers of complexity. I

47:30

think certainly from like a UK and US

47:33

vantage point, I think partisan media, I imagine

47:35

kind of for as long as I kind of

47:37

remember, has always been a thing. You know, people

47:39

have always had their I prefer to watch Fox

47:41

News over CNN or MSNBC or whatever, but

47:44

I think it's it's. Become

47:46

different in that suddenly

47:48

it's not just a matter of disagreement, but it's

47:50

like this abject like no, they've got it wrong.

47:54

Like that they're completely misleading us. And

47:56

so there's there's definitely the polarization aspect

47:58

that hasn't helped, but I think. Also

48:00

media is kind of wrangling with, certainly

48:03

when I think of modern day criticisms, I

48:05

even see some of my peers make about

48:07

the type of language that we use. And

48:10

certainly how even the most well-intentioned

48:12

institutions, like say the BBC, particularly

48:15

with a lot of the events happening these days, even

48:17

if we just take the Warren guys as an example,

48:21

someone dies versus someone's killed, things like

48:23

that. Even those little things erode a

48:25

lot of trust in are

48:28

these publications speaking to me? Are they representing

48:30

me? Are they giving me the facts? And

48:33

I think that's something that media

48:35

institutions are going to have to

48:38

kind of actively think about. And

48:41

doing that whilst they're also competing for

48:43

readers and eyeballs, because people

48:45

also have a lot more that they can do with their time

48:47

in this region. That kind

48:49

of clickbait urge and grabbing

48:52

people is sort of antithetical to

48:54

the trust building. And quite often I'll

48:56

see people on Twitter

48:59

denouncing a headline on

49:01

a paywalled site, and I happen to have paid

49:03

the subscription so I can read the article. And

49:05

I'm like, oh, that's not really what the article

49:07

is saying at all. And some people probably thought

49:10

they were quite clever getting attention by

49:12

kind of caricaturing the argument.

49:15

And yet this just leaves the majority of

49:17

people who don't have a subscription thinking,

49:20

well, this looks like a load of old

49:22

trash. But for thinking about

49:24

trust in institutions again, it is

49:27

an obvious aim of this government to reduce

49:29

trust in the BBC. It ideologically

49:31

is opposed to the licensee, or at

49:33

least many MPs are. What

49:36

more widely than that it would

49:38

like to see a free market as it

49:40

sees it in news and supply of news

49:42

and comment. And what

49:44

we've seen in particular in the

49:46

last two years with GB News

49:48

and the extraordinary revolving door between

49:51

serving politicians and presenters on GB

49:53

News is an attempt to build

49:55

up a rival to the

49:58

BBC that is. there's

50:00

quite a lot of time flagging off the

50:02

BBC, perpetrating the idea that the BBC is

50:04

not to be trusted. And of course, it's

50:06

not just from the right, the left has

50:08

also done a great job of attacking the

50:11

BBC in its time as well. It's

50:13

a game anyone can do. Well, I'm not a regular

50:15

GB news viewer, but I have noticed that some

50:18

of its reporting is less reliable than that of

50:20

the BBC. And

50:22

that, for example, you get, you know, Neil

50:24

Oliver saying that vaccines cause turbotransil and you

50:26

get a bunch of conspiracy theorists. And one

50:29

of the weird things about conspiracy

50:31

theorists is that they have this

50:33

weird mix of like immense scepticism

50:35

of any mainstream narrative, any mainstream

50:37

narratives immediately suspect and

50:39

then unbelievable credulity about

50:42

like a kind of yoga teacher on Facebook.

50:44

And we've seen a sort of that

50:47

weirdness in where you place your trust in terms

50:49

of like Brexit. Most people didn't really know what

50:51

Brexit was. I know that was meant to be

50:53

a condescending thing to say, but it was obviously

50:55

true. And

50:58

yeah, they just went, I guess I trust these

51:00

people. I trust Nigel Farage and I trust Boris

51:02

Johnson. And in America, there's a lot

51:04

of people that sort of trust Donald Trump. And

51:07

it's very strange that you can understand somebody like

51:09

it, you know, that that's a more old school

51:11

smile of David Cameron. It's like, hello, I'm a

51:13

posh man and I'm in charge. And that's something

51:16

where you just think I can see where someone would

51:18

trust him, even if they shouldn't. Whereas

51:21

some of these guys, they come along and

51:23

they just seem like, well, clearly, you know,

51:25

would you lend Donald Trump money? No,

51:28

no, but that doesn't necessarily matter. There are plenty

51:30

of people who you might want to trust who

51:33

you don't want to lend money to. Trust operates

51:35

on multiple different different levels. And

51:37

when you think about Brexit, Brexit offered

51:39

an amazing cognitive shortcut. I actually think

51:41

the genius of Brexit was the very

51:43

word Brexit itself. It the

51:46

idea that with a clean break,

51:48

you could remove yourself from a myriad

51:51

of laws and institutions. And they managed

51:53

to sell that idea because it was

51:55

appealing to think that something that most

51:57

people had not really thought about much

51:59

before. let's face it, the European

52:01

Union was not widely discussed except

52:04

as the source of some laws

52:06

that quite often people

52:08

found slightly annoying. But

52:11

to suggest that with one clean break,

52:13

as they were always saying, you could

52:15

exit all that and set out alone

52:17

and free yourself, that was the great

52:19

sell of Brexit and that was what

52:21

people were putting their trust in. And

52:23

the genius of Boris Johnson was

52:25

that, speaking to your point about

52:27

who and why people trust certain

52:30

propositions, is that he somehow combined

52:32

all the received generations of reassurance that you

52:35

get from what the British establishment has always

52:37

been, sounding posh, having been to Eton and

52:39

Oxford and all these things that sort of

52:41

imply nothing will really change. It's always going

52:44

to be exactly how it was with the

52:46

adventure in the sense that this is actually

52:48

hilarious and funny and we

52:50

can just smash everything up and it'll be a

52:52

terribly entertaining jape. And by combining those

52:54

two things, the sort of thrill

52:57

of vandalism and the deep

52:59

reassurance of poshness, it might not be anyone in

53:01

the entire country who could have combined those things

53:03

as well as he did at that moment. It's

53:05

like when you say to a different kinds of

53:07

trust, there's trusting somebody to look after something, to

53:09

look after the NHS or the economy. And then

53:12

I suppose there's trusting somebody to smash up the

53:14

thing that you don't like. And often

53:16

they will do that. Your trust was well

53:18

placed because they will smash it up. It's

53:20

just you might not be left in a

53:22

good place afterwards. Yeah, well, I mean,

53:24

another of the great things they managed with

53:27

Brexit was because

53:29

it received such a simple proposition. As we

53:31

began to try to leave, it became obvious

53:33

it was actually a very complicated proposition. And

53:37

that gave more ammunition, ironically, to

53:39

leave, because it's also complicated. You

53:41

don't understand it. Why should you

53:44

trust something that you don't understand

53:46

became the reflex. And

53:48

there was just like, oh, God's sake, just take

53:50

all this stuff away. And that's why I've been

53:53

ready Brexit. I've been

53:55

ready Brexit became a thing. You said something really

53:57

interesting, which I agree with and

53:59

I think it's a sort of a cognitive mistake

54:02

that a lot of us made, you know, before

54:04

2016, Brexit Trump, which was

54:06

to think that there are all sorts of signs

54:09

and signals that you can look at and

54:11

think, Oh, this, this reassures me that this

54:13

information is thing is good. So the masthead

54:16

on a broadsheet newspaper, for example, or things

54:18

that you look at and go, Okay, this

54:20

is telling me these accused that tell me

54:22

that this is reliable information. And it turns

54:24

out those are culturally much more rarefied than

54:26

I think a lot of us realize. And

54:28

actually, a lot of people found those cues alienating

54:31

and had they had become the emblem of

54:33

mistrust and something that looked to us like

54:35

trash tabloid, why would you possibly trust this

54:37

plea that was cutting through it exactly the

54:39

way that essentially, you know, for want of

54:42

a better term, the old metropolitan liberal elite

54:44

was not prepared to rebut and didn't know

54:46

how to engage with properly. Ross's

54:48

book is out now, it covers all these things plus

54:51

the serious future future stuff like

54:53

AI and Metaverse and a frankly

54:56

demented sounding sort of snake

54:58

shaped city that they're thinking of building in

55:01

Saudi Arabia, which I thought perhaps Roz had

55:03

made up as a sci-fi jape, but appears

55:05

to be a real plan. It totally

55:07

is. You can go to the internet and find all about

55:09

what it's gonna look like. Yeah, the line is a brainchild

55:12

of MBS, the Mohammed bin

55:15

Salman in Saudi Arabia. And

55:17

it is an extraordinary thing because it's going to be

55:19

a paradise of surveillance.

55:21

Basically, you are going to walk around, you're going to

55:23

have a smartwatch. It's going to tell you when you're

55:26

at risk of suffering from anything, the healthcare is going

55:28

to be fantastic. There is not a detail on the

55:30

website how this place is going to be governed. It

55:33

is a surveillance state par

55:35

excellence. And one of the

55:37

things that I speculate about in the book

55:39

is whether as states like

55:41

ours struggle and public services break

55:44

down, places like this

55:46

might have despite the lack of

55:48

democracy and the lack of accountability

55:50

might have a surprisingly strong

55:52

appeal for many people. Soil and green. We've

56:09

reached the end of the show, so what are the stories that have

56:11

gone under the radar this week? Yasmin?

56:14

On Monday, well, this was a story that

56:16

actually predates a few weeks, but basically for

56:18

backstory, an Israeli lawmaker

56:20

with the Arab Jewish party

56:22

Hadash called Ofer Kasif faced

56:25

a vote of impeachment over

56:27

his support for South Africa's genocide

56:29

case at the ICJ. That

56:33

vote, unprecedented, hasn't happened

56:35

before, happened on Monday.

56:37

And typically the mechanism that was used to

56:39

hold this vote is if they've said

56:42

something racist or incited violence against the

56:44

state of Israel. Even

56:47

the deputy attorney general of

56:49

the government said there is

56:51

no legal standing for this. So

56:53

what happened on Monday is this vote took place. It

56:56

needed 90 of the Knesset's 120 lawmakers

56:58

to vote for it to pass. 86

57:02

voted to impeach him. So he has saved

57:04

his job by just four votes. Now

57:06

that's good news for

57:08

him. However, when I spoke with him after

57:10

the vote on Monday, he said, yes,

57:13

but the fact that that many voted to

57:15

impeach a lawmaker on the basis of

57:17

his opinion is quite concerning

57:19

for Israeli democracy. So,

57:21

yeah, that was a story that happened on Monday. And I think

57:23

given everything going on in the world, it kind

57:25

of went under the radar. Had he been impeached, I

57:27

think people would have seen. Well, obviously the world is

57:30

focused on what's happening in Gaza,

57:32

but the sort of growing

57:34

authoritarianism of Israel, and when you delve

57:36

into some of the characters that are

57:38

in the Cabinet, it's incredibly alarming for

57:41

Israeli citizens as well. There's a pretty considerable

57:43

war on dissent. And the fact that it's

57:45

reached the Knesset, I think, is really concerning. I'm

57:49

kind of looking for good news in the world

57:51

right now, and it's not

57:53

that easy to come by, but I

57:56

was quite thrilled by the discovery of

57:58

automagnetism. Are you familiar with it? automagnetism.

58:01

This is a new kind of magnetism, right? Who

58:03

knew that there was more than one? They look

58:05

like alternative truth. They're basically, turns out there are

58:08

three kinds of magnetism. So there's a classic one

58:10

that you know about like, you know, fridge magnets

58:12

and you know, what would be stuff that blew

58:14

our minds as kids and... The second one is

58:16

sexual. Yeah, it's kind of charisma

58:18

that's radiating in this room right now. No,

58:21

then there's basically the non-ferromagnetism which is rubbish

58:23

and doesn't really do much. Actually, it's incredibly

58:25

important in all sorts of ways. They really

58:27

understand. And then as if they've found

58:29

a third one and which again also incredibly complicated,

58:31

don't really understand. It's all about the way each

58:34

atom has its electrons whizzing around, you

58:37

know, the core and those whizzing around

58:39

in certain directions in different ways that

58:41

basically create, generate their own little magnetic

58:43

fields and then aggregated together, they make

58:45

the bigger magnetic field and automagnetism has

58:48

this crazy, wacky, new type of magnetic

58:50

field which is going to be incredibly

58:52

useful and important and save

58:54

the world. Maybe. But either

58:56

way, I just reading about it. I don't

58:58

know, I just remembered like, magnetism is cool.

59:01

It's magic. It feels like magic. It's like

59:03

your, it's like a weird superpower. And

59:05

just reading about the new kind of

59:07

magnetism I would just momentarily taken back

59:09

that being a child thinking, cool

59:12

magnetism. And so I just wanted to share

59:14

that with listeners. Well, Ralph has taken us

59:16

all the way up. Where are you taking

59:19

us? How can I follow that? You

59:21

do realize I want to talk about a young

59:23

offenders institution now, albeit very

59:25

briefly. Okay. Okay.

59:27

This, this is a report that came out independent

59:30

report into cook and wood, which is a young

59:32

offenders institution in Kent came out last

59:34

week, and it's terrible. It makes just awful, awful

59:36

reading. So this is a place that houses 15

59:38

to 18 year olds, often

59:40

many of them are on remand for

59:42

horrible crimes or convicted

59:44

of horrible crimes. And

59:47

they are, you know, undoubtedly difficult and

59:49

difficult kids. These are often people who've stabbed other

59:51

people, you know, but the

59:54

measure of our society is how we treat these kids, right?

59:56

It is a measure of whether we treat them with humanity, despite the fact that

59:58

we treat them with humanity. them being extremely,

1:00:01

extremely difficult people and

1:00:04

they are being treated in a way that

1:00:06

the report describes as inhumane. Some of

1:00:08

them are held in cells for up to 23 hours

1:00:10

a day. They get a maximum

1:00:12

of 12 hours of schooling a week

1:00:15

if they're lucky. It

1:00:17

is just an awful, you know,

1:00:19

and when I say 23 hours a day that's

1:00:21

solitary confinement and some of

1:00:24

them went for over a hundred days with

1:00:26

solitary confinement in that way.

1:00:28

Absolutely awful. Well,

1:00:32

it's sort of good news from extremely bad

1:00:34

news. Just one of the most shocking things

1:00:36

that happened to anybody that I knew in

1:00:38

the last few years was Merrick Mills and

1:00:41

Paul Leyte, both editors on The Guardian who

1:00:43

I had written for and had some dealings

1:00:45

with their 13-year-old

1:00:47

daughter Martha, died of

1:00:50

sepsis after an accident in 2021.

1:00:52

It was very preventable.

1:00:55

She should have been taken to intensive care

1:00:57

earlier and she wasn't and they've been campaigning.

1:01:00

Something which is now called Martha's Rule where

1:01:02

patients and family can call a critical care

1:01:04

team for second opinion if the condition is

1:01:06

deteriorating and the primary care team isn't

1:01:09

doing enough. It's being

1:01:11

rolled out starting with a hundred hospitals.

1:01:13

I've seen a little bit of skepticism

1:01:15

from some doctors but something

1:01:18

like this has been tried I think in

1:01:20

Canada and Australia and it's worked well and

1:01:22

what they found is that people do use

1:01:24

it wisely and there's not loads

1:01:29

of just kind of like super anxious nuisance

1:01:32

patients calling for this. It really

1:01:34

is when normally when something, your

1:01:36

second opinion is really needed and

1:01:39

it just seems to be one of those cases where just like this horrifying

1:01:42

personal tragedy might

1:01:44

end up having this kind of lifesaving

1:01:47

legacy. And

1:01:53

that's the show thanks to Raph. Thank you. You know what

1:01:55

I mean? Yeah. And Russ. Thank you.

1:01:57

Stick around for the extra bit after Demonism wants to...

1:02:00

by Cornershop and a roll call of our generous supporters.

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You could join them and get the podcast early and

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See you next time. Oh

1:02:51

God What Now was

1:02:53

written and presented by Dorian Linsky, Yazmin

1:02:56

Sahand, Rafael Baer

1:02:58

and Ross Taylor. The

1:03:01

producer was Chris Jones, audio production

1:03:03

by Robin Lieber, art by

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Jim Parrott and a

1:03:07

managing editor was Jacob Jarvis and group

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editor Andrew Harrison. Oh

1:03:12

God What Now is a pop master's

1:03:14

production. Hello

1:03:22

and welcome to the extra bit exclusive to Patreon backers.

1:03:24

When Covid hit four years ago it looked as if

1:03:26

it might all be over for cinema going as a

1:03:28

mainstream pursuit but it's back baby. Global box office was

1:03:30

up by a third in 2023 to 34 billion dollars

1:03:32

and the movies are

1:03:34

more interesting. Oppenheim have pulled things from

1:03:36

the zone of interest with the big winners at

1:03:39

the BAFTAs last weekend and the field was so

1:03:41

strong that films as good as Barbie and all

1:03:43

of the strangers were snubbed. There are no worthy

1:03:45

duds in this year's Oscar season I reckon. Meanwhile,

1:03:48

Madam Webb continues a disastrous run for the once

1:03:50

mighty superhero movie. Before

1:03:52

we get to the movies themselves, Ross,

1:03:54

are you surprised that cinema recovered so

1:03:56

well from the pandemic? I

1:03:58

am a little bit. It's

1:04:00

worth saying it hasn't quite good up to pre-pandemic

1:04:03

levels yet. It's still, it's not quite there

1:04:05

yet. And I think that's because tickets

1:04:07

are more expensive and we're in a recession.

1:04:10

And that's one of the things that people cut back on. But

1:04:13

it seems to be really on form. If you

1:04:15

look at the best picture lineups for I think, is

1:04:17

it 21 and 22? It's really like, it

1:04:22

wouldn't be hard to boot a few out. Like

1:04:24

you really felt like they were just like scraping

1:04:26

around. It was like, yeah, it

1:04:28

was like kind of dances with wolves level. I

1:04:30

always think about what else is the wolves in

1:04:32

an example of a movie that was extraordinarily popular

1:04:34

at the time and yet was actually really

1:04:36

rubbish. Sorry,

1:04:39

when do I get to do my rant about Oppenheimer, which

1:04:41

I'd put in that category, I thought it was a terrible,

1:04:43

terrible movie. I just thought it was the, I

1:04:46

could go on. I thought it was a good, good

1:04:49

movie. Oh really? Well, I just thought that it was

1:04:51

just perhaps the most overrated. That was a teaser for

1:04:53

the bonus bit of this week's podcast. If you'd like

1:04:55

a drop more Oh God What Now every week without

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ads and a day early, then sign up, spack us

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on Patreon for as little as three pounds a month.

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You'll also get our exclusive weekly mini cast, Oh God

1:05:04

What Else every Monday morning, some merchandise offers and more.

1:05:06

Thank you for listening and see you next week. How

1:05:11

did Hitler's sexuality shape his

1:05:14

worldview? Why did the Black Death

1:05:16

lead to the rise of the

1:05:18

witch trials? And what are some

1:05:20

of the sources scandal involving Kings

1:05:22

and Queens at Hampton court? I

1:05:25

don't know about you, but this is the

1:05:27

history I want to hear about. If you

1:05:30

do too, then join me, Tate

1:05:32

Lister, every Tuesday and Friday to

1:05:34

find out the answers to all

1:05:36

of these questions and more. Listen

1:05:38

to the Twixasheets, the history of

1:05:40

sex scandal in society, wherever you get your

1:05:42

podcast. Brought to you by History It.