122: Labour's Freebies and The End of the Peers Show

The team discuss why Keir Starmer should have gone to Specsavers; why the 92 hereditary members of the House of Lords might not be there much longer; and who will win the Murdoch succession battle playing out in a Nevada courtroom. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andrew (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray andI'm here in the Eye Office with Helen
Lewis, Adam MacQueen, and Ian Hislop.
We are here to discuss the lastweek's news, the next week's
news, and everything in between.
And I should start with a quick littleannouncement to the three of you actually.
I just want to let you all know thatI want to thank James Dyson for the
jeans I'm wearing today, HindujaBrothers pay for my shirt, Lembo Vatnik

(00:26):
for the Casio, and the underpants...
model's own.
So just so you know.
And what lovely underpants they are.
Thank you very much.
Thanks

Adam (00:34):
for dropping the jeans to reveal them to us.
I'm so glad.

Andrew (00:37):
Someone noticed.
I'm looking my best for the country,as I think we all have a duty to do.
Particularly on a

Ian (00:44):
podcast.

Helen (00:44):
An inherently visual medium.
And it's nice to

Andrew (00:47):
know that Mrs.
Murray is looking so dapper as well.
Not here, with us.
no.
But, she wants to thank RichardBranson for all her stuff.
yeah, this is the news that's been,that was in the eye a long time ago.
this is a little reward for subscribersthat you were well aware that Keir Starmer
was getting lots and lots of freebiesof glasses, and clothes, and holidays in

(01:08):
Welsh beach huts and things like that.
And this has been one of thedominant stories of the last week.

Helen (01:14):
It's quite annoying, isn't it, that the opportunity was for him to take
the advice before the election, right?
The Private Eye has been runningstories about this, particularly him
going to concerts or soccer matches.
Soccer matches, I've gone soAmerican, I've finally turned.
Football matches, and so it's not likethis was a new scandal in a sense, right?
he just walked straight into this onewith people having noticed it previously.

Ian (01:36):
the traditional cry is always, doesn't he have any advisors?
And then the response is always, youdon't need advisors to tell you not to
take free glasses, or wear suits whenyou've made a, very, big point about how
corrupt the previous administration is.
It's extraordinarily short sighted.

Andrew (01:56):
Yeah, I know.
Has anyone Has the line, Should havegone to Specsavers, been trotted out
lots and lots in the last week or so?
It should have been.

Ian (02:02):
Yes, someone said it was a Specs scandal, as opposed to a Tory sex scandal.
Okay, it was me.
ha And it's not just the smallnessof the amounts, it's the fact

Adam (02:13):
that he's doing it at all.
Yeah.
There are two arguments on there, becauseyou're right that the amounts are small
in comparison with Boris Johnson'sfreebie holidays all over the place, and
freebie houses, and Dalesford organicpackages being delivered to his door,
and basically inability to put his handin his pocket for absolutely anything.
But then it seems, it makes it worsein a way, but the obvious thing
is just to not take any freebies.

(02:35):
Don't take even cheaper ones.
It's just

Andrew (02:39):
this is the interesting thing because Starmer actually was,
I think, between 2019 when he becamethe Labour leader and the summer of
this year, he got more gifts thanany other member of Parliament.
They're all declared, but they were,as you've said, things like concerts,
football tickets, hotel stays, Coldplay,Taylor Swift, Adele, Wimbledon.
To go and see, I like this one, the playNigh, at the National Theatre, which

(03:02):
is all about the founding of the NHS.
Which didn't give out freeglasses, unlike Lord Ali.
but the current rules, now the rulesthat PMs, and in fact all ministers
have to obey, the Ministerial Code,say that if you are given something,
I presume this applies to Starmersince he became Prime Minister.
You have to pay the, the streetvalue for it, as it were.

(03:22):
If it's worth more than 140 quid, you pay.
you can buy it with 140quid taken off the top.
or you can give it back.
Why 140 quid?
That was just the standard set many yearsago by a sort of low ish value for a gift.
for example, Theresa May did thiswith clothes that she was given.
Designers were always sendingher clothes when she was PM.
She bought a few of them.

(03:43):
She would send the rest back.
Sarah Brown, the last LabourFirst Lady, as it were, wrote the
same thing in her book in 2011.
That this is what she did, so thatis the kind of standard protocol.
And the fact that Boris wasgetting all these freebies, I can't
quite work out how that squares.
I don't

Ian (04:00):
want to suggest he didn't care what the rules were.
No, true.

Andrew (04:03):
Which would be shocking.
Yeah, but I wonder if this was somethingStarmer was doing before the election.
I don't know.
When the rules were, did not applyto him because he wasn't a minister.

Helen (04:11):
The thing that annoys me most about it is it does reveal how bloody
expensive women's clothing has got.
so I'd note, even just some of the verylow key dresses were 300 to 700, which
is not unusual now for high end brands.
But if you're a kind of normal everydayperson, you're not allowed to write that
off against tax, even though, perhaps,were someone, somebody who only buys
posh clothes, for example, to wear on TV.

(04:33):
I'm just saying.
It's just personally aggrievedme, because there is No, we're now
into Helen's tax
groins.
you know this was famously whyABBA wore such ridiculous costumes
on stage in the 70s, don't you?
It's because they had to provethat they were tax deductible
because they were stage costumes.
And the only way they could do that washave something so utterly ridiculous
that even Benny and Bjorn would nothave walked down the street with

(04:54):
it.
But it does make me think there is anunfair expectation that, particularly
for women in public life, you will,keep up to a specific standard of dress.
However, the counterpoint to that isthe fact that they do earn a decent
wage and everyone else on that wagewould expect to buy their own clothes.
It
does come down to the Daily Mail headlineon Monday which just said, Why can't
the Stalmers play for their own clothes?

(05:14):
Which is a very, good question, isn't it?

Ian (05:17):
Yeah, this is rare on this podcast, the Daily Mail being quoted.
Approvingly, yeah.
As a voice of sense.
Is not the argument Lady Starmerhas, said I do not want a role in
politics and I'm not First Lady.
Okay, then why do you need clothesbought for you by Lord Ali?

Andrew (05:35):
the other defense that David Lammy was trotting out, yesterday,
I think, when he was doing a fewmedia appearances, is that well, U.
S.
Presidents and their First Ladies get afixed budget, which is not strictly true.
No, I was going to say, I thought

Helen (05:48):
the only one problem with that is it's not, correct.
No,

Andrew (05:51):
the President does get a, he gets, the President gets a 38, 000 a year.
Budget for clothing.
Does that include bulletproof vests?

Helen (06:00):
notoriously the same thing happens with the royal family in that all the
way along Kate Middleton's clotheswere bought by the Dutchy of Cornwall.
So Charles app, his income gaveher an allowance, acknowledging
that, She needed a lot of frocks,lovely frocks for appearances.
And someone had to pay for that.

Andrew (06:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the first lady who does have anofficial role in the USA, doesn't
have an allowance for clothing.
And you, the fact is everyonewho becomes president is a
millionaire, many times over, but,

Ian (06:26):
Presumably, there would be very little appetite in this country for
a clothes budget for the First Lady.
to be announced just afterthe winter fuel budget cuts.
I can't, see that happening.

Helen (06:38):
Not unless she's going to wear a three bar fire or something.

Ian (06:41):
But part of the Labour appeal harking back to, Michael Foot, did
anyone pay for the, donkey jacket?
I think his wife boughtit for him, didn't she?
Jill Craigie both of themwould be at pains to point
out, it wasn't a donkey jacket.
It was a rather nice pea coat,in a beautiful shade of green,
which he always insisted.
He was complimented on by the Queen Motherat the Cenotaph, and therefore this, has
negated any criticism of, it thereafter.

(07:04):
there's a lesson learnt from history.

Andrew (07:06):
Yeah, thing that you said Adam about it being a blind spot is so
striking because one of the dominantobservations made about Starmer
is that he's a bit of a roundhead.
That he's A Puritan.
He's a Puritan, Oliver Cromwell was nottaking free lace collars from, I don't
know, you have no evidence for that.

(07:28):
Norwich's biggest, flaxproducers or whoever it was.

Helen (07:31):
I think that's probably why though, I remember someone saying this
to me about, Jeremy Corbyn, somebodywho'd worked with him about his blind
spot on antisemitism, who said, look,his whole shtick, through his entire
life, his whole self conception ofhim, his place in politics is that he's
someone who's always really cared aboutracism, really cared about the underdog.
He cannot conceive of himself as somebodywho might have missed something like that.

(07:54):
And I wonder if there's somethingsimilar true with, Starmer's idea is
that he is really a horny handed sonof toil and it can't possibly be that
he actually likes quite flash suits andnice glasses and so he's just struggled
to reconcile that with the fact that,as you say, he's been to a lot of
Adele concerts, Taylor Swift concertsand so on, paid for by someone else.
But the answer

Adam (08:13):
to that is to be a bit more of a horny handed son of toil, toil a bit more
and then you can afford the nice suits.
he can!
It's not even a question of sumsand 140 allowances or anything.
if someone's offering you a gift asa politician, why are they doing so?
It's not out of thegoodness of their heart.

Ian (08:31):
having appeared in front of various parliamentary committees trying to point
out that, exactly that point, Adam, whichwas entirely lost on many of the members
who couldn't, see the problem here.
we literally, we went into the businessof, tickets for football matches.
And, I was trying to say thatif, say, Taylor Swift sends

(08:52):
you some free tickets, lovely.
If the, Premier League sends yousome tickets for the Taylor Swift,
concert, then you should be suspiciousbecause someone else is paying.
And in all other walks of life,we know that people who provide
things often want something back.
again, I, my colleagues, Richard, Brooksand, Solomon Hughes and I, having been

(09:16):
to this committee once, we are, infact, being asked to offer our advice
again, which is, the same as last time.
This is all blindingly obvious,and now, Even the Prime
Minister can't seem to see it.
And in the new LabourParty, the, first scandal.
Is from a Blairite source, it'sas though we're right back to 97.

(09:41):
As in Lord

Andrew (09:41):
Ali, you mean?
Lord Ali.

Ian (09:43):
and again, why take clothes and glasses all sorts of different
kinds of grey suit, which areobviously incredibly, exciting.
looking at how this will look, evento your own party, why is there no
one saying at any point, including.

(10:03):
This isn't a very good look.

Andrew (10:07):
An MP for several years and a former Director of Public Prosecutions.
He couldn't be expected to own any suits.
Those are very much mufti jobs.

Adam (10:15):
Mind you, he's packed on the pounds a bit.
He's got a bit more timber thanhe did when he was DPP now, so
maybe Lord Ali could have justpaid to have the old ones let out.
This is not going to devolveinto an exemplic conversation.
I won't let it happen.
It's Bodyshaming Cornerwith Adam MacQueen!
No, but I do think you're right,Ian, there is this bizarre blind spot
in something with politicians, withsomething that ought to be so obvious,
and it reminds me of the scandal,I think, in my time here that has

(10:37):
caused the most public outrage, whichwas the MPs expenses stuff in 2009.
And one of the most extraordinary thingsabout that was that it emerged that MPs,
as part of their second home allowance,got basically a grocery allowance
every week to go and do their shopping.
And you just thought, What onearth do they think that all the
rest of us spend our wages on?
Yeah, what is that extra?

Andrew (10:59):
If I have to travel for work and I have to have a meal out I can write
that off against tax because it's a MealI wouldn't have had I wouldn't have gone
to somewhere, if I wasn't 400 miles awayfrom home or whatever But I don't get
to do that when I have my lunch here,despite the fact I have had to come to my
place of work, which I'm very resentfulabout, Ian, and, and buy a sandwich,
which is probably overpriced, actually.
Yeah.

Adam (11:18):
But also, as you just wanna work from home, like all millennials.
You're writing it off against tax.
You're not getting Some money inyour account to pay for that dinner.
No, I still have to pay for it.
Yeah, you're still paying for it!

Ian (11:31):
apart from these specifics of Andy's life.
Adam's talking aboutthe expenses scandals.
The extraordinary thing about thatera was just how small, The items
were that the public got annoyed by.
You remember the man who, with theduck house, Zahawi, the heating bill
for his stables, an MP who wouldn'teven buy a poppy for Remembrance Day.

(11:54):
it's part of my public duty.
I've got to wear it with a suit.
he didn't actually claim the suit as well,so did it match the poppy, but there is
a sort of, there's a patheticness aboutthis scandal that I think is undignified.

Andrew (12:08):
have mentioned Boris Johnson briefly, but, Boris was given all
sorts of donations for all sortsof things all the way through,
and they did try and get around.
the redecoration of the Downing Streetflat over the annual budget, which I
think was about 30, 000 at the time, but,
Again, 30, 000!
Who spends 30, 000 on DIY?

(12:28):
Not, renovating a house froma wreckage, not re wearing it
entirely, just, upkeep stuff.
30, 000!
These sums are just astronomical!
Yeah, but the previousdecor was terribly common.
It was all John LewisNightmare, wasn't it?
Yes, it

Ian (12:43):
Positively unsustainable for Boris.
I

Andrew (12:46):
do what this is giving away about all of us.
Helen has agreed about theunreasonable cost of women's clothes.
It's, for me, it's sandwiches.
For Adam, it's, youcould, do P& Q much sugar.
For me it's poppies.
what a surprise.
but for example, Boris, he, hiswedding was funded by the Bamfords.
The JCB back then.
The JCB scullia there, yeah, Yes, they

Helen (13:05):
had a traditional South African barbecue, did they not?

Andrew (13:08):
They had a South African barbecue, an ice cream van, they had some port a
loos, all of which totted up to 23, 000.
They should have, actually had abig banner for Boris wedding saying,
If you're in a hole, stop digging.
That would have been a good

Ian (13:19):
That would have been good.
Surely there was a visitto a JCB back then.
Factory that, caused some problemsafterwards with people, I don't know,
probably working for a satirical magazinesaying, is this entirely justified?

Andrew (13:32):
Yeah, I think so.
But the, whole timbre of conservativepolitics for, years has been if you pay
a lot of money you get access to theparty leadership and you get to join
the advisory board if you give a lotof money and that gives you access.
I don't know what Labour's mechanismIs, but I won't be surprised
if I hear there is one.
That, I think, is what playsinto the side of the story that

(13:52):
we haven't really seen yet.
All we know that Waheed Ali got inreturn for his generosity was a pass
to Downing Street, supposedly tohelp with the transition process.
Oh God, maybe he's doingredecorating as well, who knows?
which apparently has since been revoked.
But there do seem to be a lotof these figures, and they're
all figures from the 1990s.
It's a weird retro feelingwe've got at the moment.
But Alan Milburn as well is stillknocking about with no sort of

(14:14):
defined role, but appears to beturning up at meetings and things.
And I would suggest that kind of,yeah, looking slightly beyond the
headlines of the suits and things,you're getting into some Potential.
Were I a Labour spin doctor, of whichthey don't seem to have any at the
moment, I would be saying, Guys, do youwant to maybe have a look at this one?
This is looking a bit iffy.
I've got one last little, international fact to show how other
countries do this much better than us.

(14:36):
Yes?
recently Emmanuel Macron got introuble for, booking a business
class seat on a flight from Paristo Brazil for two of his kids.
Suits.

Helen (14:46):
I was so poised to defend him because I think the one thing we aren't
necessarily Puritan about is politicianstravelling like first class on a train.
They should absolutelybe allowed to do that.
They should work on the train.
They should not be harangued byweird people with camera phones.
I'm totally fine with that.
However, I will not defend the suits.

Andrew (15:03):
No.
they had to be able to lie flat.
That's apparently I'm making that up
we come back to the thing which isprobably going to be the title of
this episode, despite the fact Iwon't write that for another two days.
The end of the Piers show.
Helen.

Helen (15:18):
Are you proud of yourself, Andy?
Really

Andrew (15:19):
proud.
Has Piers Morgan resigned?
I'm afraid not.
From
what,
Ian?
From that little show on YouTube?
It's

Ian (15:28):
got billions of hits, Adam.
Thank you for your cynicism.

Andrew (15:32):
And you've just never met anyone who's watched it.
No, we're in the House of Lords.

Helen (15:37):
Yes, so Labour have introduced a plan to get rid of the
last remaining hereditary peers.
There's 92 of them.
And it's sponsored by the Cabinet Office,so this is a bill with government backing,
which means it might actually happen.

Andrew (15:49):
Okay.

Helen (15:50):
if you remember, the last Labour government did half the job.
When they were elected in 97 of the Houseof Lords were still hereditary peers.
And they said, let's get rid of them all.
And then there was an amendment thatwas put in that said, look, let's have
a bit of a transitional arrangement.
Some of them haven't got homes to go to.
but we'll we'll then get rid of themin the next bit of Lords reform.

(16:14):
And so over the years since then, peoplehave kept on proposing amendments to
it, and the conservatives largely havesaid, we can't just get rid of the
rest of the peers because we're waitingfor the larger bit of Lords reform.
And let me shock you, that's never come.
And it's been a quarter of a century.
It has been a quarter of a century.
I've prepared a little quiz though, whichI know you like, which is, Are these

(16:37):
people real hereditary peers or not?

Adam (16:39):
Great.

Helen (16:40):
And all but one of them is sitting in the room.
Lords, all, and one ofthem has tried to be.
okay, is Valerian Freyberg a real peer?

Ian (16:49):
It's a herbal remedy.
It is, and it's a carriagefrom House of Thrones.

Helen (16:55):
I'm gonna need an answer from you.

Andrew (16:57):
Yes.
I'll say hereditary.
Hereditary.

Helen (17:00):
Correct, he's a crossbencher.

Andrew (17:01):
Hey!

Helen (17:02):
Peregrine pickle.

Andrew (17:04):
No, Woodhouse, minor character, Hobbit, Dickens.

Helen (17:10):
You're all wrong, it's Tobias Smollett.
I want you to think very carefully, it wasThe Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is one
of Tobias Smollett's Actually, he's not asgood as Humphrey Clinker, but it's good.
Anyway, Rualyn Howell,Thurlow, Cumming Bruce.

Ian (17:22):
Yes,

Andrew (17:22):
definitely.

Ian (17:23):
Yeah,

Andrew (17:23):
he's real.

Helen (17:24):
Yeah, okay, yes, he's a crossbencher.
Merlin Hay.

Andrew (17:28):
Merlin Hay?
Oh, he's real.

Helen (17:31):
I don't know why you would say that with a kind of real, Oh, I'm Merlin.
Because I
feel like I've read all those70s political biographies
that we banged on about.
You're thinking of Merlin Rees.
I am thinking of Merlin Rees, aren't I?
Yes, sorry.
I'm going to say fake.

Ian (17:47):
No, it's Merlin and he's Welsh and he lives in Hay.
Very nice.
He's real.
I'll go with real.

Helen (17:52):
He is real, he's the 24th Earl of Errol on a crossbench pier.
Arthur St.
John Copper.
Russ

Andrew (18:00):
No.
minor player in EastEnders, I believe.

Helen (18:03):
I have made that up because that's the first two, two of the four
names of Evelyn Moore and Lord Copper.
Lovely.
That would be one thatwould be nice for you.
Up to a point.
Exactly.
Charles Rodney Muff.
Big Charlie Muff, yeah.
He's real.
He's real and he sits on thebench next to Lady Garden.
yeah.
He tried to be a Lib Dems here.
He was also real.
He is the, Lady Garden isreal, as is Lord Panic.

(18:25):
Third, Baron Calverley.
There you How many of them are actually

Ian (18:28):
active?

Helen (18:29):
there was a big report into the fact that, lots of people have
been turning up and claiming expenses.
I don't think thehereditaries are any worse.
In fact, I think they might bebetter because the system has always
been, so when they went down tojust 92, they fixed the percentages
of them at the composition, arational composition at the time.
So there's 49 Conservatives, 4 Labour,4 Lib Dem and 35 Crossbenchers.

(18:50):
And basically what happens iswhen one of them dies or now
retires, there's a by election.
And they have to say, you have tosay, look, you're going to have
to be a Lib Dem hereditary peer.
So the people who are motivatedto put themselves up for those
elections do actually tend to stay.
It's just weird because there areonly three Lib Dem peers when they
had the last election in 2016, so onlythree people voted in that election.

(19:12):
They all voted for thesame person, it was fine.
But you can

Andrew (19:15):
end up with more voters.
Yeah, that can quite easily happen.
Because if you're a Toff and youwant to be a Lib Dem peer, It's
like the Tory leadership election.
There's only so many of them left.
so the odd thing is that theseare the only people in the House
of Lords who are elected in thatsense, although they are elected by
other lords, so other hereditaries.
Yes, but that's a little bit of election.
Yeah, and to be fair, they don'tjust sail through, you have to

(19:36):
write a statement of applicationwhich has to be up to 75 words long.
It doesn't have to be 75 words, though.
You don't have to hit it, so

Helen (19:45):
I love them.
They are like UCAS personal statements.
They're like, I have spent a lot oftime in Africa and Asia exploring
mineral wealth, and now I'm veryinterested in environmentalism.
I would be a good member of the House of

Andrew (19:56):
Lords.
My favorite one that Ifound of these was in 2021.
Lord Milverton, Lord Milverton'sstatement was eight words long.
He said he would try to be asobjective and reasonable as possible.
Although he wasn't 90 years old whenhe was making his application, so
he may have simply been quite tired.
but I had no idea how many were here,until I started researching this, that
there were nearly 700 hereditariesin the House of Lords before 1997.

(20:19):
And so it's obviously an enormous number.

Helen (20:22):
It's also a big, diversity and equality and inclusion challenge, in
that there are only 90 peerages, thatcan even be inherited by women, let
alone ones that go to a male heir first.
So currently all 92 hereditary peersare men, and as you'd expect, unless
I'd know there's an exception, I don'tknow, they're all white, or would
identify themselves as white, right?

(20:42):
So you just have this block of votesthat do not represent the diversity
of what Britain actually looks like.
the Countess of Mar was the last femalehereditary peer, and, but she died,
and they, and was replaced by a bloke.
I

Ian (20:56):
mean, we had a, an account, and if you want to see the standard
of the quality of debate in theLords were debating, themselves.
in a recent debate, and that was in, inthe last issue, and you, get a flavour.
extraordinarily, quite a lot ofthe hereditaries are in favour
of, the hereditaries staying.

Andrew (21:15):
Again,

Ian (21:16):
there's

Andrew (21:16):
surprising stuff you read in the eye.
Is there a party weighting to itbecause there are more Conservative
hereditaries than Labour?
did you say it's 40 odd Conservatives?
45

Helen (21:26):
Conservatives, yeah, plus anyone from the crossbenchers who might
want to vote with the Conservatives.
And
has it remained at those levelswhich are representative of what
the state of the party is in 1999?
Yeah, it was fixed at the time.
It's changed
enormously, hasn't it?
there was an awful lot of Labour,peers were put in to address
that imbalance, but, that bitstayed the same, that's for sure.
Yeah, and it's
wild to read, so the Lib Dems, one of their constitutional reform

(21:48):
things they wanted to do when they werein coalition was reform the Lords, and
they wanted to take it down to three.
360 elected and 90 appointed.
that's like half the numberof peers we've ended up being.
Because exactly that problem, right?
Which is that everybody wantsto stack the lords in order that
their stuff will go through.
So there's just been a real huge influxof peers over that conservative time.
And they're wanting to maintaintheir numerical superiority.

(22:10):
How

Ian (22:10):
many are there now?

Helen (22:12):
Of peers.

Andrew (22:13):
There are about
800.

Helen (22:14):
Yeah.

Adam (22:14):
So it's 1 in 8 that's hereditary.
And they have enacted variousreforms, so you can't now retire as
a peer, or you can get kicked out.
Lord Prescott was recently kicked out,but the rule now is that if you haven't
made a contribution or attended inthe last parliamentary term, that's
it, you are automatically retired.
Lord Prescott's very ill healthy,he had a couple of strokes a few
years ago, and so he didn't turn up.
favourite peer, Lord Archer ofWeston super Mare, also stepped

(22:36):
down, just before the last election,so various people, Michael Ashcroft
as well, Lord Ashcroft has retiredofficially from the House of Lords.

Ian (22:43):
Really?
Now that is a shame.
Yeah, that might have hadsomething to do with them actually
enforcing some tax rules, but I

Helen (22:49):
have another quiz question, which is, what is unusual
about Lord Simon of Withenshaw?

Andrew (22:55):
not actually from Withenshaw.

Helen (22:56):
Probably not.
Is he a hereditary?
She is now legally a woman.
Ah.
So this is Matilda Simonwho is a transgender woman.
Not sitting in the Lords.
Did briefly, was briefly onthe list but is now withdrawn.
But has inherited the title ahead ofher elder sister because the Gender
Recognition Act says that you can changeyour legal gender under British law.
But it doesn't affect the inheritanceof peerages, which is just the most

(23:18):
British thing that I've ever heard.
It's obviously

Ian (23:20):
Helen is now primogeniture critical.

Helen (23:24):
I just think it's so funny that we're going like, let's move
with the times, but not, that much.
The, actually, the listing,bless them, on the House of Lords
websites about the gender breakdownsays male, female, non binary.
But we haven't got anynon binary Lords yet.
Still hanging on in there, but it hasn'thappened yet, but maybe it will do.
one of the problems with Lord's reformand part of the reason that nothing's
been done further has been done onit really for the last 25 years is

(23:46):
the logically, you just get intoterrible problems, because obviously
it's unjust to have hereditary peers,92 of them, in the House of Lords.
But it's also completely unjust tohave political appointees in the
House of Lords, if you give it morethan two seconds thought, isn't it?
So you really do have to come up witha solution that encompasses the whole
thing, and then force that through toa point that's going to disadvantage,
probably, the party in governmentat any given time, and the chances

(24:08):
of anything actually getting done.
Yeah, the Gabelbasher piece was very good on this, because it basically
said, You're never going to get theLord Turkey to vote for Christmas.
And that is always theproblem with laws reform.

Andrew (24:18):
If you're getting rid of the hereditaries, which, is that
likely to actually go through?
It's a cabinet

Helen (24:23):
office bill, and so it's sponsored by, Pat McFadden.
So the previous problems has been,they were 10 minute reform bills, or
they were Lib Dem bills that thereforethe Tories didn't really care about.
But this is a,

Andrew (24:32):
this is a policy.
This is a proper,

Helen (24:34):
they will whip it, yeah.

Andrew (24:35):
So if you're getting rid of the hereditaries, and you're getting
rid of the ghastly spiffs that Boriswas seeing wandering through the
office and putting in, Who's left?

Ian (24:44):
the left is what we call the arbitrary peers, which appears that
no one knows why they were appointed.
it's quite a large group,but it's led by, Lady Owen.
Okay.

Helen (24:59):
I think the best thing that they could do, really,
is introduce term limits.
it wouldn't necessarily be the worst thingin the world anyway, because the average
age in the House of Lords is about 70.
So realistically people areprobably not going to be there for,
unless they are Baroness Owen, notgoing to be there for 50 years.
but that would also allow a kindof, natural wastage means it sounds
like they're being taken outsideand shot, but It would allow not to

(25:20):
vastly outlive the complexion of thegovernment that appointed them, right?
So even if you get somebody who comesin, stacks it, those people will,
cycle back out again when perhapsthe political wind has changed.

Adam (25:30):
Can I offer my solution?
Because I genuinely think thisis one of my only good ideas
of actually solving something.
Elected second chamber, but doneaccording to share of the vote.
if all of these peers have a good reasonto be in there, parties can put them up
as a list, like they do, in the ScottishParliament, you have the constituency,
and then you have the list of othercandidates who are used to top it up.

(25:51):
You have your candidates for variousparties in an order of how you want them
in, and the seats in the second chamberare just accorded every parliament
according to the actual share of the vote.
Then you solve Yes, you're going to havea few reformy type people in there, you're
going to have lots more Lib Dems, you'regoing to have more Greens and things,
but it addresses two problems at thesame time of getting rid of unelected
peers and sorting out an element ofproportional representation in Parliament.

Ian (26:14):
Can I just say that as a journalist, your job is to be incredibly
critical and offer no solutions at
all.
That's my only one, that's literally.
I still feel you are letting
the side down.
I'm sorry, forget

Andrew (26:26):
it.
but Doesn't proportional meanthat you'll be able to get through
anything you like as the government?
Doesn't it mean that you'll havea limited amount of scrutiny?

Helen (26:32):
you already can in the sense of it's a manifested commitment
or a financial measure that, thekind of standing rule is that the
Lords shouldn't vote that down.
They can send things back and ping pong,but the idea is that Lords should provide
scrutiny, but they can't go against thegovernment of the day on things like that.
It's

Andrew (26:48):
1911, isn't it?
we have done this once.
I think there's a committee that'sallowed to I don't recommend expert
peers, but it's only a couple pertime, it's only sort of two per year.
And there were proposals toraise the number of expert peers
to, ten a year, for example.
But there's an absolute argument
for that.
And there is actually an argumentfor some retired people from the
House of Commons to go in there.

(27:08):
If they've got particular, particularlyuseful skill sets, a few of them, maybe.
there is, having a second chamberto scrutinise and potentially oppose
is a very, good idea, isn't it?
It's just not the one we've got.

Helen (27:21):
Yeah, there are some really good peers, but there are also some people
who don't turn up very much, or don'treally have a great deal of expertise,
or, political appointees who just regardit as a sort of private members club, I
think is the way that some people do it.
I think working peers, we shouldencourage people to be working peers,
and this is their, first and probablyonly job, which is why retirees, I
think, do tend to work quite well.

Andrew (27:43):
Do you want to hear one of my fave peers?
Yeah.
Lord Christopher.
Familiar with that name?

Helen (27:47):
No.
Familiar

Andrew (27:48):
Christopher is the oldest member of the Lords, and will
soon be turning 100 years old.
Wow.
Yep.
Last living British Parliamentarian tohave served in the Second World War.
Is he still turning up?
I don't know, I haven'tchecked his attendance record.
He's not a hereditary, no.
No, he's just one of the the appointeds.

(28:09):
But, he was, briefly, hewas in the RAF in 1944.
Still counts.
I'm picturing a Galapagos
tortoise at this point.
Aww.
Inermen.
Yeah.
now, speaking of creaking institutions with extremely elderly heads,
And battles over primogeniture wecome to the Murdoch family empire.

(28:32):
And Adam, rumble
happening in Nevada this week.
There is, in Reno, Nevada,home of my favourite casino
in the world, the Peppermill.
Just a little travel tip foryou there, if you're popping
over to cover the Murdoch trial.
Which you won't be able to, becauseit's all happening behind closed doors.
All of this is taking place in secret.
And this is the battle between RupertAnd, most of his children, he's got

(28:53):
one on side, Lachlan Murdoch, who isthe, the boss of News Corp these days.
and this is all about the trust thatwas set up for the family after Rupert's
second divorce out of four so far,five wives, four divorces so far.
, and we all know that, we all knowthe rhyme, we all know the rhyme.
I've completely

Helen (29:12):
lost track of the wives.
Okay,
this is a fun quiz for you if youlike, because I realised the other week
that I can't name all seven dwarves,but I can do all five Murdoch wives.
Can you?
yeah, Sporcy, Ginger.
It's
Prudence is his eldest daughter with his first wife, Anna?
Nope.
First
wife is Patricia.
okay.
The second
wife is Anna, and that's the main, I would say the

(29:32):
main wife in terms of heirs.
you, she's three, so she isLachlan, James and Elizabeth, not
necessarily in that order, third wife,
friend of Tony Blair, Wendy Deng, great friend
of Tony Blair, an admirer of TonyBlair, Wendy Deng, who produced
Grace and Chloe, Two more wives.
Geri Hall.
Very good.
Of course.
And
then he had the near miss with the one who turned out to be an

(29:53):
evangelical Christian who believedeverything that Tucker Carlson said.
She thought Tucker
Carlson was the second coming of Jesus.
Backed away quite fast.
She was too right wing for RupertMurdoch, which again is quite a feat.
And I'm afraid I don't know the lucky number five.
He is now in a state of connubialbliss with Elena Zhukova.
Yeah.
Former mother in law of Roman Abramovich.
Mother in law of Roman Abramovich.
It was all in air of

Ian (30:15):
Sorrows.
Oh, no, it wasn't.
But she is a, she's a scientistand she's a microbiologist.
She is.
yes, She is looking forthe secret of eternal life.
Yes.
I've made that bit up.
She is of an age, that means she'sconsiderably younger than Rupert,
but then everyone in the world isconsiderably younger than Rupert.

(30:36):
she is of an age where she's unlikelyto produce any more children.
so we probably do have the full complementof children now, which is what this
current legal battle is about becauseRupert is currently trying to change the
terms of the arrangement by which thefour kids, four older kids get a vote
in what happens to the company afterhe dies and make it Lachlan, the sole
person who gets to decide anything.
So this isn't in terms exactly ofmoney, it's in terms of control.

(30:59):
Is that fair to say?
No, everyone gets money.
So Grace and Chloe, theyounger kids, also get money.
What they don't have is a say in therunning of the company and voting shares.

Andrew (31:06):
And now the proposal is that not only do those two younger children with
Wendy Deng Not have the right control.
The three others, apart fromLachlan, lose that control.
They lose that.
They keep the money, butLachlan is in sole charge.
And the reason for this is that Lachlanis the most right wing and most aligned
with Rupert's own political views.

Ian (31:25):
So Roman and Shiv get nothing.
Nothing at

Adam (31:31):
all.
Not a thing.
And not even the Tom Wamsgans of thisset up, who is a chap called Alastair
MacLeod, who is married to Prudence,now, Prudence is always a weird one,
because whenever you see any reference toPrudence they say, Prudence who's a lot
less involved in her father's businesses.
Guess what Prudence did untillast year as one of her jobs?
She'd run Sky, I don't know.

(31:51):
Director of Times Newspapers.
Oh, okay.
Guess what Alistair McLeod, Mr, Mr,Prudence Murdoch, did for 21 years?

Helen (32:00):
He was a page three girl?
Close.
He was Managing Directorof News Corp Australia.
So the idea of being slightlymore detached from the company.
admittedly, he was a bit more He didn'tactually run the whole thing and screw
it up completely like James Murdochdid, which was then he suddenly had his
political awakening and decided thathis views didn't align with his dad's.
And he didn't have his own TVcompany purchased for 450 million,

(32:20):
like Elizabeth Murdoch did byher, when her dad paid that much.
And it was one of the rare events wherethe other shareholders in Murdoch's
companies have got so cross aboutit, they actually tried to challenge
that one, and it went all the way tocourt and ended up in a large payout.
So Sorry, I'm just playing catch up

Andrew (32:36):
here.
we've got Lachlan over here,Our furthest on the right is
Lachlan, and then the other three,Prudence, James, and Elizabeth.
Prudence being the much older of thethree, James being the one who did all
the appearances with Rupert Murdochafter Leveson and things like that.
And then Elizabeth, who ranthis Shine TV and film company.

(32:57):
And then sold it to her dad.
They're all, I presume,very angry about this.

Adam (33:01):
And this is why it's happening in secret?
Is that right?
They are extremely angry about it.
it's happening in secret because it'sbeing done in Nevada, which is a place
which offers complete and utter secrecyon any court case involving family trusts.
Okay.

Helen (33:12):
Otherwise that would be a very rogue decision, because it's
not like anything's in court.
It's a completely bizarre one.
usually these things happenin Delaware, don't they?
That's the kind of
organisations who've tried tochallenge this, but there's very,
little chance of anyone gettinginside that courtroom at all.

(33:32):
they are very angry.
We can grade how angry they are about itby the fact that none of them turned up.
None of those three, Prudence, Elizabeth,All James turned up to the last
wedding to Elena Zukova back in June.
They all suddenly found they hadvery important other appointments.
once you've been to acertain number of weddings,

Andrew (33:52):
you know what the cake will taste like.

Ian (33:55):
Does anyone know of any just cause or impediment?
Yeah, we do, actually.
Am I

Helen (33:59):
right in thinking my other bit of weird murder trivia that's
coming out of my brain is that Jameshas got a tattoo of a lightbulb.
He may well do, I feellike he is interesting.
He is an interesting place in that he,as he not exactly huffed off, but he
left off, he left America, didn't he?
As, the sort of Fox Empirewas going very hard.
James had a weird degree to Australia.
James.
James did initially when he was young,try and branch off in a different

(34:22):
direction entirely, and went and found,I think, hit pop labels in Manhattan
and they weren't desperately successful.
And suddenly at one point he decidedthat maybe he did wanna be a part
of the, family business as well.
Came over to head up, news UK NewsInternational as it was known then.
right into the heart of thephone hacking scandal, which
he handled fairly appallingly.
If

Andrew (34:40):
so what actual decisions at the Mulder Corporation will, this
change, or would it change, depending
on the results of this case?
What will happen to theentire Murdoch empire?
there is no sign that any of them are veryinterested in newspapers, for instance.
, and Rupert is the man who haskept the interest in newspapers
going within that company.
Certainly none of the other shareholders.
This is the weird thing about News Corp,is there are a lot of other shareholders.

(35:03):
They actually have a minorityinterest in it, the Murdochs.
But because of the way it's set up, theyhave the full control over the company.
It's all about the voting sharesas opposed to the ordinary shares.
Lachlan I don't thinkhas got any interest.
I would be very surprised if the Timesand the Sun survive for very long
under Murdoch family control afterRupert departs this particular plane.

(35:23):
but actually Rupert was intown with LAN last week.
inking another deal, which was to buysomething else entirely, which was right
move, the estate agents listing side.
What?
Yep.

Ian (35:34):
You sure

Adam (35:35):
he didn't think it was a political website?
It might have just been a real snubto Elizabeth and James, mightn't it?
We're moving right.
No, I think that's one of the mostrevealing things that's come out
in the last few days is that thefuture of Newscall is unlikely to
be in any media properties otherthan Fox, which is still violently,

(35:56):
virulently successful in America.
but, they've just had the massivefailure of TalkTV over here.
They can't replicatethat on a British site.
I don't think Latylin is veryinteresting in Britain at all.
It's very much thefiefdom of Rebecca Brooks.
She's pretty much, thewoman in charge over here.
and the fact that they'removing into Rightmove.
it would be a great purchase.
it is a site that completelyrevolutionized house buying

(36:16):
and is enormously successful.
hopefully going to be a moresuccessful purchase than MySpace.
Remember when Rupert said, I've heardof this thing called the internet.
I want to get into it and purchaseMySpace for some ridiculous price.
Ridiculous eye watering amountof money in 2005, just to watch
that go down the pan entirely.
but I think that is a sign of theway that the business is likely
to be going, under, Lachlan.
The

Helen (36:36):
Mail Group has got a number of websites like that, hasn't it?
It owns various thingsthat are news adjacent.
There's a kind of group of likefinancial websites and stuff like that.
They do, a
lot of financial websites, they doa lot of event organisations and
conferences and things like that, yeah.
If you look actually at the DMGT website,Daily Mail in general Trust the name
of the newspaper is there and thetitle of it, but it's not desperately

(36:56):
prominent in the description of thebusiness, as far as Roth Mirror and his,
it comes back to that thing that we've
talked about a lot of on this podcast, which is that now the bottom
has fallen out the market in terms ofmaking media, print, media make money.
And internet media makesfar less money than.
than the 90s when you used to be ableto sell hugely, profitable print ads.
So really, who wants to ownmedia properties anymore?

(37:19):
It's either people like RupertMurdoch who have a sort of legacy
attachment to them, or it's peoplewho want an influence operation.
And don't negate that last part of it,because the other thing that Rupert
did when he was in town last weekwith Lachlan was to meet up with Kemi
Badnok and Robert Jenrick, the twofrontrunners, and I think, Probably
fair to say the two most right wingcandidates in the Tory leadership contest.
So he's still keeping a beady eye on that.

(37:40):
Someone tried to convince me recently,a Sun person, that he's got Rupert,
really has genuinely retired now andhanded over the reins and doesn't take
any interest in what's going on atall and is just in canubial bliss in
his vineyard in California with Elena.
But I think there's still a verymuch a beady eye on what's going on.

Andrew (37:58):
And on the second reason, Hannah, that you mentioned, the kind of political
And that's the machination side of whyyou'd want to own a media business.
We come to, Paul Marshall.
Yes.
Who has just bought The Spectator.
For a hundred million.
Which is, I think last time itwas on sale, Adam, correct me if
I'm wrong, it was twenty million.
So even accounting forinflation, it's, he's, paid a,

(38:19):
he's paid a premium whack for
That's a huge amount.

Helen (38:23):
Yeah, I don't know how much they've got to recoup on the Telegraph, but the
whole thing is like 800 million, isn't it?
So this has done a huge amountfor recouping the Barclays losses.
And makes the case, really, that theSpectator is a more powerful asset,
maybe, perhaps, than the Telegraph,Not least because It makes money.

Adam (38:41):
the Telegraph makes money as well, that's the one
thing that can be said of it.
But only as a result of the sortof weird asset stripping, like
it's been cut to the bone, I'm notsure, do you know what I think?
I don't know.
A lot of it is down to that.
They have been fairly successful intheir subscriptions drive and stuff.
I think the attraction of the Spectatoris it's also got an international
angle, it's got an American edition, itdoes a lot of kind of internationally
conferences with Viktor Orban and variousdodgy people in Hungary and Andrew Neal

Helen (39:08):
That's it, all gone.

Adam (39:09):
And Douglas Murray and people popping up, popping
up in, Budapest and things.
so it's got, it fits that PaulMarshall, GB News, unheard kind of,
what we've talked about before on here.
This weird, form of internationalnationalism that is, it seems to be a
big, thing in conservatism these days.

Andrew (39:25):
And Where does Andrew Neill go?
I think that's the main concern we've all
got.

Helen (39:31):
he's out as publisher.
He had always said in advance, if youremember, he had that sort of weird
spat with Jeff Zucker, ex of CNN, aboutwho was going to buy it, and he said,
whenever it gets taken over, I'm leaving.
And so he did, I want to say it's aFacebook post, but I'm not sure, my
mind maybe just transmuted this, saying,I'm going, I think it's terrible that
the workers won't get compensated inthis takeover, says Chairman Neil.

(39:53):
Which

Adam (39:53):
was never a traditional line he had when he was at the Sunday Times
with The Economist, I have to say.

Helen (39:57):
And also that I hope that they'll Respect the editorial freedoms, and you're
like, what it, what about unheard justmakes you think that they're not prepared
to publish spicy right wing content?
I like, I read a lot of unheard, butit will push, pretty brisk stuff,
of the type that The Spectatoralso does, it, it was, not a, Not a

(40:18):
gracious farewell post, I think not,

Adam (40:20):
but I just love the fact that, Paul Marshall got him into GB News where
he lasted a week and in an enormouslyembarrassing episode resigned after
doing, I think it was slightly morethan a week, I think he did eight shows
at the end, didn't he, Andrew Neil?
And he retired to lick his woundsfrom that one, and then, but still
had the job as chair of The Spectator.
And Paul Marshall's come backto take that away from him too!
I want Paul Marshall to move in nextautumn now in Just put up Rude's topiary

(40:44):
looking over his wall and things, justdid everything, take it all, Paul!

Andrew (40:51):
moving swiftly on from that, we should come to the last question
of media ownership, which hasbeen in the news in the last week.
we've talked about the Murdochs and theirsort of vexed ownership, and we've talked
about the Spectator changing hands.
The other story that has been in thenews, but a bit lower on the radar, I'd
say, has been about the Jewish Chronicle.
there's been a mass walkout ofstaff from the Jewish Chronicle
over, over a particular columnist.

(41:13):
But there's been troubleat Mill for a while.

Helen (41:16):
Hadley Friedman, David Aronovich, Johnny Friedland, and David Baddiel
have all said they're not going to work.
for the paper anymore.
And the inciting incident for this,although I think some of them have
troubles going back a bit further, isthat the Jewish Chronicle published a
series of stories by a freelancer whosebiography appears to be somewhat inflated.
One of the clues that maybe itwasn't all straight down the line

(41:37):
is the fact that he claims to havebeen a member of an elite Israeli
special forces unit at the age of 53.
Which is a bit, Dad's Army.
I like the idea of a sortof Mossad Dad's Army.

Andrew (41:45):
Was he a hereditary member of the Special Forces Unit?
So was

Helen (41:48):
And also, the other thing that was very coincidental about these stories
is that they all peddled a very specificline that was very helpful to Benjamin
Netanyahu, which was the idea that theleader of Hamas was going to take some of
the hostages and into Iran, and thereforethere was no point doing a hostage deal.
Now the backdrop to that is thefact that there's huge pressure both
from the Americans and from withinIsrael itself to do a ceasefire deal,

(42:10):
and the belief that will lead tomore of those hostages coming home.
Benjamin Netanyahu's beenreally resistant to that.
So what had happened really was thata slightly fishy, Freelancer had been
putting stories in the JC that werevery pro Netanyahu and I think that
really coalesced people's concernsalready that the paper has become

(42:30):
very pro Likud, specifically, ratherthan representing the British Jewish
community or even representing a sort ofbroad pro Israel self defense position.
but as you say, the issue of theownership has been dribbling on for
a while, so we're Robbie Gibb, if youremember, was actually Andrew Neill's
producer on the Sunday Politics,that's where I remember him from.
He then became Theresa May's spin doctor,he then now sits on the BBC board.

(42:52):
He, was until recently listedas the person with sole control
of the Jewish Chronicle.
Okay.
But we don't know wherehe got the money from.
Suspiciously found something likethree million down the back of the
sofa in order to, to pay for it.
And Alan Rusbridger in Prospect a coupleof months ago raised the question,
maybe it was a US multi millionairethat was funding this, but no one has

(43:13):
been able to get to the bottom of it.
Lots and lots of people have looked.

Andrew (43:16):
Has Gibb been asked about this?
Just won't say.
Flatly refuses to answer.
Won't

Helen (43:20):
say.
And there is now a plan to turn the JCinto a charitable trust, which I think
would be very tricky given its kindof very overtly political, stances.
there are now, including, talking peoplefrom the Blair era coming back, Lord
Austin, the Labour, was he a Labour peer?
Ian Austin, anyway, has nowbeen named as a director along
with a couple of other, people.

(43:41):
the ownership Technically, people whosename is above the door has changed.
We still don't really know wherethat initial money came from.
And that bothers people in the same waythat it bothered people that the UAE was
going to take over The Telegraph, right?
You should know and be able tohold accountable the owners of
big media properties in Britain.

Andrew (44:00):
Yeah, if you own a pub, you have to say who's the owner on the outside.

Helen (44:05):
but I think it's all got sucked into, as soon as you mention anything
to do with Jewishness and money,people react very strongly, right?
Yeah, of course.
And I mentioned how bad I felt forall the people who had resigned on
principle, and someone came back atme, a Telegraph writer, saying, Oh,
I see, you're just saying it's allmurky because it's Jews and money.
And I said, no.
No, I think I've taken a fairlyprincipled stand all along about

(44:26):
media ownership and plurality.
But, but it's this odd situationin which Robbie Gibb just won't
say and no one can make him.

Andrew (44:34):
But he won't say either, yes, I do own this or where the money came from.

Helen (44:40):
And it's, I think the one of the reasons it's particularly concerning to
people is that he sits on the editorialboard that adjudicates on complaints
about Israel Palestine coverage.
At the same time, as he has been owninga very pro Netanyahu, very hawkish
paper, and I think that people feelthat's a conflict of interest, that
he's not a neutral observer, at atime when the BBC's coverage, as you

(45:02):
might expect, has been enormouslycontroversial, with activists from both
sides complaining about it an awful lot.

Ian (45:08):
The idea that people are leaving the Jewish Chronicle because they've
noticed that it peddles stories that aresympathetic to Netanyahu, I'm not shocked,
and I'm wondering where they've been.
I did feel rather sorry for Josh Glancy,who took a principled stand and left the
Jewish Chronicle, I think last October,for exactly these reasons, that he
didn't like the increasingly right wingand pro Netanyahu line it was taking.

(45:31):
Went off to work at Jewish News instead.
And, it pops up saying, Hi guys,yeah, some of us did this months ago.

Helen (45:39):
Yeah, and Gabriel Progrand, who is the kind of ace reporter at
the Sunday Times, who does, who didthe Starmer glasses story and stuff,
he popped up on Twitter quite bravelya couple of months ago and said, It
is really weird that we don't knowthe ownership structure of this.
But, all of those people have beeneither ignored or shouted down, I think.
And, and I think the communityhas really dealt with that.
Divided over it.

(45:59):
There was a statement by thechief Rabbi that was also pretty
much we need more weapons.
It was a very political statementfor a religious leader to put out.
And I think there is an increasinglyinteresting schism in the British Jewish
community between people who feel, don'tquestion what Israel's doing when there's
a war on, and people who don't subscribeto that view, who are probably slightly to
the left, slightly more predisposed to be

Ian (46:22):
Yeah, shouldn't you suggest that in a satirical magazine?
you would find yourself in a great dealof trouble, so a cartoon that says they've
moved from saying support Israel's rightto defend itself to support Israel's
right, that is, is not acceptable.
How did that go down?
Very, badly.
and again, it does, make me feelthat the, those people working

(46:45):
on the Jewish Chronicle couldperhaps have looked differently.
around a bit more widely at other mediato see how they were handling this
particular story before they suddenlyall noticed that the paper they were
working for was not entirely reliable inpresenting the facts of this situation.

Helen (47:03):
I think I'm probably more sympathetic to you because I know and
like several of the people involved.
And I think it's, I think JohnnyFriedland's resignation letter was a
really interesting example of this.
He said, Friedland's been writingthis paper since the 1970s,
my birth was announced in it.
I think lots of people have a kind of deeployalty to the paper and what it was, and
have therefore been hoping that at somepoint it would come back round again.

(47:25):
But I do, you are right that therehave been rumblings of discontent about
it for really quite some time now.

Andrew (47:33):
What happens next?

Helen (47:34):
I think it's a really savage, to lose four of your really
objectively biggest named columnistsin one weekend is a pretty, big blow.
But then it comes back to this questionthat, we were talking about before about,
is it being run as a media business?
it's losing quite a lot of money.
Or is it being run as, will itbe run as a charitable trust?
Or is whoever owns it, whoever thatmight be, happy to keep supporting it

(47:55):
because they want to have Britain'sbiggest Jewish newspaper be in
tune with their political opinions?
So the brutal answer might be that itmight just carry on without really caring.

Andrew (48:05):
Watch this space.
And if you would like a magazinethat is fortnightly, funny and
interesting, just go to private-eye.
co.
uk and subscribe.
For the low, price of 2.
99, roughly 100, 000, 000 lessthan the Spectator cost, you
can get a subscription today.
And in fact, if you subscribe,it's even cheaper than that.
That's it from us this week.

(48:26):
Thanks to Ian, Helen and Adam, and toMatt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.