February 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Travel special! Andy, Ian, Helen and Jane fly off to the Chagos Islands (AKA ‘How to spend £9billion losing sovereign territory'), ride the driverless railway Keir Starmer thinks he’s in charge of, and finally tackle the four most important words in the electric car revolution: ‘Cross Pavement Charging Solutions’.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
(00:03):
Hello, and welcome to another episode ofPage 94, the UK's best Fortnightly News
podcast, I think, in a crowded field.
Yeah.
my name's Andrew Hunter Murray.
I'm here in the Private Eyeoffices with Helen Lewis, Jane
Mackenzie, and Ian Hislop.
We're here to discuss all thethings that have happened since
the last episode of the mag.
coming up later in the show, we'll betalking about the new biography of,
(00:25):
Keir Starmer and the Labour Party ingeneral, and we've got some great stuff
about cross pavement charging solutions.
. But first, oh no, we haven't.
Gotta wait for that.
Have we
concentrate on anything else?
But first let's go away to a lovelylittle archipelago of islands, the
British Indian Ocean Territories.
Is that what it's called?
That's right,
(00:45):
let's hone in on in particular, ChagosIslands and one, in particular called
Diego Garcia, which, Has been thesubject of lots of news stories recently
because it's technically and actuallyBritish owned at the moment, and Britain
is proposing to amazingly pay moneyto give it away to someone, is a very
reductive way of describing it, but that'seffectively what seems to be happening.
(01:07):
And Jane, you have beenwriting about this for.
A while.
Most of my career.
Most of your career?
Yes.
So should we start off withprimer on these islands are, why
they're important, and how, wecame by them in the first place.
before, they were owned by the British,they were owned by the French, and they
brought a large population of Africanslaves there to work on the coconut farms.
(01:29):
The British acquired themduring the Napoleonic Wars.
The slaves were eventually liberated'cause Britain wasn't allowing slavery.
And, many of them then stayed there.
they formed their own culture.
They're a long way from anyone else.
the nearest island Acapela goes,the Sey shells, the Maldives
and Mauritius, are still likehundreds of miles away from them.
(01:51):
So they were an isolated, population,but they were still a British territory.
And then in 1965, Mauritiusbecomes independent and islands
have been governed from Mauritius.
So just before independence, Britainkind of hived off, the Chagas
Islands and said, we think we'lljust hang onto this particular bit.
(02:12):
they bought it for 3million pounds at the time.
and then they.
Effectively handed over thelargest island to the Americans.
And the deal has never beenmade completely transparent.
It's been alleged that it was in returnfor a cracking discount on some Polaris
missiles, but that's never been confirmed.
Yeah.
But nonetheless, it led to,there's a big American base there.
Yeah.
And, in order to, make wayfor a big American naval base,
(02:33):
the population were, removed.
initially, people who left theisland to go do business in
Mauritius or go to hospital in Sey,shell were just not allowed back.
And, eventually, were forced ontoboats carrying one bag and dumped
in, the neighboring countries.
rather, like Trump's current planfor removing the Gazans, in fact,
(02:56):
just remove an entire population.
Obviously, they were a much.
Much smaller population.
Yeah.
This is a bit that has confusing me aboutthe recent stories is I was quite aware
of the story about the right to return.
the fact that the Ian populationhas been advocating to be allowed
home for a really long time.
But this isn't that, is it?
This is not, that's notexactly what's being proposed
(03:16):
no, the poor, IANS who, Still exist asa diaspora in the Sey shells, Mauritius.
And, largely Sussex, specifically Crawley,are not really a party to this current,
deal that's being arranged with Mauritius.
In fact, even those, IANS I, Mauritiusreally are a, minority and not a very
(03:40):
well-treated minority in Mauritius.
So why is it that, behind thisdeal, everyone says it's all
these human rights lawyers.
Who seemed to be very interested inmatters of national security and not
very interested in displaced persons.
Yes.
this notion that it's de colonialization,we're giving it back to, Mauritius.
It was never really, Mauritiusis in the first place.
(04:04):
who certainly, the courts havepreviously held had the strongest right
to be there were the chick oceans.
Way back in, in 2000.
they very nearly did, getthe right to resettle there.
they won a court case and Robin Cook, whowas then the foreign secretary, said he
would not oppose their right to return.
And
am I right in thinking that theynearly got the right to return to some
(04:27):
of the smaller islands, not the onewith the massive US naval base, but
suddenly after nine 11 these islandsbe had a new geopolitical significance.
Basically.
They were an incredibly useful . Spacefor long range bombers and also rendition
of Terror Suspects, which is another,shameful thing that happened there.
Yes.
Which, was denied for some time.
(04:48):
And the UK government insisted thatabsolutely no, no Guantanamo, like things
were happening on Diego Garcia becauseit would be against the terms of the
lease that we allow the, US to be there.
And, eventually we had to admit thatthere had in fact been incidents
of extraordinary rendition via.
Garcia
just incredible all the goodwill thatBritain might have possibly gained
(05:09):
by liberating a population of slavesjust completely steadily, wasted and
wrecked by , perhaps two centuries.
We'll drink them later.
what I don't understand is if theChagos population had been given the
right to self-determination, they then,as a small country, could have done a
really good deal leasing Diego Garciato the Americans and then funded their
(05:30):
new country for the rest of time.
Absolutely.
, they, they probably wouldn't havebecome a completely independent country.
They would've remaineda . Overseas territory in a kind
of falkland ascension kind of way.
but they would've certainly had thatsame, The people of the Falklands have
had to say, no, we'd like to, stay,here, or we'd like to sell out to
(05:53):
Mauritius for all this lovely cash.
Or
could've stayed in the Commonwealth.
Yes.
Or they become Guernsey.
. Yeah.
if the this deal goes through, willthe Chagossians get to go home?
Will they have to go andthe ones who are in Crawley.
That is rather than the oneswho are nearby necessarily.
most of those in Crawley now do have,British citizenship, properly protected.
(06:14):
There was a long period where there wasa particularly difficult situation where
some Ians had become stateless effectivelybecause, They were originally from a
British overseas territory in particular.
There was a generation who wereborn during that period where, for
instance, their mothers went to anotherisland to give birth and weren't
(06:35):
allowed back, so they were born.
In Sey shells.
but sey shells didn't give themcitizenship and they'd missed
out on the British citizenship.
but that's been resolved fairly recently.
So most of those now living inBritain have British citizenship.
the most part, they wouldlike the right of return.
(06:57):
. Largely to visit the sort of ancestralhomeland visit family graves.
Just know where they came from.
there's probably not that many desperateto icks and move halfway across the world.
Again,
Basically Diego Gua was theonly property inhabited island.
I think there was a bit on someof the other, there was two other
rattles that were, Hadinhabitants and Okay.
(07:18):
There's been some feasibility studies.
Okay.
And in terms of whether you couldbuild tourist facilities there,
whether there's enough fresh water,there are other sort of bits of the
archipelago where you could build avery, a fairly small, but practical
in the same way that the Maldives iscapable of hosting tourist industry.
On little tiny bits ofbeautiful beachy, island.
(07:41):
and it's an incredible wildlifepreserve at the moment, partly because
of the lack of access to anybodyother than the American naval base.
Sounds could build a beautifultourist industry around,
go and dive with the, yeah.
The wildlife.
So clear the water there that I believeit's used as an international standard
for polluted water or unpollutedwater around the rest of the world.
(08:03):
it's a very, Unspoiled it's like novel has
really had a real bounce back
in front.
Yeah, no, it has.
that's for another one, another podcast.
, the humans loved it.
Incredible dark skies too.
There's like a us space observation,place there as well, like you.
So what is the, justificationfor a deal in which we pay,
(08:26):
Mauritius 9 billion pounds?
possibly, but it couldbe 18 billion or even 52.
As Nigel Farage estimated it, , he'ddone his inflation busting, calculations.
Do we then charge thisback from the Americans?
I can't imagine Trump saying, I'd love topay Britain to be middle person on a deal.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
(08:47):
it will make some internationalcriticism go away.
There's been various sort of UN reportsand votes, criticizing the UK for, holding
on to the Chagos Islands, which I thinkpartly comes about because of . How they
ended up depopulated in the first place.
Everybody does agree.
That was not good.
and then also there's a sort of UNcommittee, which seems to largely be
(09:11):
made up of, countries including Russia,Iran, they just wanna have a go at us,
by saying, the UK should give this away.
Yeah.
they , but they would,say that, wouldn't they?
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's really tricky 'cause it's anattempt to thread the needle of what,
Britain would like is to keep theUS base there for several decades
more to resolve the long runninginternational dispute over these.
(09:34):
no one, as far as I couldtell, is going to do anything
for the ia, the Ian Islanders.
That's not on Mauritiusagenda as far as I can tell.
But if it's successful,then you end a dispute.
You still get a base there.
and the other thing we haven't discussedis the role of China in all this, because
China has, ambitions in this cornerof the world as in every other corner.
(09:54):
have been investing enormousamounts of money in Mauritius.
they have paid.
Loaned hundreds of millions of dollarsto build Mauritius an airport they've
built the state broadcasters, offices.
they've, done a lot of construction.
They'd clearly love a base hereor on one of the other islands.
And I think the idea is Britain is hopingthat it might be able to negotiate,
permanence of the Earth base and, ruleout any Chinese construction in the area.
(10:18):
China does tend to just build islands.
Yes, it does.
Outta nothing.
It does.
Yes.
if they wanted to build somesort of odd looking atols
Yes.
About 25 foot off the coast with a,I guess they might with huge radars
pointing exactly at the US Naval base.
Yeah.
great respect is in the caseof Tibetan Taiwan of other
places, territorial sovereignty.
This is the, my problem with it, I'vebeen consciously trying to seek out news
(10:39):
stories that rebut my knee jerk prejudice,which is that I feel and I just dunno if
I've consumed too much, X content thatthe Mauritius is very cynically using
the idea of decolonization and saying,look at you rich white people who've
come over and been terribly beastlyto us in the developing world in order
to basically get lots of money thatthey would like for their government.
Which I don't, but I just feellike we're we being had, and I'm
(11:02):
aware that is a. a Prime Telegraphcolumnist opinion, , and therefore
I should probably probe it a littlebit more deeply and see if it's true.
But from everything that you've said,Jane, it seems that the two different
issues, the natural justice for thedisplaced people is very separate to
the idea of the geopolitical questionof the control of the islands.
Yes.
I certainly, if you ask the, peoplein Crawley and then the displaced
(11:25):
Chagas population, On this side ofthe world, they are not in favor
of the Mauritius deal at all.
They've been fairly vocal aboutthe fact that this is, not the
way, they hoped to see things go.
now I, don't know to what extent the sortparts of the Chagas diaspora of perhaps
(11:45):
followed more the Mauritiusgovernment's line.
But, actually the populationhere is, very substantial.
there have been no reports for theMauritius government saying we would like
to spend this money on a lot of, leisurecenters and health facilities for the poor
c Chagossians who ended up in Mauritius.
No, not those news reportsare very thin on the ground.
(12:05):
And it's pretty clear what they want.
And when they say, oh, by the way,we didn't mention inflation before,
but we're factoring in inflationnow, The price is just going up and
it's the price for a military base.
And in, the, whole liquidation of theBritish Empire, what is left is very
odd places in the middle of nowherein which it's quite important for,
(12:28):
national security s to have a base.
and that has to be paid for somehow,but not necessarily . this way
it's amazing that . We're paying9 billion quid to effectively
get rid of a Lamborghini.
Like how have we done that ? And alsohow does it work in a world where Donald
Trump is currently threatening to invadethree allies, nevermind three enemies.
Like what
(12:48):
you think it will actually happen?
Because one of the things I thought wasreally interesting about this was that
the latest, the government's latestjustification was something to do with The
broadband spectrum, the electromagneticspectrum, and the control over it.
And then you had lots of people, not justthe usual suspects come out and say, I had
that advice when I was in government too.
And I thought it was bollocks.
so I just wonder whether or not at somepoint, given that the US are against
it, and there's lots of relatively saneand sensible voices when the British
(13:11):
establishment saying, we actuallydon't think this really stacks up.
what might we just.
Not do it.
as we started this conversation, I havebeen writing about, the islands since
2000 when, Robin Cook made his comments.
it's been at an impasse, bouncedthrough various, courts, the House
(13:31):
of Lords, the European courts.
Nothing's really changed
there was a, US senator, addressedKeir Starmer directly over this
issue and said, put the bong down,
. she said, there's notoriously freewheeling Keir Starmer and I thought,
gosh, somehow Keir Starmer'sgot a, reputation for
dreaming big internationally.
(13:53):
it is quite odd and we are justwaiting for what the Americans say.
Aren't we?
I think so.
I, don't think in theend, the UK government.
It's gonna make the decisionon its own piece of land.
So
ultimately they'd rather upsetMauritius and the UN court
than they would upset America.
So eventually it might, but you are right.
It just seems to me everythingyou've said, the most likely
(14:15):
outcome is that people just keeparguing about it for another couple
of decades and nothing happens.
we'll be back in 25 years whereJane will look back on a career.
We come now to Culture Corner.
I think that's whatwe're calling this bit.
It is the book section of the podcast.
Yeah.
And we occasionallycover political, books.
And, Helen, you've beenreading one lately.
(14:37):
I have.
I've been reading, Get In by PatrickMcGuire, who used to work, for me
at The New Statesman and GabrielPogrund of the Sunday Times.
And this is the follow up to their.
previous book, which wasabout the Corbyn leadership.
they've got a unholy marriagewith Tim... Tim Shipman does
the Tories and they do Labour.
They've work it in shifts.
I dunno if someone's gonna juststep up and do the Lib Dems at
some point, but no one knows yet.
(14:58):
if this one's called Get In,what, was the previous one called?
Stay, out?
No, don't.
'cause they're all, 'cause all theTim Shipman's ones have all got
versions of 'in', which is No Way Out.
Then the last one, the fourth oneis actually called Out and then the
previous one on about Corbyn is called.
Maggie, Maggie.
Out, That's it.
Yeah, It's
called yeah.... Left Out.
Left Out though.
(15:18):
I, yeah.
And
honestly, there is a, broad,you'll notice a theme emerging.
Very
good.
Okay.
And this is a, is it a kind ofbiography of or Labour in general?
no, 'cause there was a very good biographyof Starmer by Tom Baldwin, which was
actually, I think, a lot more revealing.
It was a semi authorized one, but Ithink was a lot more revealing than
perhaps Starmer was comfortable with.
One of the things that comes out inthis book, and has been a feature
along is that, Starmer really is veryprivate and doesn't want to talk.
(15:40):
he never names his kidsin public, for example.
they've never been photographedpublicly and he never wanted, he,
before we laugh about his father,the toolmaker, they had to brutalize
him, his leadership team into saying,you've got to talk about your, roots.
You've gotta seem likea human being to people.
Wow.
So that, the, starbiography by Tom Baldwin is.
He is really quite moving about the factthat he is, he never, he and his dad
(16:04):
never said, I love you to each other.
his mom was always very ill.
When he was growing up.
His dad was very buttoned upand in his shed the whole time.
His brother had a really difficultlife, the one who died recently,
but Starmer is very reluctantto talk about all those things.
This is a political book that takesyou from Starmer, becoming an MP.
At which point, it's alwaysthought that he really at that
point wanted to be Prime Minister.
(16:25):
But it's really, if any,it's a book about anybody.
It's a book about Morgan McSweeney,who is now his chief of staff, who
was his, essentially ran his campaign,who is an Irish guy who started off
working on the desk at Millbank.
During the New, Labour years,there's a great quote from Peter
Mandelson who now loves him.
Says, 'I never, I don't rememberhim . I didn't notice him at all.
Was he there?' It's a story about howMorgan McSweeney basically decided that
(16:48):
the Corbynites were kind of bunch ofout touch lefties who were never gonna
win an election in the Britain thatthey exist, which they think is very
socially conservative, for example, muchmore that Blue Labour, you know, faith,
family, and the flag, and basicallyset about to it's almost described
explicitly in this term, 'do a conjob' on the Labour Party to get in.
(17:09):
Convince Corbyn you were on hisside, convince the members that
you were pro second EU referendum,and were very loyal to Corbyn.
And then as we've seen with Starmer,actually achieved the leadership
of the Labour Party... and dosomething completely different.
And it's about that story, about howhe remade the Labour Party, but how
it's now left him slightly stranded.
Because what does Keir Starmerbelieve about Anything?
(17:30):
there's a kind of, there's a kindof hole at the, center of this book.
He's obviously built a machinethat's brilliant for taking
control of the Labour Party andthen winning election in Britain.
But the big question that obviouslyeverybody and we've talked about on this
podcast is... And then, what is the plan?
, what is the plan now?
Is there.
A sense in which political journalistsand commentators like to believe in
(17:51):
a grand narrative of someone secretlymaking a puppet who then takes over.
Is it possible he just took over and,McSweeney's mildly talented, but the,
Tory parties exploded and the Britishpublic didn't like the look of Corbyn.
I know we like a, very Machiavelliannarrative, but halfway through any book
(18:16):
like this, I start thinking, really,
is always a problem as well inpolitical books that you find out...
you can work out the sourcing to someextent by, sort of 'Peter Mandleson
walked handsomely into the room...'
Like, 'Michael Gove was up to hisusual clever machinations,' and
you're like, oh, was... was he?
Interesting.
I wonder who told you that?
So I always have that question.
There are a lot of books that mentionthat Dominic Cummings has a walk on roll
(18:38):
in which he does something amazinglybrilliant, counterintuitive, and you
think, oh, I wonder who told you this?
Something.
I it, didn't end well for Cummings.
Key to Dominic Cummings is he doesn'tmind if you hate him or love him
as long as you think he's clever.
He will take credit for anything,no matter how evil it is, as long as
he, it looks like a smart thing tohave done, which is very different
to most people's motivation.
(18:58):
he's the,
guy who came up with the eye testalibi, . So we don't need to worry
about smartness anymore, do we?
Incredible.
Great.
But I, so I think thereis a similar thing.
You are right.
Starmer was the beneficiaryof a lot of structural forces.
he was lucky.
Luckier than Ed Milliband.
Ed Milliband came in as afirst term opposition leader,
which is just already harder.
Like it's just a harder thing todo because people have just very
(19:21):
ostentatiously rejected you and alsoat that stage, often in the lifecycle
of opposition, the activists andthe cabinet members are not ready
to concede that people do hate you.
They think, Come on, we could justdo it slightly differently, like
the one more heve kind of approach.
Whereas I think by the time that theparty even had been through all of that.
14 years of Tory rule, there was akind of slight concession of, okay.
They don't like us , but Iwould give them enormous credit.
(19:43):
This is the bit that is,it depends entirely on how
you feel about how this is.
I went to watch Starmer,during the leadership campaign.
Rebecca Long Bailey was theContinuity Corbyn candidate.
You would not have thought Starmer duringthat election was going to do what he did,
which was who out Corbyn from the party,marginalized the hard left completely.
(20:03):
And then run on a, a, much likea Blue Labour type platform.
He said basically his only points ofdisagreement would, with Jeremy wasn't
really pro Europe enough, and he was abit worried about the antisemitism stuff.
that was a result of atactical decision that.
When he got into Parliament thatthe next leader of the Labour party
would not be somebody who, like aWes Streeting, like a Rachel Reeves,
who had principally sat it out.
(20:24):
So he made a series of tacticaldecisions already from the
start of his political career.
About what would be the most thingthat would end up most likely
with him being LA Labour leader.
And so some of the people on the leftfeel just completely betrayed by that.
They feel they were lied to.
And this book has a scene where McSweeneygoes to see, Jeremy Corbyn and says to
me, look, I've got this amazing polling.
(20:45):
I'd love to share it with you,and I want to be your friend.
Whilst they're thinking, I, I hate you.
You are evil . I'm just, I wanna just.
destroy you.
So I can see why people who aren't infavor of the project think that were
duped in this really quite unpleasant way.
And then I think, yes, but thequestion is, do you want to win or not?
And it turned out theanswer to that was yes.
And I'm prepared to do alot to make that happen.
(21:06):
So this
is a record of the defeat of theleft rather than, the creation
of something new for the center.
that's the most striking criticism thatI think is valid, which is that they knew
very well what they didn't want to be,but they don't really know what they do.
And I think that's what's gotthem into trouble in, government.
Sam Freeman, who runs a very goodsubstack, very policy wonkish, has worked
(21:27):
in the Department of Education, did itask us all questions and he said one
consistent theme of the questions was lotsof people who felt they were naturally
supportive of a Labour government.
They were really glad to see one,but felt like it hadn't really.
It hadn't really done anything,and that's my perception about
the general mood in the country.
It's not obviously they won anenormous majority, but that honeymoon
has been very, brief and people feelgrumpy and the latest pollings put
(21:52):
on basically three-way tie betweenthe Conservatives Labour and Reform.
Yeah.
It's not like people think that thereis a project that they could name
even, that they know what you'rebeing asked to have an opinion on.
I'd
love a sinister project.
That'd be great.
Yeah.
Get on it.
Here's Keir Starmer, but is that,what is that what all the resets
and the growth baby growth have beenleading up to . feel like they have
(22:13):
been saying the stuff all along.
Have we not been listening orhave they not been doing it?
I think they felt like they had todo a bit where they said everything's
really miserable in the start.
to, because if you think about howmuch juice the Conservative Coalition
Government got outta Liam Byrnesaying there's no money, , that
note was being, brought backagain, pretty afraid by the end.
Yeah, Exactly.
As a justification for austerity,it was like, we had to do this.
I think they really wanted to bedin the idea that they'd inherited
(22:35):
a real mess so that anythingthey did that was the baseline.
But I think what they mostly did,
being true
, it was true as it turned out, but I think it made everyone think, oh
God, this is miserable, isn't it?
Like what?
Yeah.
are, how are we gonna fix stuff?
The NHS came out of the pandemic, muchless productive, we came to be able to
funnel more and more money into it, andit doesn't just, nothing seems to improve.
(22:56):
I think there's a real level ofmisery and he and Starmer doesn't
really do lofty eyes raised toheaven, aspirational, optimism.
Does he?
It's not really his natural tenor.
I felt that.
Because McSweeney is basicallya, man who wins elections and
he's constantly campaigning.
Part of the chaos, since Labour got incan be explained by the fact that they
(23:19):
panic and they think we are not popular.
Let's do a stunt, let's do a campaign.
And actually we don't want any campaigns.
, we just voted you lot in, I feelhis, brilliance as convinced by
this book, is actually the problemwith him in that reset reboot.
Here's a new idea, here's anotherslogan, here's growth, baby
(23:43):
drill, or, one of whatever it is.
Maybe
Bill, I believe was the phrase usedgrowth, baby gray sounds realizing
say to Doctor Sounds Medical.
It sounds
medical, yeah.
Yeah.
. And there's a moment in the bookwhere I read, Sue Gray, who's
the, chief of staff and McSweeney.
clash of Egos, only one of them had to go.
Now, guess what's gonna happen whenKeir Starmer reads that he's, a man on a
(24:04):
driverless train, a useless HR manager,doesn't have any policies, and is really
the puppet of his brilliant, PR man.
Guess what the next chapter is, Morgan?
Yeah.
Yes.
do you know what I think it is?
I think it's a bit Cummings
, classically, the, kind of King's advisor will not last until if,
(24:25):
Morgan's McSweeney is still therein position at the n next election.
That would be historicallyunusual, I think.
'cause probably the way I'd phrase it.
I completely agree, but it, does seemto capture something that's true.
There's even descriptions in the book of.
The leadership campaign in whichit described that kind of Starmer
sitting, listening to everybodyelse, he let someone else chair it.
Patrick McGuire in one of his columnswrote that he was, he was lawyerly,
(24:47):
in the sense that... if you givehim a brief to prosecute, he will go
out and do it and hammer away at it.
And he did that, obviously inthe case of the, campaign for
the second referendum on the EU.
What he isn't really naturallysuited to is, leading, is being
the one leads the decision.
He wants to almost be toldwhat to do and then do it.
And, I think that you are right, Ian.
That is the bit that kind of,because people don't want to take
(25:09):
orders from Morgan McSweeney.
No one elected him.
Ultimately, there is anauthority problem there.
I haven't read the book yet, but forme, the biggest revelation in it,
from the bits I've seen extracted, isthat Keir Starmer had a voice coach.
Who I think has carried outthe biggest con of all here.
has extracted lots of money for . What?
You don't recognize the charismatics.
(25:30):
You honestly, if you've seen hima couple of years ago, you'd have
thought he's very boring and hejust uses these weird metaphors.
And he's not full ofcharisma, but now, yeah.
Now he's Gil good in his pride.
. Yeah.
It's, yeah.
that was, it was one of the manyextracts, God bless them, they've
done a lot of extracts for, this book.
And there was a story about, butit didn't fly that story, did it?
Was it lockdown?
(25:51):
I read it and I still didn'treally take it like she potentially
breached lockdown this voice coach.
Yeah.
To come visit him on ChristmasEve to do a, to prepare him for
a speech when London was under.
Tier four restrictions.
It's a bit beer gate, isn't it?
It was a real problem about the factthat I think a most normal people, and
now moved on like the coronavirus issomething terrible that happened in
the rear view mirror and they don'treally wanna ever think about it again.
(26:12):
Absolutely not.
And also, it's just very funnywatching the right try and attack it.
It's okay, so he might have had asession with his voice coach, which
is inherently amused . What hedidn't do is get 15 loggers on and
a curry and a karaoke machine andget hammered and start belting it.
Abba.
it's, like the, de people tryingto say it was the same as Party
Gate was, extremely optimistic.
(26:34):
I felt
did the, press get hold ofany story that really flowed?
you are obviously saying, it's a reallyinteresting and, the details fantastic.
And the these, but was there ashock revelation in it that everyone
should have been excited by?
I don't.
star was quite boring.
who knew?
I think it's quite welltimed that it's come out now.
(26:54):
Exactly at the point that questionshave begun to emerge about what do you
know, what do you actually want to do?
what is the project?
But you are certainly right, Ian,about that permanent campaign strategy.
It's exactly the same problem with Trump.
Which is the blizzard of executive orders.
What does that Trumpgovernment exist to do?
It exists to own the libs cry harder.
Libs like, how do you like this?
But it's, that's not the same as.
Like making the trains run on time.
(27:16):
It's just not the same thing at all.
And there's, don't give them,
don't give them that linebecause , they already know it.
no.
Okay.
the moment of maximum effectivenessfor Starmer was the riots.
Yeah.
which has nothing to do with spin orbeing shown to do the right thing.
It's, he's good at locking people up.
So over that weekend, he locked them upquickly, the sentences were quite big.
(27:36):
And then the weekend after people thought,maybe I don't want to be locked up.
I, for me, obviously I'm trying toresist all, spin, but it seemed the
moment of doing something was moreaffected than the moment of posturing,
of pretending you are doing something.
But it was also, that was a veryauthoritarian moment, which is a very,
Blair in his constant love of ID cars.
(27:58):
there's not anything in the worldthat Tony Blair doesn't think that
Id cards aren't a solution to it.
It's one of his weird kinks for 25 yearsnow, , and I think that was a, moment for.
Starmer that that is the kind ofMcSweeneys in prescription, right?
Like tough on crime, tough on yobo.
it felt a bit like, oh, ASBOsare gonna come back soon.
Didn't it?
It felt blare, right?
In that sense, I think that's wherethat project is comfortable, which
(28:19):
is wearing the clothes of the right.
but again, that's not, again, you,there are rightwing actual right wing
parties, so if we're going to have.
Yvette Cooper kind of wearing astab proof vest and going out to
be filmed doing deportation reads.
Theresa May tried that withthe hostile environment and
actually it didn't save her.
It's, It might be your answerto Farage, but it's not.
(28:42):
It's not enough, is it?
I think saying that there areterrible problems people do expect.
The hard of government isthey expect you to solve them.
It's an answer to someone else'stalking point, rather than
presenting one of your own.
Yeah.
And I think that's the thing thathas bedeviled, Labour through all the
time that I've been covering politicsis the feeling that they always have
to play at the kind of a way end.
That Anything they do that's even veryslightly left wing they kinda get shouted
(29:03):
at for, which means the easiest thingis not to then do any those things.
I think it's a, it's a criticism fromthe left of the late party that I
have quite a lot of sympathy with thatthere are already right wing parties.
Right.
. why are you not them?
tell us a bit more about why.
, they said we've elected a Labourgovernment rather than sort of a
Labour government that's tryingto cosplay as the conservatives.
(29:24):
That's, and
the inconsistency is immediately obviousif, you are doing an immigration video
of you storming into, people's housesand sending them home for working in a
nail bar, then you are saying, yeah, butwe're not gonna have any restrictions
on legal, immigration in this country.
Obviously.
'cause business needs these peopleand people aren't gonna think well.
have you got, any ideas then ? Yeah.
(29:46):
because these two thingsdon't really match.
And if, you have legitimate concernsabout one and a half million people
having arrived in the last twoyears, is some policy not overdue.
no one will ever say
The bargain is that it's goodfor the economy, but so you're
gonna have to lump it, right?
There's always a pretensethat you can have.
You can cut immigration enormouslyand with no economic consequences.
(30:07):
There's no difficult trade off to be made.
But yeah, I think they've, I think they,they are what I would say Labour currently
are refusing to engage with that.
And instead, let's get Yvette Cooperdressed up like she's an extra on the bill
. that's what people want.
And have somebody in a hard hat saying,we're gonna build, a million and a
half homes, in the next 10 years.
And then someone says.
But we had a million and ahalf people came in last year.
(30:29):
Yeah.
So what, they all geta home each, do they,
I think it would be really interesting'cause everyone's getting very ated by
how well Reform are doing in the polls.
And that's gonna be one, undoubtedlyone of the big stories of the, if
you are Labour and you now think yourbiggest opponent actually is Reform
rather than Kemi, badnock, Torries,which I think they increasingly do.
How do you fight that?
Because.
My take on it is the only way thatanyone really falls outta love with the
(30:51):
Reform is they let Reform have a go atgoverning and they aren't very good at it.
Which is exactly what happened with u Kipprunning local councils as soon as they
had to run anything like Thanet got tosee what the reality of them look like.
Yeah.
It's all very well to be doing thesehigh flown rhetoric about whatever,
but it's like actually what peoplecare about is their bin collections
at the end of the day, and theywere terrible at those things.
(31:13):
And just staying united, like justas one local council, they couldn't
manage to hold it together as aparty without all falling out.
That has been a, consistent factor of ni.
So the two things that happen in NigelFarage's parties is one that he always
wins any eternal power struggle.
And the second thing is thateveryone else always leaves.
That's
is there going to be another book.
I don't think they can bestopped in . It will kill again.
(31:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, are there any morepuns on the words, in or out?
I think it's gonna have to be,shake it all about next time.
reference to Qatari investment.
Now we come to, the thirdsection of today's show.
This is about something that, thatRachel Reeves announced actually.
So the last episode was justbefore the Grow Baby Grow speech
(31:58):
as it's being called, by nobody.
And, as part of it, one of thetiny footnotes in it was that she
gave, 50 million quid to a, companythat does, electric car chargers.
and they're called Connected Curb.
And I think they, they providechargers for like slightly
difficult places to, to fit them to.
and my contention is that this is. Exactly the wrong thing to have done.
(32:18):
And I think I could have savedher 50 million quid and made
her life a lot easier and madeeveryone's lives a lot easier.
Wow.
Andy,
thank you.
So I'm, why glad youasked why used yourself?
no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tellyou what, enormous length
so basically as we all know, the newelectric car mandate is gonna be that
all new cars in 2030 have to havea plug and a battery, of some kind.
(32:40):
They're still hing a bit overthe details, but . New cars.
So not like most sales are secondthrough to like ninth hand cars, but new
cars themselves will have to do that.
there are currently 8 millionhouseholds in the uk which
cannot, charge a car easily.
So 60% of homes have their own driveway.
Brilliant sticker chargeron the house plug in.
(33:02):
You are absolutely laughing.
and if you do that, I, most tariffsyou can get down to charging a car
for about a Fiverr, which is very
Tempting
Greg, when you think ofpet petrol prices, yeah,
do you want to, do you wanna pay afiver, do it at home, drive off every
morning with a full tank effectively,
but is it like an iPhone in thatyou have to charge it every night?
'cause it doesn't last No
unless you are driving two and like fromLondon to Scotland and back every day.
(33:25):
Uhhuh you, you won't haveto do that effectively.
No.
Am I guessing from this, that.
You don't have a driveway . Idunno how you do it, Ian.
I don't have a driveway.
I . I, so I, so for example, I look, ifyou have one of these situations, you
can't charge for a five, you have touse a public charger, and they're either
between five and 10 times the price.
(33:45):
And in a world where you'reasking everyone to have one of
these cars, eventually . That'sa bit of a sticky point.
mo people are gonna be a bitmiffed and most people don't want
to think about charging methods.
They just want something that worksand preferably something that's cheap.
So there are two ways of doingit, like solving the problem
for most of these people.
Yeah.
For people in flat's gonna be tricky.
And that's like half the 40%, butfor about 4 million households.
(34:08):
You can either stick acharger in every lamppost.
Oh yeah, that works really well.
I'm like, there's electricity there.
Brilliant.
or you can do a thing where you run alittle cable under the pavement, like you
dig a one inch channel in the pavement.
And, these are incredibly boring things.
We should say.
They're some, sometimes they're calledgullies, sometimes they're called.
Channels, like Yeah, they work.
Yeah, they work.
(34:29):
A
Less dangerous version ofjust running lots and lots of
extension leads down the street.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And we don't want a world where you, ifyou have any kind of wheel thing, whether
it's a pram or a wheelchair or whatever,it's a nightmare going along the street.
So quite sensibly like these,we've got line bikes for that
. so that's the solution.
, they take about an hourto fit these things.
(34:50):
One hour, two at the most.
This sounds amazing.
Andy, what's the catch?
the catch is, it is a nightmaregetting one of these things.
You You wouldn't believe it atFirstly, it's the responsibility
of your council, right?
the process is just so byzantine,so in some places you need planning
permission to put a charger on your house.
if your house opens straight onto thestreet, you know you have to do that.
(35:10):
And there are some places whereyou need planning permission from
your county council for a channeland from your district council.
For a charger,
Try putting one on a listof building . Oh God.
secondly, five out of six councils justsay, no, you can't have one of these.
Just like that.
There's no obligation to provide any, sothere is, there was a pot of money set
(35:32):
aside for installing these things, butit didn't come with any guidance about
how you can do it, who are good operatorsof these ski, like that kind of thing.
It didn't come with any of that.
So most councils just said,oh, sorry, computer says no.
Can't be having it.
and then the other weird thing is inthe councils, which do it, so like lucky
old me, I live in one of the place, theone in six councils, which is doing it.
The process is amazingly complicated.
(35:53):
Like it's 'cause it's highways,there's liability there.
There are all sorts ofquestions which basically have
bats.
Please tell me there arenot bats involved in this.
Es
I have counted any bats.
Look, it's a one inch gully.
They can't fit in the tunnel out.
They're very small.
Some micro batts, I'm afraid it'sa perfect nesting environment.
no.
What, the thing is like councils haveall been doing their own individual
(36:15):
trials of their own individualpavements to see if these things work.
Pavement is not that differentup and down the country.
. Some places you might havecobblestone, some places you
might have a flag, whatever.
It's not that different basically.
the other mad thing, and this get takesus right back to Rachel Reeves, is that
these things need planning permission.
'cause it's, it's a highway.
It's outside your home.
(36:36):
Okay.
But they also need athing called a section 50.
Have you had the, difficultyof coming across these?
No.
Okay.
This is the thing that you need.
It's the permission you need when youwant to dig up like a chunk of road.
You're doing a gas main, you needa section 50 for that, right?
Yeah.
But you currently need an individualsection 50 for every single less than one
inch wide strip between, it's amazing.
(36:59):
So it, it is like going through theprocess to amputate your leg every
time you wanna cut your toenails.
That's basically what the situation is.
and the, it costs so much as well,and it vary, like the costs vary
massively from council to council,but some councils would charge
nearly three grand for section 50permission, at which point you just say.
I'm not doing that.
This is the veto that I was talking about.
(37:20):
That which is the, I think it all thepeople who are talking about growth.
Do you have a real point that wehave layered completely needless
levels of computer says no,and you have to sign this off.
I know, not that I'm turninginto like Richard, little John in
my old age, but there is a kindof like you are showing signs.
I know below
three pods you've made.
Surprisingly conserv,
but I think this is one area in whichthe right is correct, is that there is
(37:43):
a presumption about not doing things.
They, what they call often theycall it in central government,
treasury, brain, right?
The idea stuff just too hard.
We can't do it, let's just keepdoing what we're doing already
there's down be some people who aregonna, there's some downsides, so
what if we just never do anything?
yeah.
like
the kind of people who think you,you could run a hospital really
well if there just weren't anypatients that are ruining it.
There's that kind ofattitude I think as well.
(38:04):
It does seem to be amazing that the.
HS two.
Yeah, I get there are certain problemsputting it in, but a very small HS two.
If we going along a piece of
pavement,
I would've hoped that was possible.
I know
if we can't do this, we're notgonna build . Another nuclear plot.
It's just not gonna happen.
No.
we that's not gonna happen.
(38:24):
No.
Isn't correct.
And, there will be places where, differentsolutions are needed where you can't park
in front of your house on a regular basis.
You might need to do morelamppost things there.
The process for, by the way,getting a lamppost charger in
takes between nine and 18 months.
That's the paperwork.
Getting it in takes one day.
we've got this reallyfunny situation where.
(38:45):
It's, very hard to do somethingthat would make things very easy.
because you've got a laudable aim.
Get the country onto veryefficient cars, which drive much
further per quid you put in.
That's great.
a quid in a petrol car.
25 p of it is moving the car.
The rest of it is lost as inefficiency.
In electric car is about90% is moving the car..
So even if there wasn't any goodgreen reason of doing it, it's you
(39:08):
get much more bang for your buck.
the full solution I think is the kind oflots and lots of big street furniture.
The way to make this as easy aspossible is to do the nice thing is
there's precedent for this excitingly.
Do you remember phone boxes?
Yes.
Yeah, just about . Yes, I'm old.
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
So the process for doing thatwas basically, there was a
(39:29):
list of approved contractors.
like big firms like BTor whoever it might be.
Were pre-approved to bang a phone box in.
Where they needed one.
So they did not need to go throughthis very byzantine process.
internet hubs, same thing happened.
This
is also what they're trying to dowith planning permission to say,
here are some zones in which thepresumption is in favor of consent.
(39:49):
Yeah.
Kept planning permission, whichmakes a lot of sense to me.
Completely.
And there are moves in that direction.
So if you're a big CPO, which is likea ChargePoint operator, you run the
big, chargers that you get a motorways.
And wherever you now don't needsection 50 permission anymore.
Yeah,
so that is a step in the right direction.
But if you, do the tiny oneto tried things, you still do.
(40:10):
So it's, evolving fast, to have alaudable aim of switching things
over and then to be making thisbit very hard, feels all a bit.
Ass about face.
I like your niche, which is basically thatyou talk about green issues in a way that
isn't just, oh, whoa, the end is nightplaying my bow . But like here are some
very small, practical things that we coulddo that would actually make life better.
I think that's a much betterway of covering the subject.
(40:33):
I isn't it
interesting that people say, we needa network of charging points, and
then you think we've got them, they'recalled houses . The network already runs
into them and what you need is quitea long extension lead, do you think?
that sounds good.
Yeah.
We have, it is exactly that.
you want to make a big change.
The best way to do it isin very low impact ways.
(40:55):
the, there isn't much that'slower impact than a, lamppost or
your existing fuse board, yeah.
I, in answer to what you're saying, Idon't, I have no, i, have no, influence
over US onshore or offshore wind policy.
but you are
in the pocket of bigcross pavement charging
anyone wants to crowdsource adriveway for Andy , which again, I,
(41:20):
there're a worse charitable project.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
But no, there are people who arelike paving over their front garden
so that they can just cram theircar into it and, and solve this
is, we're about for flooding.
It's not give for flooding.
yeah.
So for God's sake, write to your mp.
If you're listening to this,just write to your MP and demand
the right.
What do we want?
Cross pavement.
(41:40):
Charging solutions.
Charging solutions.
What do we want now?
Good.
Stirring.
There we go.
I've made this the hill I'm gonnadie on and I fear I might okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you so much, toHelen Jane and to Ian.
We'll be back in two weekswith three more topics from the
infinite back, the news wheel.
(42:00):
Yeah, . Until then, why not goand buy the magazine, which has
even more stories than these?
It's got about 50 more stories thanwe've been able to cover today.
It's a fantastic magazine.
Go to private hyphenate.
Co UK and subscribe right now.
Thanks until then for listeningand as always, to Matt Hill of
Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
(00:03):
Hello, and welcome to another episode ofPage 94, the UK's best Fortnightly News
podcast, I think, in a crowded field.
Yeah.
my name's Andrew Hunter Murray.
I'm here in the Private Eyeoffices with Helen Lewis, Jane
Mackenzie, and Ian Hislop.
We're here to discuss all thethings that have happened since
the last episode of the mag.
coming up later in the show, we'll betalking about the new biography of,
(00:25):
Keir Starmer and the Labour Party ingeneral, and we've got some great stuff
about cross pavement charging solutions.
. But first, oh no, we haven't.
Gotta wait for that.
Have we
concentrate on anything else?
But first let's go away to a lovelylittle archipelago of islands, the
British Indian Ocean Territories.
Is that what it's called?
That's right,
(00:45):
let's hone in on in particular, ChagosIslands and one, in particular called
Diego Garcia, which, Has been thesubject of lots of news stories recently
because it's technically and actuallyBritish owned at the moment, and Britain
is proposing to amazingly pay moneyto give it away to someone, is a very
reductive way of describing it, but that'seffectively what seems to be happening.
(01:07):
And Jane, you have beenwriting about this for.
A while.
Most of my career.
Most of your career?
Yes.
So should we start off withprimer on these islands are, why
they're important, and how, wecame by them in the first place.
before, they were owned by the British,they were owned by the French, and they
brought a large population of Africanslaves there to work on the coconut farms.
(01:29):
The British acquired themduring the Napoleonic Wars.
The slaves were eventually liberated'cause Britain wasn't allowing slavery.
And, many of them then stayed there.
they formed their own culture.
They're a long way from anyone else.
the nearest island Acapela goes,the Sey shells, the Maldives
and Mauritius, are still likehundreds of miles away from them.
(01:51):
So they were an isolated, population,but they were still a British territory.
And then in 1965, Mauritiusbecomes independent and islands
have been governed from Mauritius.
So just before independence, Britainkind of hived off, the Chagas
Islands and said, we think we'lljust hang onto this particular bit.
(02:12):
they bought it for 3million pounds at the time.
and then they.
Effectively handed over thelargest island to the Americans.
And the deal has never beenmade completely transparent.
It's been alleged that it was in returnfor a cracking discount on some Polaris
missiles, but that's never been confirmed.
Yeah.
But nonetheless, it led to,there's a big American base there.
Yeah.
And, in order to, make wayfor a big American naval base,
(02:33):
the population were, removed.
initially, people who left theisland to go do business in
Mauritius or go to hospital in Sey,shell were just not allowed back.
And, eventually, were forced ontoboats carrying one bag and dumped
in, the neighboring countries.
rather, like Trump's current planfor removing the Gazans, in fact,
(02:56):
just remove an entire population.
Obviously, they were a much.
Much smaller population.
Yeah.
This is a bit that has confusing me aboutthe recent stories is I was quite aware
of the story about the right to return.
the fact that the Ian populationhas been advocating to be allowed
home for a really long time.
But this isn't that, is it?
This is not, that's notexactly what's being proposed
(03:16):
no, the poor, IANS who, Still exist asa diaspora in the Sey shells, Mauritius.
And, largely Sussex, specifically Crawley,are not really a party to this current,
deal that's being arranged with Mauritius.
In fact, even those, IANS I, Mauritiusreally are a, minority and not a very
(03:40):
well-treated minority in Mauritius.
So why is it that, behind thisdeal, everyone says it's all
these human rights lawyers.
Who seemed to be very interested inmatters of national security and not
very interested in displaced persons.
Yes.
this notion that it's de colonialization,we're giving it back to, Mauritius.
It was never really, Mauritiusis in the first place.
(04:04):
who certainly, the courts havepreviously held had the strongest right
to be there were the chick oceans.
Way back in, in 2000.
they very nearly did, getthe right to resettle there.
they won a court case and Robin Cook, whowas then the foreign secretary, said he
would not oppose their right to return.
And
am I right in thinking that theynearly got the right to return to some
(04:27):
of the smaller islands, not the onewith the massive US naval base, but
suddenly after nine 11 these islandsbe had a new geopolitical significance.
Basically.
They were an incredibly useful . Spacefor long range bombers and also rendition
of Terror Suspects, which is another,shameful thing that happened there.
Yes.
Which, was denied for some time.
(04:48):
And the UK government insisted thatabsolutely no, no Guantanamo, like things
were happening on Diego Garcia becauseit would be against the terms of the
lease that we allow the, US to be there.
And, eventually we had to admit thatthere had in fact been incidents
of extraordinary rendition via.
Garcia
just incredible all the goodwill thatBritain might have possibly gained
(05:09):
by liberating a population of slavesjust completely steadily, wasted and
wrecked by , perhaps two centuries.
We'll drink them later.
what I don't understand is if theChagos population had been given the
right to self-determination, they then,as a small country, could have done a
really good deal leasing Diego Garciato the Americans and then funded their
(05:30):
new country for the rest of time.
Absolutely.
, they, they probably wouldn't havebecome a completely independent country.
They would've remaineda . Overseas territory in a kind
of falkland ascension kind of way.
but they would've certainly had thatsame, The people of the Falklands have
had to say, no, we'd like to, stay,here, or we'd like to sell out to
(05:53):
Mauritius for all this lovely cash.
Or
could've stayed in the Commonwealth.
Yes.
Or they become Guernsey.
. Yeah.
if the this deal goes through, willthe Chagossians get to go home?
Will they have to go andthe ones who are in Crawley.
That is rather than the oneswho are nearby necessarily.
most of those in Crawley now do have,British citizenship, properly protected.
(06:14):
There was a long period where there wasa particularly difficult situation where
some Ians had become stateless effectivelybecause, They were originally from a
British overseas territory in particular.
There was a generation who wereborn during that period where, for
instance, their mothers went to anotherisland to give birth and weren't
(06:35):
allowed back, so they were born.
In Sey shells.
but sey shells didn't give themcitizenship and they'd missed
out on the British citizenship.
but that's been resolved fairly recently.
So most of those now living inBritain have British citizenship.
the most part, they wouldlike the right of return.
(06:57):
. Largely to visit the sort of ancestralhomeland visit family graves.
Just know where they came from.
there's probably not that many desperateto icks and move halfway across the world.
Again,
Basically Diego Gua was theonly property inhabited island.
I think there was a bit on someof the other, there was two other
rattles that were, Hadinhabitants and Okay.
(07:18):
There's been some feasibility studies.
Okay.
And in terms of whether you couldbuild tourist facilities there,
whether there's enough fresh water,there are other sort of bits of the
archipelago where you could build avery, a fairly small, but practical
in the same way that the Maldives iscapable of hosting tourist industry.
On little tiny bits ofbeautiful beachy, island.
(07:41):
and it's an incredible wildlifepreserve at the moment, partly because
of the lack of access to anybodyother than the American naval base.
Sounds could build a beautifultourist industry around,
go and dive with the, yeah.
The wildlife.
So clear the water there that I believeit's used as an international standard
for polluted water or unpollutedwater around the rest of the world.
(08:03):
it's a very, Unspoiled it's like novel has
really had a real bounce back
in front.
Yeah, no, it has.
that's for another one, another podcast.
, the humans loved it.
Incredible dark skies too.
There's like a us space observation,place there as well, like you.
So what is the, justificationfor a deal in which we pay,
(08:26):
Mauritius 9 billion pounds?
possibly, but it couldbe 18 billion or even 52.
As Nigel Farage estimated it, , he'ddone his inflation busting, calculations.
Do we then charge thisback from the Americans?
I can't imagine Trump saying, I'd love topay Britain to be middle person on a deal.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
(08:47):
it will make some internationalcriticism go away.
There's been various sort of UN reportsand votes, criticizing the UK for, holding
on to the Chagos Islands, which I thinkpartly comes about because of . How they
ended up depopulated in the first place.
Everybody does agree.
That was not good.
and then also there's a sort of UNcommittee, which seems to largely be
(09:11):
made up of, countries including Russia,Iran, they just wanna have a go at us,
by saying, the UK should give this away.
Yeah.
they , but they would,say that, wouldn't they?
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's really tricky 'cause it's anattempt to thread the needle of what,
Britain would like is to keep theUS base there for several decades
more to resolve the long runninginternational dispute over these.
(09:34):
no one, as far as I couldtell, is going to do anything
for the ia, the Ian Islanders.
That's not on Mauritiusagenda as far as I can tell.
But if it's successful,then you end a dispute.
You still get a base there.
and the other thing we haven't discussedis the role of China in all this, because
China has, ambitions in this cornerof the world as in every other corner.
(09:54):
have been investing enormousamounts of money in Mauritius.
they have paid.
Loaned hundreds of millions of dollarsto build Mauritius an airport they've
built the state broadcasters, offices.
they've, done a lot of construction.
They'd clearly love a base hereor on one of the other islands.
And I think the idea is Britain is hopingthat it might be able to negotiate,
permanence of the Earth base and, ruleout any Chinese construction in the area.
(10:18):
China does tend to just build islands.
Yes, it does.
Outta nothing.
It does.
Yes.
if they wanted to build somesort of odd looking atols
Yes.
About 25 foot off the coast with a,I guess they might with huge radars
pointing exactly at the US Naval base.
Yeah.
great respect is in the caseof Tibetan Taiwan of other
places, territorial sovereignty.
This is the, my problem with it, I'vebeen consciously trying to seek out news
(10:39):
stories that rebut my knee jerk prejudice,which is that I feel and I just dunno if
I've consumed too much, X content thatthe Mauritius is very cynically using
the idea of decolonization and saying,look at you rich white people who've
come over and been terribly beastlyto us in the developing world in order
to basically get lots of money thatthey would like for their government.
Which I don't, but I just feellike we're we being had, and I'm
(11:02):
aware that is a. a Prime Telegraphcolumnist opinion, , and therefore
I should probably probe it a littlebit more deeply and see if it's true.
But from everything that you've said,Jane, it seems that the two different
issues, the natural justice for thedisplaced people is very separate to
the idea of the geopolitical questionof the control of the islands.
Yes.
I certainly, if you ask the, peoplein Crawley and then the displaced
(11:25):
Chagas population, On this side ofthe world, they are not in favor
of the Mauritius deal at all.
They've been fairly vocal aboutthe fact that this is, not the
way, they hoped to see things go.
now I, don't know to what extent the sortparts of the Chagas diaspora of perhaps
(11:45):
followed more the Mauritiusgovernment's line.
But, actually the populationhere is, very substantial.
there have been no reports for theMauritius government saying we would like
to spend this money on a lot of, leisurecenters and health facilities for the poor
c Chagossians who ended up in Mauritius.
No, not those news reportsare very thin on the ground.
(12:05):
And it's pretty clear what they want.
And when they say, oh, by the way,we didn't mention inflation before,
but we're factoring in inflationnow, The price is just going up and
it's the price for a military base.
And in, the, whole liquidation of theBritish Empire, what is left is very
odd places in the middle of nowherein which it's quite important for,
(12:28):
national security s to have a base.
and that has to be paid for somehow,but not necessarily . this way
it's amazing that . We're paying9 billion quid to effectively
get rid of a Lamborghini.
Like how have we done that ? And alsohow does it work in a world where Donald
Trump is currently threatening to invadethree allies, nevermind three enemies.
Like what
(12:48):
you think it will actually happen?
Because one of the things I thought wasreally interesting about this was that
the latest, the government's latestjustification was something to do with The
broadband spectrum, the electromagneticspectrum, and the control over it.
And then you had lots of people, not justthe usual suspects come out and say, I had
that advice when I was in government too.
And I thought it was bollocks.
so I just wonder whether or not at somepoint, given that the US are against
it, and there's lots of relatively saneand sensible voices when the British
(13:11):
establishment saying, we actuallydon't think this really stacks up.
what might we just.
Not do it.
as we started this conversation, I havebeen writing about, the islands since
2000 when, Robin Cook made his comments.
it's been at an impasse, bouncedthrough various, courts, the House
(13:31):
of Lords, the European courts.
Nothing's really changed
there was a, US senator, addressedKeir Starmer directly over this
issue and said, put the bong down,
. she said, there's notoriously freewheeling Keir Starmer and I thought,
gosh, somehow Keir Starmer'sgot a, reputation for
dreaming big internationally.
(13:53):
it is quite odd and we are justwaiting for what the Americans say.
Aren't we?
I think so.
I, don't think in theend, the UK government.
It's gonna make the decisionon its own piece of land.
So
ultimately they'd rather upsetMauritius and the UN court
than they would upset America.
So eventually it might, but you are right.
It just seems to me everythingyou've said, the most likely
(14:15):
outcome is that people just keeparguing about it for another couple
of decades and nothing happens.
we'll be back in 25 years whereJane will look back on a career.
We come now to Culture Corner.
I think that's whatwe're calling this bit.
It is the book section of the podcast.
Yeah.
And we occasionallycover political, books.
And, Helen, you've beenreading one lately.
(14:37):
I have.
I've been reading, Get In by PatrickMcGuire, who used to work, for me
at The New Statesman and GabrielPogrund of the Sunday Times.
And this is the follow up to their.
previous book, which wasabout the Corbyn leadership.
they've got a unholy marriagewith Tim... Tim Shipman does
the Tories and they do Labour.
They've work it in shifts.
I dunno if someone's gonna juststep up and do the Lib Dems at
some point, but no one knows yet.
(14:58):
if this one's called Get In,what, was the previous one called?
Stay, out?
No, don't.
'cause they're all, 'cause all theTim Shipman's ones have all got
versions of 'in', which is No Way Out.
Then the last one, the fourth oneis actually called Out and then the
previous one on about Corbyn is called.
Maggie, Maggie.
Out, That's it.
Yeah, It's
called yeah.... Left Out.
Left Out though.
(15:18):
I, yeah.
And
honestly, there is a, broad,you'll notice a theme emerging.
Very
good.
Okay.
And this is a, is it a kind ofbiography of or Labour in general?
no, 'cause there was a very good biographyof Starmer by Tom Baldwin, which was
actually, I think, a lot more revealing.
It was a semi authorized one, but Ithink was a lot more revealing than
perhaps Starmer was comfortable with.
One of the things that comes out inthis book, and has been a feature
along is that, Starmer really is veryprivate and doesn't want to talk.
(15:40):
he never names his kidsin public, for example.
they've never been photographedpublicly and he never wanted, he,
before we laugh about his father,the toolmaker, they had to brutalize
him, his leadership team into saying,you've got to talk about your, roots.
You've gotta seem likea human being to people.
Wow.
So that, the, starbiography by Tom Baldwin is.
He is really quite moving about the factthat he is, he never, he and his dad
(16:04):
never said, I love you to each other.
his mom was always very ill.
When he was growing up.
His dad was very buttoned upand in his shed the whole time.
His brother had a really difficultlife, the one who died recently,
but Starmer is very reluctantto talk about all those things.
This is a political book that takesyou from Starmer, becoming an MP.
At which point, it's alwaysthought that he really at that
point wanted to be Prime Minister.
(16:25):
But it's really, if any,it's a book about anybody.
It's a book about Morgan McSweeney,who is now his chief of staff, who
was his, essentially ran his campaign,who is an Irish guy who started off
working on the desk at Millbank.
During the New, Labour years,there's a great quote from Peter
Mandelson who now loves him.
Says, 'I never, I don't rememberhim . I didn't notice him at all.
Was he there?' It's a story about howMorgan McSweeney basically decided that
(16:48):
the Corbynites were kind of bunch ofout touch lefties who were never gonna
win an election in the Britain thatthey exist, which they think is very
socially conservative, for example, muchmore that Blue Labour, you know, faith,
family, and the flag, and basicallyset about to it's almost described
explicitly in this term, 'do a conjob' on the Labour Party to get in.
(17:09):
Convince Corbyn you were on hisside, convince the members that
you were pro second EU referendum,and were very loyal to Corbyn.
And then as we've seen with Starmer,actually achieved the leadership
of the Labour Party... and dosomething completely different.
And it's about that story, about howhe remade the Labour Party, but how
it's now left him slightly stranded.
Because what does Keir Starmerbelieve about Anything?
(17:30):
there's a kind of, there's a kindof hole at the, center of this book.
He's obviously built a machinethat's brilliant for taking
control of the Labour Party andthen winning election in Britain.
But the big question that obviouslyeverybody and we've talked about on this
podcast is... And then, what is the plan?
, what is the plan now?
Is there.
A sense in which political journalistsand commentators like to believe in
(17:51):
a grand narrative of someone secretlymaking a puppet who then takes over.
Is it possible he just took over and,McSweeney's mildly talented, but the,
Tory parties exploded and the Britishpublic didn't like the look of Corbyn.
I know we like a, very Machiavelliannarrative, but halfway through any book
(18:16):
like this, I start thinking, really,
is always a problem as well inpolitical books that you find out...
you can work out the sourcing to someextent by, sort of 'Peter Mandleson
walked handsomely into the room...'
Like, 'Michael Gove was up to hisusual clever machinations,' and
you're like, oh, was... was he?
Interesting.
I wonder who told you that?
So I always have that question.
There are a lot of books that mentionthat Dominic Cummings has a walk on roll
(18:38):
in which he does something amazinglybrilliant, counterintuitive, and you
think, oh, I wonder who told you this?
Something.
I it, didn't end well for Cummings.
Key to Dominic Cummings is he doesn'tmind if you hate him or love him
as long as you think he's clever.
He will take credit for anything,no matter how evil it is, as long as
he, it looks like a smart thing tohave done, which is very different
to most people's motivation.
(18:58):
he's the,
guy who came up with the eye testalibi, . So we don't need to worry
about smartness anymore, do we?
Incredible.
Great.
But I, so I think thereis a similar thing.
You are right.
Starmer was the beneficiaryof a lot of structural forces.
he was lucky.
Luckier than Ed Milliband.
Ed Milliband came in as afirst term opposition leader,
which is just already harder.
Like it's just a harder thing todo because people have just very
(19:21):
ostentatiously rejected you and alsoat that stage, often in the lifecycle
of opposition, the activists andthe cabinet members are not ready
to concede that people do hate you.
They think, Come on, we could justdo it slightly differently, like
the one more heve kind of approach.
Whereas I think by the time that theparty even had been through all of that.
14 years of Tory rule, there was akind of slight concession of, okay.
They don't like us , but Iwould give them enormous credit.
(19:43):
This is the bit that is,it depends entirely on how
you feel about how this is.
I went to watch Starmer,during the leadership campaign.
Rebecca Long Bailey was theContinuity Corbyn candidate.
You would not have thought Starmer duringthat election was going to do what he did,
which was who out Corbyn from the party,marginalized the hard left completely.
(20:03):
And then run on a, a, much likea Blue Labour type platform.
He said basically his only points ofdisagreement would, with Jeremy wasn't
really pro Europe enough, and he was abit worried about the antisemitism stuff.
that was a result of atactical decision that.
When he got into Parliament thatthe next leader of the Labour party
would not be somebody who, like aWes Streeting, like a Rachel Reeves,
who had principally sat it out.
(20:24):
So he made a series of tacticaldecisions already from the
start of his political career.
About what would be the most thingthat would end up most likely
with him being LA Labour leader.
And so some of the people on the leftfeel just completely betrayed by that.
They feel they were lied to.
And this book has a scene where McSweeneygoes to see, Jeremy Corbyn and says to
me, look, I've got this amazing polling.
(20:45):
I'd love to share it with you,and I want to be your friend.
Whilst they're thinking, I, I hate you.
You are evil . I'm just, I wanna just.
destroy you.
So I can see why people who aren't infavor of the project think that were
duped in this really quite unpleasant way.
And then I think, yes, but thequestion is, do you want to win or not?
And it turned out theanswer to that was yes.
And I'm prepared to do alot to make that happen.
(21:06):
So this
is a record of the defeat of theleft rather than, the creation
of something new for the center.
that's the most striking criticism thatI think is valid, which is that they knew
very well what they didn't want to be,but they don't really know what they do.
And I think that's what's gotthem into trouble in, government.
Sam Freeman, who runs a very goodsubstack, very policy wonkish, has worked
(21:27):
in the Department of Education, did itask us all questions and he said one
consistent theme of the questions was lotsof people who felt they were naturally
supportive of a Labour government.
They were really glad to see one,but felt like it hadn't really.
It hadn't really done anything,and that's my perception about
the general mood in the country.
It's not obviously they won anenormous majority, but that honeymoon
has been very, brief and people feelgrumpy and the latest pollings put
(21:52):
on basically three-way tie betweenthe Conservatives Labour and Reform.
Yeah.
It's not like people think that thereis a project that they could name
even, that they know what you'rebeing asked to have an opinion on.
I'd
love a sinister project.
That'd be great.
Yeah.
Get on it.
Here's Keir Starmer, but is that,what is that what all the resets
and the growth baby growth have beenleading up to . feel like they have
(22:13):
been saying the stuff all along.
Have we not been listening orhave they not been doing it?
I think they felt like they had todo a bit where they said everything's
really miserable in the start.
to, because if you think about howmuch juice the Conservative Coalition
Government got outta Liam Byrnesaying there's no money, , that
note was being, brought backagain, pretty afraid by the end.
Yeah, Exactly.
As a justification for austerity,it was like, we had to do this.
I think they really wanted to bedin the idea that they'd inherited
(22:35):
a real mess so that anythingthey did that was the baseline.
But I think what they mostly did,
being true
, it was true as it turned out, but I think it made everyone think, oh
God, this is miserable, isn't it?
Like what?
Yeah.
are, how are we gonna fix stuff?
The NHS came out of the pandemic, muchless productive, we came to be able to
funnel more and more money into it, andit doesn't just, nothing seems to improve.
(22:56):
I think there's a real level ofmisery and he and Starmer doesn't
really do lofty eyes raised toheaven, aspirational, optimism.
Does he?
It's not really his natural tenor.
I felt that.
Because McSweeney is basicallya, man who wins elections and
he's constantly campaigning.
Part of the chaos, since Labour got incan be explained by the fact that they
(23:19):
panic and they think we are not popular.
Let's do a stunt, let's do a campaign.
And actually we don't want any campaigns.
, we just voted you lot in, I feelhis, brilliance as convinced by
this book, is actually the problemwith him in that reset reboot.
Here's a new idea, here's anotherslogan, here's growth, baby
(23:43):
drill, or, one of whatever it is.
Maybe
Bill, I believe was the phrase usedgrowth, baby gray sounds realizing
say to Doctor Sounds Medical.
It sounds
medical, yeah.
Yeah.
. And there's a moment in the bookwhere I read, Sue Gray, who's
the, chief of staff and McSweeney.
clash of Egos, only one of them had to go.
Now, guess what's gonna happen whenKeir Starmer reads that he's, a man on a
(24:04):
driverless train, a useless HR manager,doesn't have any policies, and is really
the puppet of his brilliant, PR man.
Guess what the next chapter is, Morgan?
Yeah.
Yes.
do you know what I think it is?
I think it's a bit Cummings
, classically, the, kind of King's advisor will not last until if,
(24:25):
Morgan's McSweeney is still therein position at the n next election.
That would be historicallyunusual, I think.
'cause probably the way I'd phrase it.
I completely agree, but it, does seemto capture something that's true.
There's even descriptions in the book of.
The leadership campaign in whichit described that kind of Starmer
sitting, listening to everybodyelse, he let someone else chair it.
Patrick McGuire in one of his columnswrote that he was, he was lawyerly,
(24:47):
in the sense that... if you givehim a brief to prosecute, he will go
out and do it and hammer away at it.
And he did that, obviously inthe case of the, campaign for
the second referendum on the EU.
What he isn't really naturallysuited to is, leading, is being
the one leads the decision.
He wants to almost be toldwhat to do and then do it.
And, I think that you are right, Ian.
That is the bit that kind of,because people don't want to take
(25:09):
orders from Morgan McSweeney.
No one elected him.
Ultimately, there is anauthority problem there.
I haven't read the book yet, but forme, the biggest revelation in it,
from the bits I've seen extracted, isthat Keir Starmer had a voice coach.
Who I think has carried outthe biggest con of all here.
has extracted lots of money for . What?
You don't recognize the charismatics.
(25:30):
You honestly, if you've seen hima couple of years ago, you'd have
thought he's very boring and hejust uses these weird metaphors.
And he's not full ofcharisma, but now, yeah.
Now he's Gil good in his pride.
. Yeah.
It's, yeah.
that was, it was one of the manyextracts, God bless them, they've
done a lot of extracts for, this book.
And there was a story about, butit didn't fly that story, did it?
Was it lockdown?
(25:51):
I read it and I still didn'treally take it like she potentially
breached lockdown this voice coach.
Yeah.
To come visit him on ChristmasEve to do a, to prepare him for
a speech when London was under.
Tier four restrictions.
It's a bit beer gate, isn't it?
It was a real problem about the factthat I think a most normal people, and
now moved on like the coronavirus issomething terrible that happened in
the rear view mirror and they don'treally wanna ever think about it again.
(26:12):
Absolutely not.
And also, it's just very funnywatching the right try and attack it.
It's okay, so he might have had asession with his voice coach, which
is inherently amused . What hedidn't do is get 15 loggers on and
a curry and a karaoke machine andget hammered and start belting it.
Abba.
it's, like the, de people tryingto say it was the same as Party
Gate was, extremely optimistic.
(26:34):
I felt
did the, press get hold ofany story that really flowed?
you are obviously saying, it's a reallyinteresting and, the details fantastic.
And the these, but was there ashock revelation in it that everyone
should have been excited by?
I don't.
star was quite boring.
who knew?
I think it's quite welltimed that it's come out now.
(26:54):
Exactly at the point that questionshave begun to emerge about what do you
know, what do you actually want to do?
what is the project?
But you are certainly right, Ian,about that permanent campaign strategy.
It's exactly the same problem with Trump.
Which is the blizzard of executive orders.
What does that Trumpgovernment exist to do?
It exists to own the libs cry harder.
Libs like, how do you like this?
But it's, that's not the same as.
Like making the trains run on time.
(27:16):
It's just not the same thing at all.
And there's, don't give them,
don't give them that linebecause , they already know it.
no.
Okay.
the moment of maximum effectivenessfor Starmer was the riots.
Yeah.
which has nothing to do with spin orbeing shown to do the right thing.
It's, he's good at locking people up.
So over that weekend, he locked them upquickly, the sentences were quite big.
(27:36):
And then the weekend after people thought,maybe I don't want to be locked up.
I, for me, obviously I'm trying toresist all, spin, but it seemed the
moment of doing something was moreaffected than the moment of posturing,
of pretending you are doing something.
But it was also, that was a veryauthoritarian moment, which is a very,
Blair in his constant love of ID cars.
(27:58):
there's not anything in the worldthat Tony Blair doesn't think that
Id cards aren't a solution to it.
It's one of his weird kinks for 25 yearsnow, , and I think that was a, moment for.
Starmer that that is the kind ofMcSweeneys in prescription, right?
Like tough on crime, tough on yobo.
it felt a bit like, oh, ASBOsare gonna come back soon.
Didn't it?
It felt blare, right?
In that sense, I think that's wherethat project is comfortable, which
(28:19):
is wearing the clothes of the right.
but again, that's not, again, you,there are rightwing actual right wing
parties, so if we're going to have.
Yvette Cooper kind of wearing astab proof vest and going out to
be filmed doing deportation reads.
Theresa May tried that withthe hostile environment and
actually it didn't save her.
It's, It might be your answerto Farage, but it's not.
(28:42):
It's not enough, is it?
I think saying that there areterrible problems people do expect.
The hard of government isthey expect you to solve them.
It's an answer to someone else'stalking point, rather than
presenting one of your own.
Yeah.
And I think that's the thing thathas bedeviled, Labour through all the
time that I've been covering politicsis the feeling that they always have
to play at the kind of a way end.
That Anything they do that's even veryslightly left wing they kinda get shouted
(29:03):
at for, which means the easiest thingis not to then do any those things.
I think it's a, it's a criticism fromthe left of the late party that I
have quite a lot of sympathy with thatthere are already right wing parties.
Right.
. why are you not them?
tell us a bit more about why.
, they said we've elected a Labourgovernment rather than sort of a
Labour government that's tryingto cosplay as the conservatives.
(29:24):
That's, and
the inconsistency is immediately obviousif, you are doing an immigration video
of you storming into, people's housesand sending them home for working in a
nail bar, then you are saying, yeah, butwe're not gonna have any restrictions
on legal, immigration in this country.
Obviously.
'cause business needs these peopleand people aren't gonna think well.
have you got, any ideas then ? Yeah.
(29:46):
because these two thingsdon't really match.
And if, you have legitimate concernsabout one and a half million people
having arrived in the last twoyears, is some policy not overdue.
no one will ever say
The bargain is that it's goodfor the economy, but so you're
gonna have to lump it, right?
There's always a pretensethat you can have.
You can cut immigration enormouslyand with no economic consequences.
(30:07):
There's no difficult trade off to be made.
But yeah, I think they've, I think they,they are what I would say Labour currently
are refusing to engage with that.
And instead, let's get Yvette Cooperdressed up like she's an extra on the bill
. that's what people want.
And have somebody in a hard hat saying,we're gonna build, a million and a
half homes, in the next 10 years.
And then someone says.
But we had a million and ahalf people came in last year.
(30:29):
Yeah.
So what, they all geta home each, do they,
I think it would be really interesting'cause everyone's getting very ated by
how well Reform are doing in the polls.
And that's gonna be one, undoubtedlyone of the big stories of the, if
you are Labour and you now think yourbiggest opponent actually is Reform
rather than Kemi, badnock, Torries,which I think they increasingly do.
How do you fight that?
Because.
My take on it is the only way thatanyone really falls outta love with the
(30:51):
Reform is they let Reform have a go atgoverning and they aren't very good at it.
Which is exactly what happened with u Kipprunning local councils as soon as they
had to run anything like Thanet got tosee what the reality of them look like.
Yeah.
It's all very well to be doing thesehigh flown rhetoric about whatever,
but it's like actually what peoplecare about is their bin collections
at the end of the day, and theywere terrible at those things.
(31:13):
And just staying united, like justas one local council, they couldn't
manage to hold it together as aparty without all falling out.
That has been a, consistent factor of ni.
So the two things that happen in NigelFarage's parties is one that he always
wins any eternal power struggle.
And the second thing is thateveryone else always leaves.
That's
is there going to be another book.
I don't think they can bestopped in . It will kill again.
(31:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, are there any morepuns on the words, in or out?
I think it's gonna have to be,shake it all about next time.
reference to Qatari investment.
Now we come to, the thirdsection of today's show.
This is about something that, thatRachel Reeves announced actually.
So the last episode was justbefore the Grow Baby Grow speech
(31:58):
as it's being called, by nobody.
And, as part of it, one of thetiny footnotes in it was that she
gave, 50 million quid to a, companythat does, electric car chargers.
and they're called Connected Curb.
And I think they, they providechargers for like slightly
difficult places to, to fit them to.
and my contention is that this is. Exactly the wrong thing to have done.
(32:18):
And I think I could have savedher 50 million quid and made
her life a lot easier and madeeveryone's lives a lot easier.
Wow.
Andy,
thank you.
So I'm, why glad youasked why used yourself?
no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tellyou what, enormous length
so basically as we all know, the newelectric car mandate is gonna be that
all new cars in 2030 have to havea plug and a battery, of some kind.
(32:40):
They're still hing a bit overthe details, but . New cars.
So not like most sales are secondthrough to like ninth hand cars, but new
cars themselves will have to do that.
there are currently 8 millionhouseholds in the uk which
cannot, charge a car easily.
So 60% of homes have their own driveway.
Brilliant sticker chargeron the house plug in.
(33:02):
You are absolutely laughing.
and if you do that, I, most tariffsyou can get down to charging a car
for about a Fiverr, which is very
Tempting
Greg, when you think ofpet petrol prices, yeah,
do you want to, do you wanna pay afiver, do it at home, drive off every
morning with a full tank effectively,
but is it like an iPhone in thatyou have to charge it every night?
'cause it doesn't last No
unless you are driving two and like fromLondon to Scotland and back every day.
(33:25):
Uhhuh you, you won't haveto do that effectively.
No.
Am I guessing from this, that.
You don't have a driveway . Idunno how you do it, Ian.
I don't have a driveway.
I . I, so I, so for example, I look, ifyou have one of these situations, you
can't charge for a five, you have touse a public charger, and they're either
between five and 10 times the price.
(33:45):
And in a world where you'reasking everyone to have one of
these cars, eventually . That'sa bit of a sticky point.
mo people are gonna be a bitmiffed and most people don't want
to think about charging methods.
They just want something that worksand preferably something that's cheap.
So there are two ways of doingit, like solving the problem
for most of these people.
Yeah.
For people in flat's gonna be tricky.
And that's like half the 40%, butfor about 4 million households.
(34:08):
You can either stick acharger in every lamppost.
Oh yeah, that works really well.
I'm like, there's electricity there.
Brilliant.
or you can do a thing where you run alittle cable under the pavement, like you
dig a one inch channel in the pavement.
And, these are incredibly boring things.
We should say.
They're some, sometimes they're calledgullies, sometimes they're called.
Channels, like Yeah, they work.
Yeah, they work.
(34:29):
A
Less dangerous version ofjust running lots and lots of
extension leads down the street.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And we don't want a world where you, ifyou have any kind of wheel thing, whether
it's a pram or a wheelchair or whatever,it's a nightmare going along the street.
So quite sensibly like these,we've got line bikes for that
. so that's the solution.
, they take about an hourto fit these things.
(34:50):
One hour, two at the most.
This sounds amazing.
Andy, what's the catch?
the catch is, it is a nightmaregetting one of these things.
You You wouldn't believe it atFirstly, it's the responsibility
of your council, right?
the process is just so byzantine,so in some places you need planning
permission to put a charger on your house.
if your house opens straight onto thestreet, you know you have to do that.
(35:10):
And there are some places whereyou need planning permission from
your county council for a channeland from your district council.
For a charger,
Try putting one on a listof building . Oh God.
secondly, five out of six councils justsay, no, you can't have one of these.
Just like that.
There's no obligation to provide any, sothere is, there was a pot of money set
(35:32):
aside for installing these things, butit didn't come with any guidance about
how you can do it, who are good operatorsof these ski, like that kind of thing.
It didn't come with any of that.
So most councils just said,oh, sorry, computer says no.
Can't be having it.
and then the other weird thing is inthe councils, which do it, so like lucky
old me, I live in one of the place, theone in six councils, which is doing it.
The process is amazingly complicated.
(35:53):
Like it's 'cause it's highways,there's liability there.
There are all sorts ofquestions which basically have
bats.
Please tell me there arenot bats involved in this.
Es
I have counted any bats.
Look, it's a one inch gully.
They can't fit in the tunnel out.
They're very small.
Some micro batts, I'm afraid it'sa perfect nesting environment.
no.
What, the thing is like councils haveall been doing their own individual
(36:15):
trials of their own individualpavements to see if these things work.
Pavement is not that differentup and down the country.
. Some places you might havecobblestone, some places you
might have a flag, whatever.
It's not that different basically.
the other mad thing, and this get takesus right back to Rachel Reeves, is that
these things need planning permission.
'cause it's, it's a highway.
It's outside your home.
(36:36):
Okay.
But they also need athing called a section 50.
Have you had the, difficultyof coming across these?
No.
Okay.
This is the thing that you need.
It's the permission you need when youwant to dig up like a chunk of road.
You're doing a gas main, you needa section 50 for that, right?
Yeah.
But you currently need an individualsection 50 for every single less than one
inch wide strip between, it's amazing.
(36:59):
So it, it is like going through theprocess to amputate your leg every
time you wanna cut your toenails.
That's basically what the situation is.
and the, it costs so much as well,and it vary, like the costs vary
massively from council to council,but some councils would charge
nearly three grand for section 50permission, at which point you just say.
I'm not doing that.
This is the veto that I was talking about.
(37:20):
That which is the, I think it all thepeople who are talking about growth.
Do you have a real point that wehave layered completely needless
levels of computer says no,and you have to sign this off.
I know, not that I'm turninginto like Richard, little John in
my old age, but there is a kindof like you are showing signs.
I know below
three pods you've made.
Surprisingly conserv,
but I think this is one area in whichthe right is correct, is that there is
(37:43):
a presumption about not doing things.
They, what they call often theycall it in central government,
treasury, brain, right?
The idea stuff just too hard.
We can't do it, let's just keepdoing what we're doing already
there's down be some people who aregonna, there's some downsides, so
what if we just never do anything?
yeah.
like
the kind of people who think you,you could run a hospital really
well if there just weren't anypatients that are ruining it.
There's that kind ofattitude I think as well.
(38:04):
It does seem to be amazing that the.
HS two.
Yeah, I get there are certain problemsputting it in, but a very small HS two.
If we going along a piece of
pavement,
I would've hoped that was possible.
I know
if we can't do this, we're notgonna build . Another nuclear plot.
It's just not gonna happen.
No.
we that's not gonna happen.
(38:24):
No.
Isn't correct.
And, there will be places where, differentsolutions are needed where you can't park
in front of your house on a regular basis.
You might need to do morelamppost things there.
The process for, by the way,getting a lamppost charger in
takes between nine and 18 months.
That's the paperwork.
Getting it in takes one day.
we've got this reallyfunny situation where.
(38:45):
It's, very hard to do somethingthat would make things very easy.
because you've got a laudable aim.
Get the country onto veryefficient cars, which drive much
further per quid you put in.
That's great.
a quid in a petrol car.
25 p of it is moving the car.
The rest of it is lost as inefficiency.
In electric car is about90% is moving the car..
So even if there wasn't any goodgreen reason of doing it, it's you
(39:08):
get much more bang for your buck.
the full solution I think is the kind oflots and lots of big street furniture.
The way to make this as easy aspossible is to do the nice thing is
there's precedent for this excitingly.
Do you remember phone boxes?
Yes.
Yeah, just about . Yes, I'm old.
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
So the process for doing thatwas basically, there was a
(39:29):
list of approved contractors.
like big firms like BTor whoever it might be.
Were pre-approved to bang a phone box in.
Where they needed one.
So they did not need to go throughthis very byzantine process.
internet hubs, same thing happened.
This
is also what they're trying to dowith planning permission to say,
here are some zones in which thepresumption is in favor of consent.
(39:49):
Yeah.
Kept planning permission, whichmakes a lot of sense to me.
Completely.
And there are moves in that direction.
So if you're a big CPO, which is likea ChargePoint operator, you run the
big, chargers that you get a motorways.
And wherever you now don't needsection 50 permission anymore.
Yeah,
so that is a step in the right direction.
But if you, do the tiny oneto tried things, you still do.
(40:10):
So it's, evolving fast, to have alaudable aim of switching things
over and then to be making thisbit very hard, feels all a bit.
Ass about face.
I like your niche, which is basically thatyou talk about green issues in a way that
isn't just, oh, whoa, the end is nightplaying my bow . But like here are some
very small, practical things that we coulddo that would actually make life better.
I think that's a much betterway of covering the subject.
(40:33):
I isn't it
interesting that people say, we needa network of charging points, and
then you think we've got them, they'recalled houses . The network already runs
into them and what you need is quitea long extension lead, do you think?
that sounds good.
Yeah.
We have, it is exactly that.
you want to make a big change.
The best way to do it isin very low impact ways.
(40:55):
the, there isn't much that'slower impact than a, lamppost or
your existing fuse board, yeah.
I, in answer to what you're saying, Idon't, I have no, i, have no, influence
over US onshore or offshore wind policy.
but you are
in the pocket of bigcross pavement charging
anyone wants to crowdsource adriveway for Andy , which again, I,
(41:20):
there're a worse charitable project.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
But no, there are people who arelike paving over their front garden
so that they can just cram theircar into it and, and solve this
is, we're about for flooding.
It's not give for flooding.
yeah.
So for God's sake, write to your mp.
If you're listening to this,just write to your MP and demand
the right.
What do we want?
Cross pavement.
(41:40):
Charging solutions.
Charging solutions.
What do we want now?
Good.
Stirring.
There we go.
I've made this the hill I'm gonnadie on and I fear I might okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you so much, toHelen Jane and to Ian.
We'll be back in two weekswith three more topics from the
infinite back, the news wheel.
(42:00):
Yeah, . Until then, why not goand buy the magazine, which has
even more stories than these?
It's got about 50 more stories thanwe've been able to cover today.
It's a fantastic magazine.
Go to private hyphenate.
Co UK and subscribe right now.
Thanks until then for listeningand as always, to Matt Hill of
Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.
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