134: Mega MAGA

Ian, Helen, Adam and Andy discuss how the Right went online and  stayed there, and the secrets of Succession Season 5 (AKA the Murdoch family lawsuit). Plus, Phil Hammond reveals the latest in the Lucy Letby story and the continuing campaign arguing her trial was mishandled. 

Episode Transcript

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

(00:03):
Hello and welcome toanother episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the private eye office with
Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop.
We are here as ever to discuss thestories of the week since the last
issue of the MAGAzine came out.
And it's obviously an enormous crunchweek, uh, for Europe, capital E
capital everything... with varioussummits taking place over Ukraine.

(00:23):
And how the continent is gonna respond,how America has or has not responded.
And the thing I, I suppose we wantedto focus on this time, Helen, you've
been looking at a lot of this, is theincreasing splits, particularly in the
world of the right as we go, Mega MAGA And
. Meghan Maggot.
Yeah, Meghan
MAGA.
Because
there have been a few
big get Moed

(00:43):
Uh, there have been a few huge conferencesrecently, which, uh, things like cpac Yes.
And in London, I believe it was the Arc,ARC: Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
Mm-hmm . Which
does sound sinister Now I say it out loud, uh, and we'll see how sinister it is.
But these are things which don'treally intrude on the lives of.
normal people, but whichyou've been spending a lot

(01:04):
of time with . Exactly.
but Very important to very
abnormal people.
Yes.
.Sorry, Helen, but I
mean.
mean,
people like me, they are a big deal.
Um, Politico described CPA, which is aConservative Political Action Conference
as being like a kind of MAGA commenter.
Right.
Which
I think is a good way of saying Communistinternational, but it is, they are
these kind of great internationalgatherings of this very . Online, right.

(01:26):
CPAC's been around since the 1970s.
It used to be very mainstream.
Um, Ronald Reagan gave thekeynote address at the first one.
Then it went verylibertarian, very tea party.
And now it is essentially a kind ofaudition to be a Donald Trump clone.
So you get Georgie Maloney of Italy'sspoken there, having a malai of
Argentina turned up with this chainsaw,which he takes to bureaucracy.

(01:46):
that is the kind of allianceof people who see themselves
very much as the coming thing.
However, rwy'n feel like in a way, abit early to say that it's, it's peaked.
But I think in a way, the thingthat's fascinating about 'em is
they don't have any real ability todeal with that having actual power.
Quite a lot of these people,they're so in love with the idea
of brand being anti-establishment,that they very much struggle with
the concept of actually governing.

(02:08):
Okay.
Which I think
I think is fascinating, but I alsothink that there is a danger with
a lot of this stuff, that these
people are drifting furtheraway from the shores of sanity.
May I talk to you about Liz Trusts
briefly.
Of course.
As a parochial list.
I'm only interested in howthis affects our patch.
Yeah.
And
Well, I'd always viewed CPAC as a bitlike the doctor who conventional, one
of the international sci-fi thingswhere people turn up in costume

(02:30):
Yeah.
Um, and Liz Truss seems to be the ultimate
delegate
'cause she'll, she'll appear in some sort of cosplay.
Um, and here she was again.
Yeah, I mean, her speech is justannals about how online things are.
Okay, so she brought
she brought out the Albanian chickennugget story, which if you've
spent any time on the right winginternet, you'd be very familiar.
We should just say briefly what that is.
Uh,

(02:50):
The idea that someone couldn't bedeported back to Albania because
of they're a family member.
There's liked chickennuggets that they got here.
To be fair, the McNugget is one of thegreatest inventions of human history.
But the idea was theycouldn't be deported because
of it.
So the nugget thing, not not,
no, I think the nugget thing is,is true up to a point, but it's an
interesting one of these things thatjust becomes a, I mean, I've talked
about this before in the podcast.

(03:10):
You know, something that everybody ina certain bit of right wing politics
has heard of is actually axiomatic tothem that this is an exemplar of the
failed state, and I don't think theleft is quite as good at creating those
kind of memes.
Can I just say, you describedthat as a very, very online thing.
I think it originated on thefront page of The Daily Telegraph,
which is its own batch it space.
but is very online now.
Right.
It's been eaten alive.
It is no longer When we had thisconversation before the paper of

(03:32):
Colonel Buffin Tufton in the Shires, it
is now the pa, of veryintense looking young men
The paper of Bufton 8 5 79 9 on Twitter, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
She also mentioned the abortionclinic protestor, if you remember
the man who was arrested forbeing in a buffer zone, which was
a big feature of JD Vance'sspeech to the Munich Security
Conference saying that Europe
no
longer has free speech.
That
was

(03:52):
apparently the main problem
with Europe.
Right, and it again, a story that is true.
He was arrested forpraying in a buffer zone.
But the whole point of the bufferzone is that people being there is
intimidating to women seeking abortion
services.
And then this is the Apogee,I think, of the online list.
How online is this?
She then had to go about the fact thatU-S-A-I-D funded, Rory Stewart's wife.
wife.
The charity run by RoryStewart's wife, Shoshana.

(04:13):
And you just think that how manypeople in the world are in the market
for a story of basically Liz trustshaving a beef with a podcaster.
presume she had to explain forthat audience who Rory Stewart was
No, she didn't at all.
Just
She said they fund the BBC.
They fund the Tony Blair Instituteand they fund Rory Stewart's wife.
And the crowd
did not go wild.
The crowd went . Who,
as a rule of three, you put the onepeople know at the end, um, you know,

(04:37):
I hate to give comedy tips to LizTrust 'cause she's out shone all of us.
I mean, really over the years.
Is,
Yeah, it was, it was really interestingto watch, uh, somebody who has, has
just spent so much time on the internetthat they don't, they just completely
lost touch with what a, a normalperson would be interested in
and care about or might have

(04:57):
heard
about.
Yes.
I mean I'm obviously,
on
the internet
the whole
day,
. Um, but I mean, even I got Farage's speech, which again, as
a slightly um, older, um, reader,is absolutely extraordinary.
Farage turns up in a foreigncapital and says, my country
is a complete hell hellhole.
everybody there is miserable.
If only we were like theUnited States, we'd be happy.

(05:19):
We've got an appalling, you know, leftwing government and life is miserable.
Um, traditionally we didn'tlike people going abroad and
slagging off our country, and
I mean, to be honest, the writersmade a lot of people slagging
off their country over the yearsbeing one of the major problems.
But to literally hear a man ona quite an agreeable weekend,
I mean, I did go out a bit

(05:39):
bit,
when I
wasn't on the internet.
It seemed to me there were a lotof people having very nice weekend
lots
of
of people engaged in activitiesthat weren't being locked
up for
a failure of free speech.
I just thought you are now beginningjust to sound like a mad person online.
Well, it just reminded me of allthose, um, leftists in the twenties
and thirties who used to go over toStalins Russia and go, isn't it amazing?

(06:01):
Everything just works here andeveryone's so happy and like, we're
not like that back in Britain.
We'd love a bit of your Sovietcommunism back in Britain.
I wish we could have it.
And everyone back in Britain went, we
don't want
Soviet communism . That sounds terrible.
But it has got that same thing of sortof self-styled intellectuals going to a
foreign country and just sort of pandering
to
its
leaders.
Mm-hmm .That was very much . The toneGeorgie Maloney, I think at least had some

(06:24):
mild sort of sense that actually she mightbe passing from Trump's line on Ukraine.
But realistically, it was, itwas the giant Trump suck up
Ac I probably watched too much ofthis, but there was a sort of, again,
a competition in doing stupid salutes,um, because, Steve Bannon having, seen
Musk get vast amounts of publicity,then did his own version of a Nazi

(06:45):
salute, which he obviously said wasn't.
And then a Mexican actor who, youknow, like all actors wants to be in
politics 'cause they've seen Trump do it.
He did the same thing.
that is why I, repeat the sci-fi analogy.
You do seem to see people acting up.
And copying each other in a rather sort of
nerdy,
fanboy
way.
I don't think these people wantanyone to live long and prosper.

(07:07):
just to, to
Um,
Yes.
It was a quite a, a bleak momentwhen the leader of the French far
right party pulled out of doing hisspeech because he thought N Bannon had
done a n
Nazi
salute
bit far for him.
It was just, it was sort of a great sitcomwe've done for the moments in a sort of
very heavily far right conference wherepeople go a bit much, bit, much come on.
this is another strange thing.

(07:27):
I mean, if it's another thingthat I suppose Europeans have
to look at and say, well, a
lot of
Europeans living do remember a time whenNazi salutes are being chucked around.
it probably has a bit more.
Meaning over there.
I mean, it's illegal in Germany, isn't it
To do the things that are being
thrown
Yes.
There's a, there's a, big row aboutAmericans not understanding why Germany
might have quite strong rules about hatespeech or why indeed the German parties

(07:49):
don't want to go into coalition for theAF with the a FD, the far right party.
And, and there's a sort ofidea that that's illegitimate.
That's somehow by not working with thea FD or in some way kind of repressing
them rather than making your own activepolitical choices about what, who you are
and aren't allowed to do business with.
They kind of want.
That's what I mean.
They want no guard rails, exceptoccasionally someone does overstep.
Uh, Adam May be the onlyone who appreciates this.

(08:10):
Been 2017.
Guess who which Daily Telegraphaligned later internet
celebrity got banned from cpac,
I think Bleached hair.
hair, Milo
Opolis.
It was Miley Opolis who was exactly
spokesperson for Kanye
West.
Yeah, exactly.
In the most interesting
career
move
sort of inevitable career move I
Yes, from Daily Telegraphblogger to alt-right figure to

(08:33):
Christian evangelist, ex-gay to
Kanye West Burn, and maybe themost eclectic CV in human history.
But he was banned after he said,you know, I was abused as a
child and it didn't do many harm.
And actually, if it's fine to havesex with people as young as 13,
and again, there was this momentof suddenly lots of people who
said, oh, you can't say anything.
These days went, you
can't say that.
And I think this is the bit that they'reconsistently running into, is that.

(08:56):
Anyone who tries to enforce line isexactly you are saying is seen as being
a bit of a grownup, a bit of a buzzkill.
And I think it will just take them into
places that are obviously ugly
and
the
electorate
will not
follow.
So what's interesting then becomes whois going to follow, especially in weeks
like this one, where what happens with,for example, Ukraine is, is so important.

(09:16):
So we saw,
the a RC feels like a, a slightlyvanilla version of uh, cpac, but
there's still plenty of craziness.
Doing the rounds
there,
Kimmy Badenoch made a speechthere and, uh, she was later
interviewed by Jordan Peterson on hispodcast, and I have to say, Helen.
.You are responsible now for myYouTube algorithm throwing up a lot
of really ripe stuff that I , I would.

(09:39):
it's really interrupting the heatpump videos that I like to be served
and that I'm comfortable with.
Instead,
I'm getting loads of Jordan Petersonjust dished up to me on a daily
basis.
Tell, I mean, Tell, me about that.
you should try getting it dishedup to you for 90 minutes live.
It's quite
thing.
but she, so Camry bock, uh, youknow, ha has been trying to get in
on this a bit and, and clarify thatWestern civilization is in crisis

(10:02):
mm-hmm ..And
not because of people.
, let's say invading western countries and killing thousands of people there.
It's because of, uh, weakness
weakness and,
well, she's quite, she's pluggedinto, this sphere very heavily.
What she doesn't appear to beso plugged into, you've had
conservative local party associationchairman complaining that she's
not doing the kind of hard work ofthe, what they call the rubber chicken

(10:23):
circuit, doing
that kind of
level
of
rebuilding,
and that's.
That's chicken you eat ratherthan the rubber chicken being
the stock comedy gag for
a
Yes.
Is that
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're reading Rubbery Chicken and asort of mid-range, um, community hall.
Okay.
But yeah.
And so, you know,
uh,
also for our
non-online listeners, there wasanother row, uh, this week about the
fact that Fraser Nelson, formallyedge for the Spectator went on

(10:44):
a podcast called Trigonometry.
And Stan k has been a, is a bigspeaker at the art conferences and
they had a a row about whether or not.
Rishi Sinna is English and constantZen said, you can't call him English.
He's a brown Hindu.
And it was a ve it was a, a moment inwhich a lot of people sort of suddenly
went, oh my God, who are these peoplethat we've been associating with?
How, you know, how couldthis possibly happen?

(11:05):
And it was another moment of peoplesuddenly realizing that there
was a line that they hadn't beenenforcing and they're feeling that
they, they really had to do it.
The interesting thing about that is whowas on the week before Fraser Nelson?
Kemi Badnock was on trigonometry.
This is the sphere that she isplugged into having these Oh, so
spicy conversations does she want tobe a podcaster or does she want to

(11:25):
be leader of the conservative party?
At the moment, she seems really ratherhappier being a spicy podcaster.
and the, you talk about, um,ordinary people realize that there
is a line they don't want to cross.
And I think the line is differentin Europe because of our history.
And again, I mean this week and the numberof people have been coming forward saying,
I used to work for Trump and he didn'tknow X. Um, we had John Kelly said he

(11:48):
wasn't sure that Trump knew who was onwhich side during the second World War.
I mean, and again, that is afunny, but b sort of explains why
That particular group of people in thatsphere, they do not know any history.
So, um, the bits of it they chooseto interpret, are not the ones that
people living in Europe, See as thisis, um, where we don't go across and

(12:11):
that, I just feel that becomes reallyclear when , when you look at, Trump's
version of, of how the Second WorldWar went, what happened during the
thirties, what dictatorship means.
What appeasement means, that narrative,which we've all internalized.
He doesn't have,
But I think Trump lives entirelyin the moment, doesn't he?
And yeah, no, I don't.
There's no great ideology, bythe way, and the big attack on

(12:33):
Zelensky last week and calling him a
dictator,
which
is the most
ridiculously historicalbit of nonsense ever.
But that was just because he thoughtZelensky had insulted him by saying
he lived in a disinformation space.
So it's just that Trump thing is, it'sa personal insult and I will kick back
in the worst way I can think possible.
And then everyone else has tosort of go along with this and
turn this into some kind of
policy.
Yeah,
you're
right.
And the thing that's interesting is thatthis bit of the right loves to talk,

(12:53):
particularly when they talk about gender.
They love to say, oh, theleft, you know, taking leave
its senses are so outta touch.
But if you look at the pollingon things like, who was the
villain in the second World War?
Was it Churchill or Hitler?
Most people in in America are prettyclear on, I may able to call that one.
Or it was the same thing.
Who invaded?
Who did Ukraine, in fact bring iton themselves by wearing two shorter
a skirt Or did in fact Russia.

(13:14):
Invade them.
This is really like some of this stuff.
They have really drifted awayfrom median public opinion
without seeming to realize it's
all care,
which is kind of fascinating to me.
And may, you know, they're obviouslynot all of these leaders are all
elected leaders at the moment.
They're not paying the electoral price
for it,
but
at some point
they might.
Yeah.
it's interesting seeing leaders likeFarage who has managed to retain,

(13:34):
he does speak at these things.
But he has retained an eraof relative nor normality.
It was interesting seeing him beingforced into the grudging concession
that no zelensky is not a dictator.
Mm-hmm.
quite,
grudging, wasn't It
and
extremely
grudging.
I mean, Bo Boris Johnsondid si similar gymnastics
by saying that you reallymustn't take anything.
Trump
says
literally
Yeah.
But just
words,
to

(13:54):
any of
it.
Just
on your side.
side.
Yeah.
But
he's literally come aroundtoday and said, oh no.
It's entirely reasonable forTrump to be demanding all of the,
uh, the mineral wealth from, um,
uh, from Zelensky,
you know, in return for you.
Yeah, I was, that's absolutely fine.
You just think this was the oneplace where people still like,
chew Boris Johnson.
You knew you were, you were a hero.
They were like naming their kidsafter you and putting up weird
frescoes of you defeating dragons andthings, and you, you lost that one.

(14:17):
Now you lost your audience.
That's quite sad.
'cause there're asked, aren't there, therewere kids who were called Tony Blur in uh,
Kosovo.
Yeah, in
in Kosovo.
Yeah.
And on the generation of little Boris,the only ones left with the ones he
actually fathered.
Mind
you, if
you're in
Ukraine, you're called
Boris.
You
can
probably
know
this.
Implausible
deniability,
isn't it?
You can actually say no.
No,
it's not After
Johnson
Well,
he was there for a day or
two.
So

(14:37):
I suppose, the,
thing I'm interested inand is where does this go?
'cause the, the, this movement,the macca movement is.
Is in its pomp.
Mm-hmm . You know, Thousands ofpeople are being sacked across
the
states and
and in the uk
it's,
it's
clearly the media landscape,the telegraph, the spectator.
Lots of these, uh, publications seem to be
drinking the Kool-Aid
very enthusiastically.
What comes
next?

(14:57):
I think the, death of stuff like this iswhen it becomes, begins to seem cringe.
And my wonder, our question is, is, isit, does it stay feeling dangerous enough
that it doesn't become, feel slightly
pathetic?
I mean, if you look at the way that, um.
You know, uh, like Woodhouse waswriting about, uh, in the, in
the thirties about, you know,swanning around in his footer bags.
There was always an element that someof this stuff was, was laughable,

(15:18):
um, that protected people from it.
I do wonder if some of thisstuff does seem quite laughable,
even as it seems very dangerous.
There's other stuff happening too.
So the German elections among youngpeople, everybody in, uh, you know, the.
That German electorate hasmoved to the, to the right.
Definitely.
But women, uh, 1824 have moved to theleft to de linker just in extraordinary
numbers, just the most obvious shift,which is again, is an anti-establishment

(15:42):
party and there's no reason that theleft, the anti-establishment left couldn't
pick up on some of this energy too.
It's just at the moment, it's all, youknow, the, the green party in various
countries
are picking up some of this energy.
So at that might be, you know, we mightbe looking at a broader dissolution of
kind of, you know, the center crumbling.
But it's always only presented as onlybeing the, the right, because that's,

(16:02):
you know, that's where lots of the energyis and the ecosystem is of the media.
I think that's a really goodpoint about being laughable.
And, uh, in the same way thatWoodhouse's Spode, um, became ridiculous.
There was just a hint of it in acouple of Trump recent speeches of this
being no longer him being the bullywho's making the jokes, but a slightly
pathetic figure.

(16:22):
Mm-hmm
. When he made up his own
ratings,
that didn't look so good.
I
I
find it hard to believe that we haven'treached the moment of Pete cringe.
I mean, I watched that bit wherethe Argentine president comes
on looking like something from
the comedians in the seventies.
The wheel tapper and shunters socialclub and hands are gleaming chainsaw Elon
Musk, who for some reason is dressed as
The Terminator, but sortof halfway through the bit

(16:45):
where he is melting into
the larva at
the end
of Terminator two, and then hewaves it around and actually shouts
chainsaw, and you just think, oh God
Safe.
The my favorite thing about
cringe myself
inside
out.
yeah.
Is
the fact that
is, the fact the chainsaw
wasn't
on,
which was presumably
it had never been used.
It was
easy, but it was like healthand safety and you were like,
come on man, if you are sure.

(17:05):
Truly, man.
Like that's the
interesting
that that truly manly
man
surely
uses
his
chainsaw,
right?
Yeah.
It should still have sawdust on it.
it's like all the people with theextremely impressive cars that have
never got seen a splash of mud.
'cause
they're exclusively used
around Knotting hill.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's All this sort
of
North
Face
jacket
It's never been mountaineering has it?
It's only been to
W one.
There was a circus act calledour chaos, which was French and

(17:27):
they were properly
mad and
they had the chainsaws
on and
they
juggled with them.
Yeah,
I mean if
you're
not
gonna
do
that,
I'm
not
going
to
your conference
,unless Elon
Musk gets one of those fireretardant suits, sets himself a
blaze and runs across the stage.
The next one.
Is
he even
a real
man
at all?
. Can, can I end with a Liz Trust quote that, that I thought
was absolutely fabulous.

(17:48):
She said, you want totally.
She said, we missed thefirst American Revolution
in 1776.
We want to be part of the second
I
know it looks
like
What?
Miss it?
No, no.
What?
What were we saying aboutpeople not knowing history?
Wow.
She
did this great parenthetical and shewent in a way, it was against us,
in
way,
in
a
way,

(18:08):
in,
in in all ways.
We were
And ironically
now even madder than George ii.
So it comes full circle,
now we come to anenormous media news story.
I wanna say enormous.
I mean 15,000 words long, has beenpublished in the New York Times.
Adam, you as the reading,everything that's ever written

(18:29):
about the Murdoch family and theirmedia conglomerate correspondent
I've pearled through it.
I've read it so
you don't have
to
Yes indeed.
Not just 11 million words in the New
York Times,
but an equal number of wordsin the Atlantic as well.
So the last we heard of them, theMurdoch family, they were suing each
other in, I believe, a Nevada courtroom,
They were
indeed,

(18:49):
yes.
And
it's, it's Rupert and one of the sons.
A Slightly
right wing one and the otherthree principal children, there
are more children obviously along
the way.
Wow.
But they've
been suing each otherover the control, over
empire after Rupert
dies.
In summary, yeah.
Rupert is trying to vary the, uh,the Murdoch family Trust, which was
set up in 1999 when he divorced,um, Murdoch, um, the mother of

(19:12):
three of his eldest children.
And there is also Pru
then the second three areElizabeth, James and Lachlan.
And
I
know Laughlin.
Yeah,
Yeah.
We get in trouble.
We get letters when we call himLachlan, even though we spell
Lachlan, but he is Lachlan, so
yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
that's cause his nickname was lackluster.
Um, uh, and probably given to him by hisfather, given how cruel they all are.
after his performancerunning one of the divisions.

(19:34):
So Lachlan, Lachlan, you know,
Okay.
it's
our fault.
. So this was the setup when hedivorced Anna, who'd been married
to for a great many years.
She was entitled to half of the Empire,which you can imagine is an awful lot
when you're talking about Murdoch.
Addie Pom in 1999, and shesacrificed that in order that.
All of the adult children would have a sayin the running of the business in future.
Uh, this is the point of course where,uh, Rupert was divorcing Anna and

(19:57):
marrying Wendy Dng, who was his wife,who definitely wasn't a Chinese spy as
opposed to Elena Kova, who is the newwife, who is definitely not a Russian spy.
So
we've got, say it again.
James Murdoch, who British listeners mightremember a bit better 'cause of, uh, the,
the Levi set inquiry and
his walkon appearance there.
Lachlan, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and
per, per, there we go.
yeah,

(20:17):
if it helps that I do mapon quite well to the kids
from succession?
Oh, thank God in
that Kean Calkins one is sort ofLachlan in that he's the kind of
bratty one super right wing maybedoesn't really believe anything.
He is quite happy to goalong with the drift of the
empire.
James is sort of, uh, the eldest one.
Yep.
Remind me, the one who doesthe rap, what's his name?

(20:38):
. Jeremy Strong.
Kendall.
Kendall, And
that he had a kind of massivecrisis of conscience and
walked out.
This itself
or so he says.
Yeah.
And then
Shiv is Elizabeth and then thereis a as Pru, your fav is Connor who
wants to,
running for president.
Yeah.
. just, she's just vibing, but Yeah.
But they, but they do, don't they?
And there is a kind of one son whowalked out, this was the Atlantic

(20:59):
piece, was an interview withJames, who was, has, was really
kind of split.
He absolutely has.
So essentially the, the differencebetween, so the New York Times basically
has accessed all of the 3000 pagesof legal documents, which were in
that secret courtroom in, in, in, inReno, Nevada, which we talked about
on a podcast a little while back.
of this case was by the way thatthe judge ruled that, that Rupert
wasn't allowed to vary the, trust.

(21:20):
And so all four kids will stillhave a say in the running of
the company after Rupert dies.
And the reason that that matters
is that if
Rupert had got his wayand given Lachlan Lachlan,
more control of the company, hewould've been able to steer the.
Entire media empire in much more of Rupertdirection, which is a bit further right
wing.

(21:40):
Whereas the other three children.
children are seen as being
a
bit more lived in woke.
The word is woke.
The word woke was came up
in the court cases.
Yeah.
No, no.
Um, Rupert is determined that Lachlanshould be the one that carries the flame
on into the next century and beyond.
Uh, because, and I'm quoting here now fromsome of the court documents that were,
that were in the New York Times article.
Rupert says, Fox in our papers arethe only faintly conservative voices

(22:02):
against the monolithic liberal media.
I believe maintaining this is vital tothe future of the English speaking world.
So he's gone full bat, Knock on this.
Basically it's about Western civilization.
It's not just about who gets
to run Fox News, the TV channel
in the US unambitious.
Why
not the gala?
You know, it is just rid Western
civilization.
wild because there's already, um,OANN and NEWSMAX in, uh, America

(22:25):
that are to the writer of Fox News.
It may, and then there'sYouTube channels that
makes Fox look like sort ofhand wringing, like Andy style,
environmentalism.
Yeah.
Yeah,
But this is Rupert's view.
I mean, he's always talkingabout the papers as well as Fox.
So he's looking at, you know, the Sun
and the times in, in Britain and thinking,well, you know, all the others are, you
know, can all the pinko lefties, likethe Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph

(22:45):
,it's us that's fighting the good fight.
what else emerged duringthe course of this
MAD
trial?
All sorts of wonderful things,like the fact that he doesn't even
refer to James as James anymore.
He's referred to throughout the legaldocuments and by all the lawyers involved
as the troublesome beneficiary, oractually just troublesome, where they
could say, James, they just say, thiswill be a problem with troublesome

(23:06):
shorthand.
which I loved.
My other favorite detail in it was that,um, um, in the deal to hive off, um, 21st
Century Fox, which is the film studio sideof the business in 2018, uh, to Disney.
one of the, uh, sub clauses ofthat was that, um, Lachlan got to
keep his climbing wall on the 21stcentury, um, studio lot in in, la.

(23:26):
Atlantic also had this great detailthat once, um, they all played Monopoly
as a family and Rupert cheated,
and I thought, yep,
I believe it.
I absolutely believe it.
Just find him like a couple ofhundred dollars bills under the.
Under the
board.
We've all been
there.
Another wonderful detail was in2010, Rupert insisted they all go on
a family counseling retreat 'causethings were so bad within this family.
And I've gotta say, if
you think your family is screwedup, the details are particularly

(23:47):
in the Atlantic Police, you will.
You will just think you are absolutely
fine.
But that is an episode of succession
That literally
is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one went straight into succession.
we get onto that.
Everyone was absolutely convincedthat all other members of
the family were leaking to
the script.
Writers of succession.
Uh, we've already heard that.
You know, one of the of.
Rupert's divorce from Jerry Hall was, shewasn't allowed to talk to Jesse Armstrong
and the other risers on succession.

(24:09):
James was convinced that Liz was,uh, briefing, uh, the,, the risers
of succession, but it turned outit was her ex-husband, Matthew
Freud, who was desperate to talkto Jesse Armstrong, give him ideas.
But, but Jesse Armstrong declinesto talk to Matthew Freud as indeed
has ever the one thing that hisfamily seems to be able to agree on.
They all hate each other, but they. Seem to hate Matthew Freud more.
They're, they're pretty muchagreed that Liz's ex-husband,
Matthew Freud is,
is,

(24:29):
is,
is even worse than any of the Murdoch
I mean, I, you know, I know blurringfact and fiction is a big Murdoch thing,
but I mean, I find it impossible tolisten to this story without seeing,
seeing
Matthew
McFadden.
be honest, the script writing was anawful lot better on succession because
the agreements that came out, the Murdochprinciples, which were agreed at the end
of this, um, family canceling, retreat

(24:50):
sorry, just to
say
that's
a
funny
phrase.
principles.
Yeah.
Oh, it's, I haven't made
that up.
Mur.
This, and the, the Murdoch principleswere drafted by Elizabeth Murdoch and
they said the top line of them was.
We commit to undertake activedialogue with each other at all
times and to relentlessly communicateopenly with trust and humility.
Well, this is not what hasbeen happening in the future.

(25:10):
There were all sorts of accusationsabout secret meetings at C Claridges
to discuss the possible demise ofRupert, uh, and what might happen next.
And this was brought up in thecourt case with Lachlan saying You
were clearly plotting against me.
You are plotting a palaceco to get rid of him.
Why else would you have chosen aprivate dining room at Clarridge's?
Uh, to which Liz'slawyers pointed out there.
'cause we were sort oftalking about our dad dying

(25:31):
and what, what, what was gonnahappen about funerals and stuff.
And We didn't really want
anyone overhearing that.
You
wanna
go
Yeah.
It's not
. is, this is giving
me strong, strong whiffs of thetelegraph, which was all the,
the,
the Barkley Brothers Feud wasall about them eavesdropping
on each other in private dining
rooms.
Yes.
Was it the
I assume that's why
they
went for Clara's rather than theRitz, which it turned out Yeah.
No, the Barclay family had riggedup their hotel, the Ritz, with,

(25:52):
uh, with bugging devices so theycould all spy on each other.
I mean, they, these, thesefamilies are really quite weird.
These families that own media empires.
It has to be
And the Barclays were plotting againsteach other, and it did end up in court.
But, I had an awful feeling wewouldn't get to, to read about the
Murdoch version because they wouldhave different rules in, in Reno.
cause we'd read all of it, um, inBritain and marvelously entertaining

(26:14):
it was too, but It's all out
there.
Yeah.
All,
So what happened toMurdoch's desire for privacy?
I thought you went to Reno so that no one
could
know what you were
up
Well, this is the big mystery.
So the Atlantic piece is based ona very long series of interviews
with James and his wife Catherine.
So it's absolutelytheir side of the story.
And unsurprisingly, it comesout extremely complimentary
of James all the way through.

(26:35):
And it turns out hewas actually a bit of a
business genius.
He was completely underrated byhis father all the way through.
the
New
York Times piece, as I said, isbased on these 3000 pages of court
documents, which have been leaked by
someone.
it's, quite slightly hard to tell.
I mean, presumably not James, becauseJames would've given them to the Atlantic
who he
was talking to.
I also played the fun game of speculatingwho leaked, and I presumed it was one of

(26:57):
the other children, one of the dissidentchildren rather than the loyalist child.
Or at least rather, I wantto say perhaps their camps.
But it's got to be oneof the parties to the
litigation
to
access
to it, surely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I thought, um, it was mycolleague McKay Coppins, who's
a really lovely guy and a super.
Che who did the Atlantic piece.
And I think one of the things hebrought out of it that you don't
necessarily just get from the, documentsis the kind of human aspect of it.

(27:19):
What you were talking about, thatthe way he frames it is Rupert wants
Lachlan to succeed because he seemsLachlan has being the most like him
and, and having his Murdoch principles,you know, that, that it's an,
it's a kind of, it's an old man'sattempt not to die to some extent.
Right.
That he wants to know that his legacyis secure and he thinks that, and that
that does make it very . King Lish.

(27:40):
You know the idea that your childrenare gonna go and be their own
independent people, not carbon
copies of you.
Yeah.
I think is it most.
Yeah,
and I think it does,which, well, yeah, I did.
It really did remind me ofthat in the sense of just
that that's the tragedy of it.
Not that any of this stuff makes youparticularly feel sorry for any of the
people involved who seem to be fightingthat rats in the sack, but it is a very

(28:01):
human story about aging and death andthe idea that you have to let go no
matter how powerful you were in life.
It
ends eventually.
It
absolutely is.
And one of the honest things about it isthis is not about disinheriting the kids.
They all get the share of thebusiness and the money whatsoever.
This is just about who getsto run the empire afterwards.
And you know, in the course of thesetwo articles we go through the fact
that neither James or Lachlan have been.

(28:21):
Particularly impressive business record.
I mean, there's this weird thingwith all the Murdoch kids that
they strike out on their own.
Liz, uh, had her own productioncompany, very successful production
company.
It
was behind things like Master Chef,which you know, is franchised all around
the world, which was bought up by herdad for such a ridiculous amount of
money that the shareholders actuallyrevolted at Fox and, and, and sued him.
Um, James went off and set up a hip hop
label.
He literally is candle

(28:42):
I mean, this
is
decision.
Yeah.
but
that too was brought in by his dad.
So his dad has thisincredibly sort of, um.
He's, he's really veryunpleasant to his kids.
That's what comes oververy strongly in this.
But he's also quite indulgent, andhe will buy up their businesses and
bring
them
back into the fold
it suits him.
But Lachlan, when he's, he's literallythen taken over after James, James,
James screws up the phone hacking scandalcompletely, and the sky takeover and, and,

(29:05):
and
ends up
outta, the company.
Lachlan then goes on to suchgreat victories, as you know, the
dominion voting systems lawsuitagainst, uh, against Fox News,
costs costs the company absolutely
billions.
I mean, neither of 'em havethat impressive of a record.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's extraordinary.
But at no point in any of this,does anyone seem to consider
the possibility that the person
who could run the company successfully
after
death

(29:25):
might not have the surname Murdoch, youknow, they could actually get someone
else in who could do it, and all thekids could just retire on the billions
they're gonna inherit anyway.
One of the questions that Jameswas asked when on the stand was,
why did you not phone your dadto say Happy birthday on his 90th
Hwyl
birthday?
then he also sends over this passiveaggressive note on top of a load of
legal documents to James that saysps. Love to see my grandchildren

(29:46):
sometimes.
the, playing off againsteach other is absolutely
hideous
in all of this It really, really is.
is.
it?
It's,
not
nice.
No, I do like the idea thatyou end up on the stand in Reno
saying, you forgot my birthday.
Yeah.
Well, I
might have done, but I
had a lot on that week.
And
how did this happen?
the buying of Shine.
Now reading this stuff from thislawsuit did make me rethink that.

(30:07):
And then I, in a sense, I wonderwhether or not it was, like a
feeling of wanting to control allthe children and not to have one
of them be successful on their own.
And actually, was it about saying,well, yeah, you've done very well
with your production company,but daddy's still the king.
what it also demonstrated wasthat Liz is the only one with
capability independently.
Uh, semi-independently.
She's never, never gonna not be a Nepobaby, but to run her own media business

(30:29):
and make it very, very successful.
And yet she seems to have not beenconsidered in the sort of succession
plans at all, at any point.
And James makes it very clear thatthat's because his father is a
misogynist and he absolutely does not
trust
women at all.
And
Pru and Elizabeth werenever given a trust.
But then of course, you got thegreat mystery of Rebecca Brooks.
Who absolutely, he's laid himself onthe line for, you know, after the phone
hacking scandal, did his best not tohave to sack her, but when, when he did

(30:50):
sack her, gave her an enormous payoffand brought her back into the company.
So that's another bizarre dynamic.
She's about the same age as hisdaughters and, and seems to be
trusted
infinitely more.
more.
But
what that, if I were a, you know, apsychoanalyst, I would say that is
the child that you never had and someonesays, well, you did have children
you had all these
ones that you
didn't like and didn't work out.

(31:12):
So you find someone
outside the family
who you treat as a
child,
You just project
it
onto
them.
yeah.
So what happens?
all this amazing drama and fun.
What's the result?
The
result is that they'renot allowed to vary.
The family trusts, uh, they are attemptingto appeal the, um, decision of the judge
in Nevada, it's unlikely to succeed.
Everyone reckons, and in a way,all of this is slightly academic

(31:34):
anyway, because the Murdoch FamilyTrust, which was set up in 1999.
Expires
in 2030 anyway, this is only in five yearstime, at which point the kids are free to
do whatever they want with their legacy.
They can give it away, you know,they can sell it to anyone, they
can do what they want with it.
So this is quite technical.
Now.
There is a strong possibility thatRupert will still be with us in 2030.
So none of this will applyat that point, either.

(31:54):
His mother, I have to say, made it to 103.
Rupert will only be 98 in, um, in, in,
in, 2030.
Can I check, sorry.
When you say
this thing runs out in 2030.
the four children after that point,if Rupert is still with us then
and then dies after that, the fourchildren still get the creative
creative control.
At
that point.
They would get, um, under the currentterms, both the money, the share of

(32:17):
the company and the shared creativecontrol over what happens to the
company, but they are not bound bythe, the, the, the trust to keep
it within the family at that point.
By that point, they cansell to the highest bidder.
Well, at that point we'll get to seewhether or not James Murdoch sort
of the rubber hits the road, right?
If he sells off his steak and gives it allto kind of, you know, pansexual dolphin
preservation, then we'll finally know

(32:39):
I hope he gets a good price of it.
'cause the other detail that came outwas that, um, the first attempt at all,
this was when Lachlan, uh, Rupert urgedLachlan to buy buy out his siblings.
They all got $2.1 billion from the saleof, um, 21st Century Fox to Disney.
Uh, so at that point, theythink could be sorted out.
He could've taken over the whole company.
Uh, but unfortunately he refusedto pay more than half of the market
value of the company at that point,and refused to negotiate, which

(33:01):
was a tactic I, I discovered this.
Rupert also adopted with his own sistersand mother when he bought them out of
his father's empire back in the nineties.
He just said, there's thedeal on the table, elderly
mother, you take it all your.
You don't . So it worked for him.
But unfortunately, uh, LA Lachlan,uh, lachlan's siblings refused
to, refused to play at that point.
So, uh, we, it all ended up in court

(33:22):
many
years
later.
Very unhappily.
Now for the second half of thisweek's show, we're going to be
talking to MD Privatized medicalcorrespondent Phil Hammond, uh, a
regular visitor to this podcast.
And the last two times he's been on,he's been speaking about the trial.
And the conviction of Lucy Luby, aneonatal nurse who is currently serving

(33:43):
15 consecutive life sentences for multiplemurders and attempted murders, uh,
of very young infants at the Countessof Chester Hospital where she worked.
Phil has been covering this case forabout 18 months now, and there is a
growing body body of opinion and evidencethat perhaps the trial was not handled
in the best possible way to put itmildly, and that raises question marks

(34:05):
over the actual convictions themselves.
the most recent edition of the MAGAzine,Phil, in part 15 of his story on Lucy
Luby, has been covering a, an assemblyof experts who've been gathered
together to give their own expert view.
Here's Phil.
Yes.
I think the big change wasshe changed her barrister
and Mark McDonald took overhis new barrister and when I

(34:26):
had, uh, interviewed him shortlyafter he'd taken over and I
said, what are you gonna do?
And he said, well, the various
tactics.
But my main tactic is probably I'm goingto scour the world for the best experts
I can find.
You know, you need the people whohave impeccable academic credentials
who know more of this than.
Anyone else.
And although the court of Appealdoesn't like games of expert top
trumps, it will be hard to ignorea global coalition of people.

(34:50):
Plus, I also want to get UK experts'cause they understand the NHS.
So I want to get somepracticing neonatologists.
Who do this at the highest level inthe NHS to look at all these cases.
And I want to get international experts.
I want the two groups tolook at these independently.
And I said to him, do youpromise to publish the results
of their findings, whether theyare in favor of let be or not?
And he said yes.

(35:12):
So I thought that wasquite a clever approach.
I think the other advantage of gettinginternational experts, is that they have.
Much less skin in the game.
It's very hard to be a UKneonatologist and not to express the
prior view on Le Be's conviction.
Whereas the vast majority of theinternational experts he found
who all agreed to work pro bono,as did the UK experts, , didn't

(35:32):
really know much about the case.
They might have seen the oddheadline, but basically they were
looking at all the evidence of fresh.
So all the evidence that waspresented at the trial, all the
clinical notes they had access to.
, and when McDonald said he was gonnamake it public, I hadn't realized
he was gonna do it in two fairlyinflammatory press conferences.
So we had one pressconference, um, mid-December.

(35:52):
where some of the results of the UKneonatology analysis were reached, and,
and they'd looked, they've now lookedat four cases in great detail and not
found any evidence of deliberate harmand have managed to explain all the
deaths and collapses that they've lookedat in terms of, um, sick babies, some
of them receiving substandard care,some of them dying of natural causes.
Um.

(36:13):
They only looked at four cases in detail.
The international panel, uh, 14experts, um, looked at all 17 cases
you were originally charged out ingreat detail pro bono, and they've
reached exactly the same conclusion.
They can't find any evidence of,uh, uh, deliberate harm by anyone.
However, they do find substantial,uh, evidence of substandard care to

(36:36):
the extent that when I asked the panel
Uh, the lead panel expert, Dr.Shoe Lee, what he would do if a
unit was performing like this inCanada, he said I'd close it down.
So they're very much in the camp ofthese deaths are entirely explained by
a unit having a, a above average numberof sicker babies than it would normally
get, and not having the expertiseto cope with it, which is what my

(36:58):
original hypothesis was 18 months ago.
But obviously you need,we needed this to happen.
We needed people who knew what theywere talking about, looking at all the
notes, um, to reach that conclusion.
There's a slight complicating factorhere in that there has been an inquiry
set up to investigate the events atthe Countess of Chester Hospital.
Uh, the third wall inquiry, uh, whicham I right in saying is ongoing.

(37:20):
it's ongoing.
Yes.
I mean, it was based on the premisethat she was guilty, so it was
accepting her guilt and is predicatedon trying to figure out whether she
could have been stopped earlier.
and again, I wrote tothe thorough inquiry back
in May saying, I think this ismisguided because, you know, one of the
reasons she wasn't stopped earlier
is perhaps, uh, she isn't guilty.
Um, and you shouldn't just consider thedeaths and collapses that involved lbe.

(37:43):
There were plenty of others that didn'tinvolve her, and you need to look at those
in its entirety, but they decided not to.
So all they've done is assume she'sguilty, uh, and, uh, tried to,
to find ways to have stopped her.
Um.
It's now in a terrible fix becausethese experts have come and said, well,
actually, the basic, we're questioningthat there was ever any homicidal act.

(38:03):
Um, certainly the means of murderhave been strongly refuted.
So should it be paused until the CriminalCases Review Commission has reached
its view on whether it's returningit back to the Court of appeal?
I mean, it's a, it could end up beinga huge waste of public money, and
if it's based on a false premise, itcould come up with recommendations
that are profoundly damaging.
I mean, it may say.
You know, we need to put CCTV inall hospitals, neonatal units,

(38:25):
maternity units, operating theatersto watch people all the time to
make sure they aren't murderers.
Well, if no murder ever occurred,uh, that might be overkill.
So my view is it probably shouldpause itself, uh, until the
CCRC has reached a view, but.
As you know, the CCC can take 10years or more to reach a view.
There's no reason why Le Me'scase should jump the queue.

(38:46):
There are plenty of other cases thatare still being considered, and so
it may be at least a year before theygo through all this very complicated
new evidence to reach a view.
and that is, we should say theCCRC is the Criminal Cases Review
Commission, which which looksat cases which have, I suppose.
Where, where evidence hasemerged to suggest that maybe
another view should be taken.

(39:07):
Yes.
And they are in trouble themselves.
Their bosses resigned andthey have lots of vacancies.
And it took, uh, them 10 years toturn over a rape conviction recently.
So a chap was wrongly
convicted, was in prison for 17 years.
Uh, and there were variousothers waiting in the wing.
So let me, is not the only
one.
And it would be unfair ifshe jumped the queue just
because there was loads of, um, you know.

(39:28):
Well now global, because of thesepress conferences, you're seeing, you
know, articles in Australia and NewZealand and America saying, have they
locked up the wrong person, et cetera.
You've got very establishedpeople like Joshua Rosenberg,
the BBC, um, legal correspondentwho's now questioning conviction.
They've now been two articles inthe economists, uh, the Church of
England Times, or even . Saying,have we locked up the wrong person?

(39:51):
It's an interesting tactic by MarkMcDonald 'cause he's basically poking
the snake of his own profession.
He's basically saying, you couldhave got this really badly wrong.
What a, you know, an obedient compliantbarrister would've done is just quietly
submit his evidence to the CCRC, notdone to great big press conferences.
And it'll be interesting to see whateffect it has on his profession.

(40:11):
Now, they might say, gosh, weneed to expedite this because
there's lots of public concern.
Or they might say, this is nowso profoundly embarrassing.
Uh, we will kick it into the longgrass for as long as we can, so we
dunno which way it's going to go.
And I think the first time you.
Um,
spoke to this podcastabout the Let Be Trial.

(40:32):
You were
quite equivocal about whetheryou, you said, I'm not saying
anything in particular about
Lucy Luby's guilt or ance.
You were more concerned with
how the trial itself mighthave been mishandled.
It feels like your opinion
has changed
since
Well, the thing that needed to happenwas the very thing that has happened now,
which is . Really top end experts lookingat all the clinical evidence and saying

(40:57):
there's no medical evidence of murder.
Now my argument going all the wayback to the Bristol inquiry, which is
the first big scandal I exposed aboutbabies going after heart surgery, is
that the two things the NHS needed onewas mandatory safe staffing levels.
So if we are gonna do the incrediblycomplex operations, or you know, we're
gonna look after premature babies.
We need to have properly, safelystaffed units and we don't.

(41:18):
And the second thing I said is youneed a crash investigation team for the
NHS, a bit like the airline industry.
So when these things happen, people,independent, trained experts go in very
quickly, hard and fast, and they come upwith the reasons why had this happened.
In the let be case, this wouldnever have gone to court.
She'd have never been implicated.
If the experts are right andnobody would ever dug up a garden,
they'd have said, this is afailing unit with substandard care.

(41:40):
And we either needed . To, to, youknow, take it down a notch or close it
or give it the staffing it requires.
So that's, you know, but I was reluctantto say she's guilty or innocent
because that's for the court to decide.
My feeling is she had an unfair trial forcomplicated reasons, but the person who
changed my mind at most was a chap calledDr. Mike Hall, who was the expert witness

(42:00):
for the defense, who was never called,and he contacted the eye very early on and
Said, I think she had an unfair trial.
I think the babies were sicker than theprosecution was alleg, uh, alleging.
And I think there were more plausiblecauses for death than murder.
But he wouldn't share any ofhis reports with us because he
said they're court documents.
So we've had to wait all this time, 18months for other experts via her barrister

(42:23):
to be able to look at all the evidence.
So I was reluctant to reacha view until . Proper experts
had looked at all the evidence.
I now think it's far morelikely she didn't do it.
But I still maintain it has to gothrough the correct legal process.
Um, but you know, if you, if the bestexperts in the world are saying we
can't find any evidence of deliberateharm, I, uh, and there isn't any

(42:43):
pathological evidence and all thecoroners performing postmortems and the
pathologist couldn't find any evidenceof deliberate harm, it all comes down to
The ex, the prosecution expertswho appeared in the original trial
led by, uh, Dowey Evans, who withCharacteristic Modesty has dismissed
all these international expertsas, uh, talking absolute nonsense.
And I have no respect for them.

(43:04):
I mean, if he was sensible, hewould've said, look, I'm standing.
My, my views, I.
They were tested in court.
These experts are entitled to theirviews and it has to go through the
correct legal process that would'vebeen scientific and diplomatic.
Instead, he said, I don'trespect these people.
I think they're talking nonsense.
Um, and it's justinflaming things even more.
So in the absence of the clinicalevidence, there, there are other

(43:27):
things like circumstantial evidence,which were, were taken into account.
Things like notes that she may havewritten, uh, while these babies were real,
or the fact that she was looking them uponline, looking at their families online,
I think all of that is
in your latest piece.
I think all of that isrelevant and all of it matters.
However, there does also appearto be other plausible explanations
that the jury weren't aware of.
For example, the notes that shewrote saying, I'm evil and I'm

(43:49):
did this, which also includednotes saying I didn't do this.
Um, were part of her counselingprocess where she was encouraged to
write down her feelings, and oftenyou write down feelings of guilt.
That's a normal thing.
The jury wasn't appraised of the factthat this was a counseling process
that wasn't an admission of guilt.
Lots of neonatally nurses you speak to,say we look up patients on the internet,
including relatives of people who've,uh, patients who've died, their families.

(44:13):
We go to their funerals, wego to their christenings.
We do this and that, althougha lot of them have said to me,
we've now backed off from doingthat to avoid raising suspicion.
So her actions could have beenseen in an innocent light.
She kept lots of handover notes,which are not clinical records.
They're bits you stroll on a piece ofpaper when you're handing over on a shift.
And again, that's not uncommon.
Now she might have collectedmore and put them under a bed

(44:35):
than, than other nurses did.
But you'd think if she's, if shereally is a murderer, she's a genius.
So she's come up with methods thathave evaded all the pathologists, um,
all the internal and external reviewsin the hospital did, and now they've
evaded 16, uh, clinical experts, 14international ones, and two from the uk.

(44:55):
Is she that clever to havebeen able to have done that?
There are loads of nurses whowrote to the thorough inquiry
saying, we think she's innocent.
We worked alongside her all this time.
We never saw her do anything wrong.
Do you think someone that brilliantand devious would be careless enough
to leave notes for the people tofind, even though that she knew
she was under suspicion, mean?
It doesn't, I don't knowwhat her motive was.

(45:15):
It, you know, there's lots of stuff thatdoesn't make sense, but the bottom line is
I don't think the science and statisticswere fairly presented at her trial.
And for that reason alone, Ithink she deserves an appeal.
And from what you are saying aboutthis team of 14 international
neonatologists, they have found that therewere enough incidents that this might
have been described as a, a failing unit,

(45:37):
Yes.
even, even outside the deaths, uh,uh, of which levy was convicted.
Yes.
And that's always, alwaysthe most common thing.
If you look at the history of the NHS,we've had quite a few maternity scandals
and neonatal scandals, and they nearlyalways come down to the same thing.
A unit doesn't have the staffingor expertise or equipment to cope
with the volume and complexityof patients that it has.

(45:58):
And so this was a, a fluctuation that was
a sudden rise in the more complex cases.
The unit themselves, theconsultants themselves have said,
we're woefully understaffed.
We're only doing two wardrounds a week, uh, on average.
Um, we don't have enoughspecialist, junior doctors
or nurses to cope with this.
And they raised those concerns.
I think what's interestingis that the consultants
themselves didn't seem to spot.

(46:20):
The babies could have beendying due to substandard care.
Uh, and that to me isinteresting 'cause it,
it, well, it shows that you shouldn'treally be investigating your own mistakes.
It's the reason we need acrash investigation team.
So when you investigate yourown mistakes, you'll probably
have a certain amount of bias.
Towards not exposing yourself.
It's So what happened is that theywere convinced that she was a murderer

(46:43):
and they sort of led the police inthe direction that they had already
concluded, whereas actually want, whatyou wanted was somebody independent.
Now, the independent experts havespent hundreds of hours looking
at, um, uh, all the evidenceaccording to, to Dr. Shoe Lee.
Whereas the prosecution lead expert,uh, Dowey Evans said he realized
it was murder within 10 minutesof looking at one set of notes.

(47:04):
And that, that really worries me in this.
He, he seemed to have reached aconclusion fairly quickly, whereas
others have taken a far longer andmore detailed and measured approach
and reached a different conclusion.
So I think there arelots of lessons there.
The first is let's staff our unitsafely, and this may never have happened.
B, let's have an independentinvestigation team that acts quickly.
And if we'd had those two things,this had never gone to court.

(47:27):
I, I hate to even estimate how muchmoney we've spent on this, nevermind
the emotional harm that we've caused.
But in terms of all the investigations,all the litigation, the court cases,
the public inquiries, it is tens ofmillion, possibly hundreds of millions
of pounds we could have spent onemploying neonatal nurses for , you know,
these units, and to make them safer.

(47:47):
So it could be such a colossaldisaster in so many ways.
Um, and I think the other thingthat saddens me is that I've
spent a lot of time trying togrow up about patient safety.
And one of the things is that, youknow, in a mature patient safety
culture, you own up to your mistakes,you explain them to Pat, et cetera.
Um, and there's much less litigation ifyou have an open, transparent culture

(48:08):
where people own up to stuff and, and thislet be the whole let be case could set
back this patient safety culture decades.
'cause people are now just all, youknow, we are back in a blame litigation.
A counter blame culture that I justthink will be, you know, deeply
counterproductive to having a safer n hs.
So I think the ramifications willbe huge, which whatever the criminal

(48:31):
cases Review Commission decides.
Um, so that alone has made it probablythe most depressing case that I've.
Had to write about, but of coursethe advantage is privatize.
It allows you to goback to the same story.
The reason I've written 15consecutive columns is that the
editor allows me to do so, and that'smakes private eye quite unusual.
Um, but it, it has allowed me to immersemyself in the case fairly deeply.

(48:52):
And.
I keep waiting for the momentto hit me in the face saying,
oh no, she obviously did it.
Um, and it hasn't, after 18 months,I've got all the court transcripts.
I've spoken to experts on both sides.
I've spoken to Doy Evans, I've, I'vecorresponded with Ravi Jra, who's one of
the consultants who thinks she's guilty.
And it, it just more and more tome looks as if there were more

(49:12):
plausible causes for the deaths.
Um, but clearly the, thecourts must decide that.
Phil Hammond there.
Thanks to him and to Helen, Ian andAdam, Phil, their insights earlier.
That's that's it forthis episode of page 94.
We'll be back again in afortnight with another one.
Until then, go and buy theMAGAzine private.co uk.
go there, get a subscription.

(49:32):
it's a fantastic MAGAzine.
It covers all this and more.
We will be back as always inanother fortnight with three
more slabs of topicality ormaybe even four if you're lucky.
Until then, thank you to you forlistening and to Matt Hill of Rethink
Audio, as always for producing.
Bye for now.