The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Breakfast With Beau ｜ Friday 10th April 2026

00:00:00.000 Morning, you alright?

00:00:07.500 Are you?

00:00:08.920 I hope so.

00:00:11.380 Me, yeah, I'm alright.

00:00:12.860 Same old, same old.

00:00:14.620 It has just ticked past 8 in the AM, British summertime,

00:00:18.360 on Friday the 10th of April in the year of Olo, 2026.

00:00:21.340 2026 now.

00:00:22.700 You are the glorious band, the chosen few, of course.

00:00:24.440 You know who you are.

00:00:25.240 Come on, come on.

00:00:26.900 Well, you're not going to watch Mike Graham or Jeremy Cotall.

00:00:30.000 In the Bo Show.

00:00:31.740 Breakfast with Bo.

00:00:33.500 Come on, let's get real.

00:00:36.580 I'm joined by my producer, Little Harry, like every morning.

00:00:39.260 How are you this morning, sir?

00:00:41.560 Good, good.

00:00:42.360 You might have noticed I'm sitting in a different seat.

00:00:46.640 What's that all about?

00:00:48.700 Well, I'm joined by a guest.

00:00:49.980 I'm only bloody joined by a guest.

00:00:51.720 Charlie Downs of Restore fame.

00:00:54.220 There we go.

00:00:54.620 How are you this morning?

00:00:55.780 I am very well.

00:00:56.240 What a pleasure it is to hear those iconic words in person.

00:00:58.960 I'm a regular listener so it's very good to be here

00:01:01.500 There you go, lovely, lovely jubbly

00:01:03.340 Yeah, no, appreciate it, thanks for coming in

00:01:06.120 Thanks for coming in so early

00:01:07.420 Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

00:01:08.740 Yeah, very much so

00:01:09.820 Rocking and raring to go

00:01:10.920 Yeah, well it's a beautiful morning, good to be out

00:01:13.160 It is

00:01:13.560 It's crisp but nice, isn't it?

00:01:16.300 It's crisp but it's nice

00:01:17.220 It's nice, you can feel spring, summer

00:01:20.340 Summer's not too far away hopefully

00:01:22.120 Although they said we're going to have another cold snap

00:01:24.660 It was pretty chilly

00:01:26.620 I mean public transport was completely empty this morning

00:01:28.680 which is always enjoyable nice and you're coming from the east yes so everyone's going the other

00:01:34.060 way to you yeah so nice nice nice no it's a good morning to be here all right should we jump straight

00:01:39.820 into it let's we'll just do the front pages what's the corporate mainstream media banging on about

00:01:43.660 this morning all right we've got a bit about melania melania trump it's all very weird this

00:01:50.420 i watched the video this morning yeah me too and i thought the whole thing was bizarre it's a little

00:01:55.400 bit odd we'll get into it if anyone doesn't know if anyone has been watching the news in the last

00:02:00.800 what 12 hours or less we'll get into it the first lady made a statement it's not all that common is

00:02:07.040 it particularly for melania yeah but okay so without the president's knowledge as well if

00:02:11.120 rumors are to be believed that's for me that's the oddest element of the whole thing that's proper

00:02:16.580 weird to me but okay so we've got i'm not epstein's victim says melania and we see you vlad

00:02:24.400 That's Vladimir Putin

00:02:26.140 Not Vlad the Impaler

00:02:27.300 So yes 0.72

00:02:29.460 A little bit of Russia 0.52

00:02:30.240 A little bit of Melania 0.57

00:02:31.720 And of course 0.99

00:02:32.740 More Iran stuff 1.00

00:02:33.740 And a little bit of 1.00

00:02:35.360 Britain falling to pieces

00:02:36.600 In front of our very eyes

00:02:37.440 The usual

00:02:38.100 Yeah

00:02:39.380 De rigueur

00:02:40.000 The standard

00:02:40.700 The standard stuff

00:02:41.660 How can you not notice

00:02:43.020 It's impossible not to notice anymore

00:02:44.820 Is it

00:02:45.100 Yeah

00:02:45.300 Okay

00:02:46.660 So let's jump straight into it

00:02:48.600 Then the times

00:02:49.100 The venerable times

00:02:50.080 The Rolling Stones

00:02:51.180 Are going to keep

00:02:52.460 How are they still alive

00:02:53.700 I know

00:02:54.340 and i don't mean that in a nasty horrible way but yeah how is keith richards not dead yet i know

00:02:58.500 and again i mean that in uh the least horrible way possible i saw that and i just thought like

00:03:02.980 it's literally just like the boomer paradigm forever it's never going to end they will never

00:03:07.540 end yeah like keith richards will live to be 200 years old or something and put his brain into a

00:03:12.820 computer and that'll be in concerts in a thousand years time ahead in a jar like in futurama just

00:03:19.060 forever okay uh with world's eyes on middle east uh russian subs tried to spy on uk so i think i

00:03:26.900 will leave that for a little for in a little bit we'll talk about in detail when it's the

00:03:30.360 when it's the main focus of the front page and it will be it is uh but the ruskies

00:03:35.520 if you believe how the papers characterize it are getting a bit more belligerent in the north sea but

00:03:42.780 We'll talk about it in a bit

00:03:44.460 So shall we start with Melania then

00:03:47.480 So if anyone doesn't know

00:03:49.460 That's Trump's

00:03:51.980 Slovenian or Slovakian?

00:03:54.560 Slovenian I think 0.97

00:03:55.260 Slovenian wife

00:03:56.200 I mean she's a handsome lady isn't she? 0.99

00:04:00.900 She was a model wasn't she? 1.00

00:04:01.940 She was a model 1.00

00:04:02.740 She rarely speaks

00:04:07.580 Rarely speaks at all

00:04:10.040 which is actually more the norm 1.00

00:04:12.840 so first ladies 0.97

00:04:14.380 or even just first partners 0.99

00:04:16.740 like for example

00:04:18.280 I'm thinking of maybe

00:04:19.080 Maggie Thatcher

00:04:20.020 obviously had her husband 0.94

00:04:21.000 Dennis Thatcher

00:04:21.720 right

00:04:22.160 Dennis Thatcher

00:04:23.120 it's hard not to like

00:04:24.360 Dennis Thatcher I thought

00:04:25.320 obviously lefties despised him

00:04:27.400 but most other people

00:04:28.820 thought he was sort of

00:04:29.620 quite charismatic and funny

00:04:31.040 but he kept his mouth shut

00:04:32.160 most of the time 1.00

00:04:33.760 as first ladies usually do

00:04:36.740 but not all of them

00:04:37.920 so for an example

00:04:38.780 well obviously Hillary Clinton

00:04:40.240 for our sins 1.00

00:04:41.880 wouldn't shut up and wanted 1.00

00:04:44.100 insisted on having a political career of her own 1.00

00:04:46.240 didn't she? I mean she's a senator and everything 1.00

00:04:47.740 she was in Obama's government

00:04:49.280 run for president

00:04:50.620 failed, but she was secretary of state 1.00

00:04:54.100 wasn't she in the end 0.99

00:04:54.820 and Michelle Obama

00:04:57.740 big Mike likes to chip in

00:05:00.600 she always likes to chip in

00:05:01.800 but mostly they don't

00:05:03.240 mostly it's actually really

00:05:05.120 it's your job to be quiet

00:05:06.840 yeah it's your job not to overshadow the leader yes the one with actual office a

00:05:11.840 lot so frequently one of the greatest examples I always think of I think I've

00:05:16.600 talked about it before on the podcast and stuff is Jackie Kennedy Jackie

00:05:22.080 Kennedy was in a way sort of the archetypal perfect first lady in a

00:05:25.980 number of ways but she very very deliberately even if from time to time a

00:05:30.420 reporter would ask her what do you think about something or other what do you

00:05:32.820 think about Khrushchev what do you think about Cuba you know and she would say I'm

00:05:36.080 I'm not, it's got nothing to do with me.

00:05:38.600 That's Jack's domain.

00:05:40.220 Don't ask me.

00:05:41.060 Yes.

00:05:41.900 You can ask me about,

00:05:42.740 she won't say it in that tone.

00:05:44.240 She's very polite.

00:05:46.080 She's like, ask me about like the decoration

00:05:49.540 in the White House or what dress I'm wearing.

00:05:51.500 Don't ask me about policy.

00:05:53.240 So okay, Melania is much more just like that.

00:05:56.960 She's just, she's his wife and that's it. 0.61

00:05:59.540 Yes.

00:06:00.380 And I've got to say,

00:06:01.200 knowing people who have partners, men or women,

00:06:04.900 work in the political field when both parties in a relationship are politicians generally the

00:06:10.820 relationship is not particularly healthy so i think for world leaders it's actually quite important

00:06:14.740 that they have a jackie kennedy at their side because that means that they're not working 24

00:06:19.780 7. right that makes any sense when the when the door shuts at the end of the day they're a husband

00:06:24.340 they're a father you know they're not continuing to be a politician but when you have a kind of

00:06:27.940 i imagine like a you know frank and claire underwood type relationship which i imagine

00:06:32.580 imagine what that's that's what the clinton household is like or mr and mrs balls yes yes

00:06:37.060 indeed you imagine what i don't really want to imagine but what they're because obviously his

00:06:41.620 career was much more uh much more hope higher profile than hers first and now he's just a tv 0.85

00:06:48.740 anchor yeah and she's she's the foreign sex so i mean i i imagine ed balls is comfortable enough

00:06:57.060 in his own skin and his own career not to it to be a problem but still yes she comes home and she's 0.82

00:07:03.060 she's the power in the out of the couple now i would imagine that it would be best nearly always

00:07:11.220 if whoever it is man or woman but it's nearly always going to be the man isn't it that they

00:07:15.380 want a spouse that's there to to not get headlines to very proactively not be in the headlines

00:07:21.860 Absolutely, yeah.

00:07:23.400 They usually do, you know, like Sam Cam or something.

00:07:27.520 Just, it's basically your job not to cause any ripples ever.

00:07:32.100 So, and that's, and Melania's good at that, right?

00:07:34.420 She has been always, I think, pretty damn good. 0.84

00:07:37.300 And I think she's reasonably popular as well

00:07:39.160 among the general American public.

00:07:40.940 I mean, I don't have the polling to hand,

00:07:41.920 but I remember reading years back

00:07:42.980 that she was very well regarded by a lot of people.

00:07:46.740 Yeah.

00:07:47.300 Yeah, I mean, there's nothing to dislike.

00:07:49.520 Unless you're like a hater,

00:07:50.760 Unless you want to make out that Michelle Obama is really, really pretty

00:07:53.360 And Melania Trump isn't

00:07:54.520 They do try to do that, I've seen that 1.00

00:07:56.740 It's insane, obviously Melania 1.00

00:07:59.440 Is so much more attractive than Michelle Obama 0.95

00:08:01.580 Obviously

00:08:02.140 But anyway

00:08:03.500 So

00:08:05.300 She just stays quiet through everything

00:08:08.180 Even all Trump's

00:08:09.380 Allegations of sexual misconduct

00:08:12.740 She just keeps 1.00

00:08:13.720 Now she came out 0.59

00:08:17.000 Last night would it be 0.55

00:08:18.580 and did a little five, four, five, six minutes to camera

00:08:22.480 in the White House.

00:08:24.720 And she said...

00:08:25.480 A prepared statement.

00:08:26.180 Yeah, reading a prepared statement. 1.00

00:08:27.480 Because the First Lady will have a team around her, 1.00

00:08:29.820 a whole team of like publicists and PR people 1.00

00:08:33.480 and political advisors and all sorts,

00:08:36.740 largely to make sure there's no ripples.

00:08:41.140 So she came out and she said,

00:08:45.000 well, she basically said,

00:08:45.920 I'm not Epstein's victim.

00:08:47.360 I there's loads of pictures out there of me with Epstein they're all fake I sent one email to him

00:08:55.940 once just to sort of there's a sort of a thank you type one-liner almost I don't know I don't

00:09:00.280 know if it was a one-liner but I sent one email to him once just out of politeness yeah just a

00:09:05.140 polite reply sort of thing the only part the only times I ever met him was in public at parties

00:09:10.600 with trump yeah um never never went to his island never saw any wrongdoing or criminality

00:09:18.060 just complete denial of everything and i absolutely was never in a relationship with him

00:09:22.420 it's been alleged that it has been and all that yeah so i mean what what do you think about it

00:09:28.480 it feels like she's trying to get ahead of something yes but she's not like she's it's

00:09:33.100 been in the news for a day or a week that all those allegations front pages and stuff and now

00:09:38.480 she's responding to it it seems to have come almost out of nowhere well it is it is certainly

00:09:42.660 noteworthy given the wider geopolitical context that she's choosing now to make this intervention

00:09:48.840 at a time where i mean obviously there's now no ceasefire but that did you know that was uh kind

00:09:53.920 of the headline the last couple of days um and so as that collapses she chooses that moment to come

00:09:59.060 out and say by the way guys i have nothing to do with epstein like it's like why now and i thought

00:10:03.780 there were a number of things that she said during her address which were just very like they spoke

00:10:09.260 to as you said knowledge of something more something wider and there was actually one

00:10:14.300 line that i perceived as a threat right a veiled threat she said um what's the effect of male

00:10:19.380 executives who resigned when the matter epstein became politicized should be investigated and i

00:10:25.220 thought that is obviously a very pointed uh kind of i think that's about a specific individual

00:10:31.100 or perhaps a specific group of individuals which i read i read that to be a threat so obviously i

00:10:35.660 mean one interpretation of this is the trump family has been threatened by you know nefarious

00:10:41.720 forces who perhaps have their hands on uh epstein materials that could be used to discredit or damage

00:10:47.740 the reputation of the trump family uh and melania is therefore coming out and saying you know we've

00:10:52.740 got dirt on you too in effect maybe yeah it yeah it does feel like she's getting out ahead of

00:11:00.480 something i did think she looked shaken as well wait maybe wasn't happy about it was she yeah

00:11:04.360 maybe it's because she's not used to being you know in the limelight and and actually being the

00:11:08.220 one speaking but i thought she came across as being quite nervous yeah i mean you would be

00:11:12.840 unless it's unless it's your job 24 7 to speak uh you probably would be wouldn't it sort of one

00:11:19.200 of the biggest moments of her life in a way like millions of eyeballs just on her just on her voice

00:11:25.060 yes um yeah imagine if that's not your bread and butter it would be nerve-wracking yeah um

00:11:31.500 but yeah so i mean so that happened i did see one report this morning on on some news

00:11:38.540 and they banded about around um um candice owens that it might be so if not candice owens herself

00:11:46.960 people like candice owens who do a little bit more sort of and this is not a pop at candy

00:11:52.920 sounds particularly but just might engage a bit more in uh more rumor stuff yeah sure and that

00:11:59.960 people like that that level of commentator might well have talked about melania and epstein a bit 0.92

00:12:07.400 a little bit yeah and that she's just even that even that is like a and so annoying to melania

00:12:14.280 personally that she is dying to make a statement but as we said a moment ago uh the thing that i

00:12:19.800 so all of that happened and it's like okay like not really a big deal ultimately i'll take her

00:12:27.080 at a word i'm prepared to take her at a word there's no reason particularly to disbelieve

00:12:30.520 disbelieve her but what i thought was interesting was what the mail goes with yeah look donald trump

00:12:36.120 makes astonishing claim he was blindsided by a wife melania's jeffrey epstein bombshell first

00:12:41.800 lady took to the white house podium to tell shocked world she was not a victim of perverted

00:12:46.280 for a financier and in this it just it says the president told ms now he he didn't know anything

00:12:54.380 about the first lady's statement before she appeared on camera when i read that i was like

00:12:59.340 okay yeah okay that's that's fully into the realm of odd now for me yes so she must have

00:13:07.460 and the team around her deliberately not told him or his team then or they didn't and this is a

00:13:14.480 strategy and he's saying that 40 chess so that it can be seen as she's done this purely of her

00:13:19.480 own volition and i didn't know anything about it which i think maybe in their minds might give it

00:13:22.980 more credibility maybe it's totally possible yeah it's totally possible isn't it yeah i hadn't even

00:13:27.900 really considered that i just took that out of face value yeah it could be yeah it could be

00:13:31.580 can't put anything past these people i mean you know if that is just yeah right it's their job

00:13:36.260 to play a little bit of games isn't it um uh but if that is true that he genuinely did not know

00:13:42.020 anything about the fact she was about to make this statement and the first time he was aware of it

00:13:46.100 is when he sees it on the news that would be not that she embarrassed herself in any way or did

00:13:52.040 anything wrong or dropped the ball or anything like that but if i was trump i'd be annoyed by

00:13:58.220 that i'd be like what you okay you didn't drop the ball and you haven't embarrassed us and

00:14:03.020 ultimately it's not a problem but didn't you want to run that by me the president yeah you're making

00:14:08.280 a statement in the white house about things that do affect the government and me and policy a bit

00:14:14.180 a tiny bit and you want to run that by me love yeah one of the most contentious issues of our

00:14:19.420 time yeah you know the mass trafficking of children by this uh you know potentially more

00:14:26.800 sad intelligence agent yeah every elite in the west is implicated in yeah i mean you want to run

00:14:31.700 that by me first love you say potentially i think in the doj dump it just explicit an fbi file just

00:14:37.220 said he was trained by ehud barrett yeah in the israeli intelligence services yeah i mean it's

00:14:42.220 obvious like there's a document that just says that yeah so yeah but this is the thing i mean

00:14:47.220 if it even if it is a strategy that they want uh that in fact trump did know uh that this was

00:14:53.460 going to happen and he's saying that he didn't some reason it's a weird one because it makes

00:14:57.120 them look completely disjointed yeah because yeah so if it is the angle you said that they did know

00:15:02.720 yeah you they then open themselves up to the accusation of what's going on guys like you

00:15:08.920 melania and trump themselves and their teams aren't talking to each other what's up with that

00:15:14.480 yeah uh anyway anyway it's actually in the scheme of things everything that's going on in the world

00:15:20.340 right now not a not a giant thing let's have another let's have a look at this there was just

00:15:24.740 very quickly there was one other aspect of her statement which i thought was interesting which

00:15:27.920 was that she called for Congress to intervene on the Epstein issue

00:15:32.160 and to hold a public hearing for survivors,

00:15:35.500 which is, I think, quite a...

00:15:36.900 I mean, that's a huge thing to ask for

00:15:39.120 because that obviously thus far has not happened.

00:15:41.460 And at some point, as with the rape gangs in our country,

00:15:44.880 you know, at the bottom level,

00:15:45.900 this is like a top-level rape gang, if you want,

00:15:48.500 at some point, it's all going to need to be brought out into the open. 1.00

00:15:51.280 So for her to be the one to come out and say

00:15:52.780 that that needs to happen in Congress is quite...

00:15:56.060 That's a big thing.

00:15:57.680 yeah yeah it is yeah and um again you would think trump might be a bit like you're stepping on my

00:16:04.800 toes a little bit that's you're getting you're getting towards the fringes of actual like

00:16:09.080 government policy here now didn't want to tell me you're gonna say that do that yeah uh but no

00:16:14.480 you're right it would be good wouldn't it i mean they've got the epstein transparency act

00:16:18.120 and you know certain elements within the u.s establishment are trying to well are trying to

00:16:24.760 get as much transparency as they can yeah it has been noted hasn't it that in the united states

00:16:29.580 fewer people than many of us might have liked being held to account right still loads of people

00:16:37.020 not really being larry summers you're not being uh you know it's okay brin you know not being held

00:16:42.280 to account for what they may or may not have done we still don't know exactly what they may or may

00:16:46.720 not have done yeah um so yeah it was good for her to say that i'm prepared to take her uh completely

00:16:52.940 at her word what she says about it and while we're here while we talk about epstein um what is like

00:16:57.580 restores policy on that what's what's the thinking in uh in the camp yeah about dealing with it with

00:17:03.540 it well look i mean it's a matter of public record that elites governing officials at the highest

00:17:09.400 level within the british establishment have were directly implicated in the epstein operation

00:17:15.060 more than just mandy and andy yeah well i mean namely peter mandelson but various others as well

00:17:20.560 and our

00:17:21.580 Drew Jusbel

00:17:21.940 yeah

00:17:22.800 he was named

00:17:23.520 wasn't he

00:17:23.840 Nathaniel Rothschild

00:17:24.460 the fifth man Rothschild

00:17:25.220 yeah

00:17:25.420 and Nick Candy

00:17:26.520 of Refrain UK fame

00:17:28.020 I think

00:17:30.400 double check that

00:17:31.680 but look

00:17:32.540 I mean

00:17:32.840 our position is that

00:17:33.900 it should all be 0.77

00:17:34.740 all of the

00:17:35.720 details of any

00:17:37.020 British officials

00:17:37.760 in public life

00:17:38.700 who were implicated

00:17:39.420 in the Epstein operation

00:17:40.260 in any capacity

00:17:41.320 should be

00:17:42.540 made public

00:17:43.380 this should all be

00:17:44.320 published

00:17:44.960 it should be made

00:17:45.660 available

00:17:46.300 for public consumption

00:17:47.640 because it's

00:17:49.180 you know

00:17:49.440 it's our right to know

00:17:50.400 what our elected well elected and unelected officials have been up to and if they were

00:17:55.340 involved with this guy epstein and whatever it was he was actually doing um how does that what

00:18:01.700 does that mean for our politics and the way that our country has been governed for god knows how

00:18:05.260 many how many years decades you know um so yeah so we would run a full inquiry into uh the epstein

00:18:13.420 operation the extent to which british officials were implicated um and proceed from there nice

00:18:18.940 so a full hangout yeah because Rupert's I mean Rupert's not implicated he's not in the files

00:18:23.280 he's got no skeletons in his closet yeah so you know has to be done it's a classic family man

00:18:28.600 isn't it Rupes yeah yeah great stuff wholesome wholesome yeah go the full hangout route brilliant

00:18:34.300 what more can you ask for really what more can you ask for okay a little bit about NATO here

00:18:40.660 the US prepares to punish NATO states for Iran rift UK may face quote reckoning after audit of

00:18:47.660 war effort that's a story really about where uh like trump met with uh that mark rutker the other

00:18:53.680 day they had a very frank conversation it was it was characterized that as and now and trump making

00:18:59.700 noises again about pulling out of nato the u.s pulling out of nato and now he's talking about

00:19:04.100 an audit that's the word that's getting thrown around now in other words from the american side

00:19:09.560 of it saying wait wait wait stop everything what exactly have you or haven't you spent money on

00:19:15.540 how much money exactly have or haven't you given us for nato etc etc etc the idea being

00:19:21.940 you can only imagine obviously is that then he can point to and go look you haven't been doing

00:19:26.360 what you're supposed to be doing um so yeah an audit of it um and you can say it's sort of as

00:19:34.900 some sort of punishment yeah well the punishment one of the punishments that has been proposed by

00:19:41.140 the white house i think it's very interesting because it does represent a tectonic shifting

00:19:45.540 in the i think global political landscape and that is essentially withdrawing troops from

00:19:52.540 nato member states specifically in europe who trump feels hasn't done their part in the iran war

00:19:58.560 and moving them to countries that have um and this is interesting because actually the afd in

00:20:04.460 germany for example this week were calling for that they were calling for u.s troops to be you

00:20:09.600 withdrawn from germany um and i mean i do think there's a conversation to be had about the fact

00:20:14.800 that many of you know the countries of europe have been have been occupied by the us military

00:20:19.200 for a very long time um and actually whether it would be a good thing for that to happen whether

00:20:23.360 it would be a good thing for example for britain to have less of a you know intimate relationship

00:20:27.680 with the us because has it been serving us i mean i don't think so i think now they're more of a

00:20:31.840 liability to us than they are a help um so it's interesting that's being framed as a punishment

00:20:37.200 But actually a lot of the people of Europe are looking at the prospect of less involvement with the U.S., less U.S. presence in their country and thinking, actually, yes, we want that.

00:20:47.340 It is interesting that Trump would say something like along the lines of, well, we might pull loads of money and men and material and bases out of, let's say, Germany.

00:20:57.120 And at least AFD, at least patriotic Germans are like, yes, please.

00:21:02.380 Finally. 0.96

00:21:02.700 Haven't we been asking for that since like the 80s or something?

00:21:06.760 like yeah go ahead yeah please do yeah i mean even in britain there's quite a lot of u.s bases yes

00:21:13.460 air bases quite a lot and they were and just like in germany and all over you they're left over from

00:21:19.220 the cold war they're left over from the cold war and um i don't necessarily be an anglo-american

00:21:25.120 myself i don't necessarily on the broadest sense want to have less tires with the united states i 0.89

00:21:30.640 certainly wouldn't want our government to fall more into the hands of china or anything but we

00:21:34.340 don't need these cold war bases all over germany all over britain all over various parts of you i

00:21:39.740 don't think we we we need i don't think it's in our interest particularly i don't think america

00:21:44.360 enjoy it it's a it's annoying to them now isn't it it seems yeah i'll tell you something else that

00:21:50.220 i find quite concerning i only learned this recently and i'm no expert on military matters

00:21:54.760 um but the uk's nuclear deterrent is not independent or sovereign of the united states

00:22:00.800 trident yeah wholesale off of exactly and our submarines are only equipped to uh carry trident

00:22:06.080 missiles so there's no way for us and i mean the warheads and the submarines are manufactured in

00:22:10.240 britain but the actual payloads themselves we uh you know they're manufactured and leased for

00:22:15.620 america and we have to go there and pick them up and so if there was a souring of relations between

00:22:20.240 the uk and the us for any reason suddenly we would be without an independent nuclear deterrent and

00:22:25.320 i'm no fan of nuclear proliferation but we live in a in an era where if you don't have a big stick

00:22:30.560 you know you might be in trouble yeah um so i don't i don't like the fact that we don't have

00:22:34.440 this sort of military independence from the u.s and it's been interesting watching starmer um in

00:22:40.320 the way he's navigated the iran war especially in a an intervention that he made in the guardian

00:22:44.720 i think yesterday or it may have been this morning um where he basically in very vague terms laid out

00:22:50.020 an agenda for self-sufficiency and sovereignty um in key strategic sectors which again i mean i'm no

00:22:55.800 fan of starmer but this is the kind of thing we've been saying right we've been saying that look at

00:22:59.820 the fact that we import you know 40 of our food look at the fact that 80 of prescription drugs

00:23:04.480 are imported from China and India look at the fact that we import a huge amount of energy when in the

00:23:09.620 early 2000s we were a net energy exporter and the way in which Starmer has framed this and indeed

00:23:14.460 the labor government more generally is using the Iran war and the shock to you know energy prices

00:23:19.780 and so on to double down on net zero and double down on the need for you know wind farms and solar

00:23:24.540 farms and all the rest of it and I'm not instinctively against having some of that I mean

00:23:28.680 like a diversified energy sector i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing especially in the

00:23:33.020 volatile world in which we live um but nevertheless i mean we need to have a conversation about

00:23:37.280 north sea drilling and gas and and not buying our own gas off the norwegians when we could just drill

00:23:42.520 it ourselves and the rest of it um have the odd offshore wind farm but yeah but i mean i think

00:23:48.320 is restore all about drilling in the north sea yeah well we're just about energy self-sufficiency

00:23:53.240 and making it as cheap and abundant as possible by any necessary if that means having some wind

00:23:57.880 farms fine if that means drilling fine you know anything we're actually going to publish our

00:24:01.780 energy policy um a comprehensive paper in uh the coming weeks so stay tuned for that great and we

00:24:07.740 can go into more detail at that time but i think as a general rule as a general principle um energy

00:24:12.720 sovereignty is is crucial so it's interesting to see starma saying the same thing it's like

00:24:17.040 it feels to me let's state in the obvious why would any country if it was possible if it was

00:24:22.240 physically possible why would any country not strain every sinew to be self-sufficient in energy

00:24:29.400 yeah why would you not if you've got massive north sea oil reserves or even giant coal seams

00:24:33.960 still like in newcastle or wales or whatever like oh you might piss off a few just stop oil activists

00:24:41.000 by opening a coal mine again or something don't care yes if they stand in the road put them in

00:24:45.560 prison we need to be sufficient for energy thank you very much and food actually go back to the

00:24:50.920 Well, dig for victory. 0.80

00:24:52.040 Everyone's got to have a little allotment.

00:24:53.760 I'm taking care of that, of course.

00:24:54.820 But it's important.

00:24:55.960 It would be nice, though, wouldn't it?

00:24:57.380 Not to have to import 40% of your food.

00:24:59.360 Yeah.

00:24:59.680 I mean, I think, according to the Department of Agriculture, 75% of indigenous foods, which

00:25:04.940 is to say foods that we could grow commercially in the UK, well, 25% we import from overseas.

00:25:11.780 Why aren't we growing that in country?

00:25:14.280 It makes no sense.

00:25:15.340 Yeah.

00:25:15.820 I get that we can't grow bananas and limes.

00:25:18.300 Sure.

00:25:18.720 Okay.

00:25:19.500 We can survive without them, I think.

00:25:20.860 But we shouldn't have to need to, ideally, you know, have to import any potatoes, let's say.

00:25:27.720 Right. Yeah. OK.

00:25:29.260 It's absurd. And so it's just interesting to see.

00:25:30.700 And as I say, he did it in very vague terms.

00:25:32.440 And he talked about he said we should not be at the mercy.

00:25:35.540 There's a starmer in the garden should not be at the mercy of events abroad.

00:25:39.140 And we need to tackle key defence and social policies.

00:25:42.400 And he I mean, he basically just, you know, runs his his usual spiel.

00:25:46.920 But as a signal, it's interesting to hear.

00:25:49.180 i mean what i perceive interpret as being a distancing from the us and a desire for more

00:25:54.780 self-sufficiency in the uk which i think is only a good thing even if it's coming from starma yeah

00:25:58.620 yeah i've always said i'm prepared to give someone credit where it's due i've always said

00:26:02.780 if ed davie started coming out with base things and i believe he meant them yeah i'd be like good

00:26:07.340 yeah good great that's nice to hear yeah and so the odd every now and again very very rarely

00:26:12.060 but when starma comes out with something i agree with i'll say so yeah same with nigel even yeah

00:26:17.100 they say something where i'm like okay good yeah then i'll give them credit of course um and star

00:26:22.140 has been that he's not wrong is he no he's not wrong of course he's not and let's not forget

00:26:26.140 by the way on that topic um that if you know we were living under a reform or indeed a conservative

00:26:31.260 government at this time we would be you know fully involved in this war because both badenock

00:26:37.340 and farage and tyson zahawi and all of these you know establishment conservatives came out on day

00:26:43.900 one and said like let's get involved you know we should be supporting our greatest ally in their

00:26:48.280 war with iran um and that would have been utterly disastrous so where starmer didn't do that i think

00:26:53.760 he deserves credit you know and i'm not saying he's handled it amazingly well but he's certainly

00:26:58.320 handled it better than i think faraj would have certainly yeah he didn't immediately just say

00:27:02.840 yes sir anything you want sir yeah yeah i mean you can always rely on nearly always nearly always

00:27:08.000 rely on the conservative party to do whatever the state department says now yeah like the state

00:27:14.300 department does a 180 on something and the tory party just fall in line with it not 100% of the

00:27:19.620 time but near very nearly um it will be interesting in the coming years especially in the uk british

00:27:25.580 context um to see how the association with trump that farage has will affect his reputation because

00:27:32.540 trump's already and has been for a long time very unpopular in britain and it's only becoming more

00:27:36.880 unpopular um as a result of this war i mean the war itself um is is massively unpopular in britain

00:27:42.660 um and eight out of ten people i think are you know actively concerned about costs um of energy

00:27:49.000 and food and all the rest of it i mean i filled up my car yesterday it was two quid a litre for

00:27:52.600 diesel it's like what are we doing here um and so drive a diesel yeah i do i know in this day and

00:27:58.360 age um but you know the uh the the association that reform has with maga um is i think will become

00:28:05.740 uh a bit of a burden for them yeah it probably it's not ideal probably would be although is it

00:28:11.220 not true i don't know this about this in fantastic detail is it not true that trump's distanced

00:28:16.560 himself from nigel a little bit certainly since like the 2016 era when you saw it did seem like

00:28:22.460 they were properly friends yeah doesn't seem as much so anymore but but there's still definitely

00:28:28.140 some sort of connection there isn't it which i don't think will serve them all that well no

00:28:32.640 probably i think trump trump has definitely it seems as though he has distanced himself from

00:28:36.560 farage but i don't think farage has really distanced himself from trump right right

00:28:40.080 he's he still presents himself as being friends right with trump um despite the fact that trump's

00:28:45.540 not popular here yeah you know yeah okay you mentioned oil and diesel prices should we have

00:28:50.260 a quick look at the price of oil in real time i do i like to do this now on the show a little bit

00:28:55.300 still under just under a hundred dollars a barrel west texas surprisingly touch more than brent

00:29:02.260 West Texas just under $100

00:29:04.560 Brent sort of $96, $97

00:29:07.180 So it's only a couple of bucks up from yesterday

00:29:09.620 This time yesterday

00:29:10.600 Remember when the war started

00:29:13.680 It was just shy of $80 a barrel

00:29:15.920 About $78 a barrel

00:29:17.900 So

00:29:19.040 What I think is a bit unfair

00:29:21.220 What's not right to me

00:29:24.500 Is that the price at the petrol pump

00:29:27.020 Doesn't seem to really reflect

00:29:30.740 The price of crude

00:29:31.880 like people trying to fill up their car are punished much harder than crude oil commodities

00:29:39.300 traders yeah that's not fair is it no bloody hell come on it's the way of the world though isn't it

00:29:44.860 yeah but this is the thing i mean this is what most people actually care about right it's how

00:29:49.720 much it costs to fill up their car to buy a bit of cheese yeah right and this war is meaning that

00:29:54.580 all of those things are becoming more expensive and less stable and it's looking you know more

00:29:59.420 and more just the future's looking more and more uncertain um and therefore it's not surprising

00:30:03.840 that this war is so unpopular so i think any sensible right thinking you know britain first

00:30:08.160 uh force like restore written is going to say we should have no part in this war none yeah yeah 0.53

00:30:14.120 protect ourselves domestically from any potential iranian terrorist cells yeah of course yeah in

00:30:19.860 fact give more money to the police and mi5 to combat that yeah but yeah actually getting involved 0.87

00:30:26.260 in in like full scale yeah blowing up people in persia yeah it's just ridiculous not so much up 0.60

00:30:34.040 for that and this is the thing like the war itself is is just ridiculous because we know it's a matter 0.54

00:30:39.320 of public record that this was an israeli operation that they they told the americans we're going to

00:30:44.620 do this whether you like it or not and rubio did say that didn't he on national television he just

00:30:48.840 said that yeah and so they just followed them into this there's no plan there's no strategy

00:30:52.040 and it does it just begs the question like why can't the americans uh rein in what should be

00:30:57.540 what is on paper like a client state what's going on here yeah i wonder if and when trump if when

00:31:03.940 trump finds an off-ramp um and he wants netanyahu to stop whether he will i think that will be the

00:31:12.560 litmus test whether at that point netanyahu will be like no thanks we're gonna do what we want or

00:31:18.160 whether he'll fall in line well i think the ceasefire is the prime example of that they just

00:31:22.100 bombed lebanon yeah beirut it's not even it's not even where hezbollah are based

00:31:26.600 yeah i mean 300 300 odd people died in the last 24 hours or so in lebanon i believe yeah

00:31:34.180 and then like another 200 odd or so the day before that so it looks like israel are not gonna yeah

00:31:40.820 stop and you've got the finance minister so not a minor figure smotrick or smotrick i'm not sure

00:31:45.740 pronounce his name coming out i think this morning or last night saying that we're going to be

00:31:49.800 expanding the borders of israel into lebanon into gaza into syria you know this is the greater israel

00:31:55.160 project which we're told is some kind of conspiracy like you've got a literal senior israeli government

00:31:59.740 minister coming out and saying yeah we're going to do this it's like it's just imperial i don't

00:32:03.720 want to sound like a leftist but like it's just imperialism and the idea that the uk should have

00:32:07.960 any part in that is just absurd doesn't benefit us in any way in fact it it's it's it's actually

00:32:13.920 uh anathema and it's against our interests to be involved in anything like that not least for

00:32:19.280 the fact that they appear to be just indiscriminately murdering people children

00:32:22.680 yeah i mean that's the bottom line does is it in britain's interest

00:32:27.340 uh israel's various wars no i mean i can buy the argument to some or i buy the argument on

00:32:36.100 a conceptual level it's best if the iranian regime and islamic theocracy doesn't have uh

00:32:43.240 nuclear weapons yes well i mean that's common sense okay there's hardly anyone that's going

00:32:48.280 to disagree with that okay okay okay i'm on board with that i agree with that yes but beyond that

00:32:55.320 i certainly don't want a single british serviceman to be wounded or maimed let alone killed

00:33:03.880 for israel yeah right yeah so and on that by the way i mean you know if if if the narrative is to

00:33:12.200 to be believed um iran was cooperating before the war in you know the disarming uh their

00:33:21.340 who knows yeah who knows i don't know but at the same time by the way the iranians will have been

00:33:26.840 looking at you know what happened in libya for example um and saying well you know when you when

00:33:32.520 when we uh when we abide by the us's demands to disarm you just invade us anyway and kill our

00:33:37.900 leaders it's like the north korea principle it's like we're gonna have nukes so you don't do this 0.74

00:33:41.980 And I'm not saying that makes it right, and I'm not saying they should have nuclear weapons.

00:33:45.640 But at the same time, you can't, in a way, you can understand the mindset when they've been looking at U.S. foreign policy for the last, what, however many decades.

00:33:53.240 Certainly as long as I've been alive.

00:33:54.500 Since the late 70s.

00:33:55.480 Yeah.

00:33:55.600 Ever since the 1979 revolution, well, there was the Tehran embassy siege, the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, which lasted for ages, like 400 plus days.

00:34:09.480 well over a year

00:34:11.300 in the Jimmy Carter

00:34:12.480 so from moment one

00:34:14.100 the United States and Iran

00:34:15.920 the Iranian Islamic regime 0.95

00:34:17.840 have been absolutely

00:34:20.040 loggerheads with each other

00:34:22.780 but okay

00:34:24.240 let's move on then quickly here

00:34:25.420 because it's already gone half past

00:34:27.500 the Daily Telegraph

00:34:29.200 the Toregraph

00:34:30.080 a lot of the same

00:34:31.960 there's Melania there 0.96

00:34:33.100 looking radiant

00:34:34.260 well nearly

00:34:35.100 she's not quite a

00:34:37.540 she's not quite a catherine is she but um i had no relationship with epstein all right we've

00:34:43.080 talked about that let's just should we just move on um what have we got in the eye paper i usually

00:34:49.140 like to read the blurb because it gives us a gives us crazy it's some of the best journalism

00:34:54.280 you get in the print media is the front page of the eye paper of all things russia used the channel

00:34:59.660 to move war quote war suppliers as threat to uk from putin escalates they say iran war emboldens

00:35:07.440 kremlin as submarines quote spire on british cables fuel for food and spare parts for putin's

00:35:14.560 armed forces believed to be taken through english channel on two sanctioned russian tankers

00:35:19.900 escorted by kremlin warship uh blacklisted tanker carrying shipments of moscow's military

00:35:27.660 shipments of moscow's military accompanied through uk waters by the the ship the admiral

00:35:36.440 grigovovich a frigate armed with crews and surface-to-air missiles defense secretary also

00:35:42.220 reveals three russian submarines tried to spy on underwater data cables in uk waters and warn

00:35:48.260 and warns that putin poses quote primary threat to use uk security quote i think the labor party

00:35:54.040 is guilty of that anyway healy said quote no damage quote was done but accused russia of using

00:36:01.080 quote a distraction of the destruction of the iran war with frigate well with so with fragile

00:36:07.540 ceasefire under strain as the iranian and lebanon prepare as israel and lebanon prepare for talks

00:36:12.900 sorry that writing is just on the limit of what my vision can read sorry about that all right so

00:36:17.860 we talk about russia now talk about the ruskies a little bit so yeah they sent through a few

00:36:24.580 tankers that we'd sanctioned said they're like they're ghost tankers they're um what they call

00:36:29.400 them zombie tankers if we could we'd send royal marines or the sbs on board to just take those

00:36:34.360 so they which we've done before in recent times done a number of times over the years and in

00:36:39.440 recent times so they sent one of their at least one of their i don't know if it's a frigate or

00:36:44.340 a destroyer or something we had the admiral grigovic to escort it so we wouldn't do that

00:36:48.940 which we then didn't and anyway the overall the biggest sort of meta point is

00:36:54.320 the escalation of tensions with russia yeah and what are your thoughts and feelings about that

00:37:02.260 in the most general sense well it's an obvious point to make but it's not surprising that when

00:37:07.700 we are allowing thousands of you know unvetted primarily you know met like adult men from the

00:37:14.660 middle east and north africa to pour across the english channel into our country you know completely 0.83

00:37:19.400 unopposed that a power like russia would look at that situation and think okay so they have no

00:37:23.760 defense in their you know in their essentially their southern border their you know the english

00:37:28.120 channel um therefore we're just gonna do what we want there and that appears to be what they've

00:37:32.760 done and helio's response was we see you and it just came across as so impotent yeah to me yeah

00:37:38.280 yeah well yeah it sort of is we sort of are um i mean i remember i remember this so clear it was a

00:37:43.740 long time ago this was when david milliband was the foreign secretary so that must have been well

00:37:49.860 that must have been at the end or in the gordon brown years and putin does this thing doesn't he

00:37:55.020 or has done in the past where he'll be the president of russia for a while and then he'll

00:38:00.120 let someone like medvedev be the president for a while and he's merely the prime minister now

00:38:03.760 and then for a few years but obviously he's still the leader yes it's obviously all policies still

00:38:09.020 rest with him obviously so and medvedev just does whatever he's told and then after a period of that

00:38:14.800 a few years of that legally putin's then allowed to run for president again and just does it again

00:38:19.380 It's just a way of keeping himself perpetually empowered

00:38:21.880 Anyway, I remember back in the David Miliband Foreign Secretary years

00:38:25.500 Him writing, I think it might have been in the Telegraph actually

00:38:28.100 Him writing a piece, doing this finger wagging thing

00:38:31.180 Mr. Putin, we see you

00:38:33.060 Mr. Putin, you better not keep doing this anymore

00:38:35.340 It's not acceptable

00:38:36.640 Yeah

00:38:37.100 Like a teacher 0.99

00:38:37.920 It's pathetic 0.99

00:38:38.840 And yeah, it's obviously super, super lame 0.99

00:38:42.960 As if Putin cares what David Miliband's like

00:38:48.440 yeah as if as if he cares about uh john healy saying we see you he's like yeah i know i know

00:38:54.860 that's the point you seeing us yeah what what now you think you think like you think they were

00:38:59.420 trying to do this secretly like there's you know i think it's who knows but this seems to be a show

00:39:03.500 of strength we see you is the point the point is to be seen right yeah yeah yeah it's not they're

00:39:09.420 not scared and the other point there i suppose is that there's some underground undersea cables

00:39:15.200 sensitive data cables and pipelines and things in the north sea and they sent uh three different

00:39:20.660 submarines there but they didn't do any damage but again i think it's very much like when they

00:39:27.000 buzz the airspace they could buzz the airspace they send fast jets right up to our airspace

00:39:31.860 and even maybe slightly inside and then turn around yeah it's like yeah they're not trying

00:39:36.280 to do it covertly it's not actually like a spire mission the point is that we see them do it yeah

00:39:41.660 So

00:39:43.520 Yeah what are you going to do

00:39:45.120 What are you going to do about it

00:39:47.480 Is exactly what Putin is saying

00:39:48.700 Yeah

00:39:49.620 So ultimately the fear

00:39:52.480 My fear is

00:39:53.300 I don't think this will happen

00:39:54.640 But my fear is that the hawks

00:39:56.920 Like in the establishment

00:39:58.720 That for some reason

00:40:00.700 Despise Russia

00:40:03.320 Like really really despise them

00:40:05.060 Despite the Ukraine conflict

00:40:07.320 Even if the Ukraine conflict

00:40:08.800 Wasn't a thing

00:40:09.800 They would still have this

00:40:11.180 what i think is a leftover from the cold war type thing of despising russia don't know where

00:40:16.820 don't know really where it comes from exactly but if they somehow got their way or there was

00:40:22.480 some miscalculation somewhere and we just found ourselves in a an exchange of kinetic weapons

00:40:31.300 with the russians maybe in the north sea yeah and no one hardly anyone i think wants that hardly

00:40:38.760 anyone normal people of britain absolutely don't want that yeah and yet we might again i think i

00:40:44.840 hope it won't happen but that could happen now there's some sort of miscommunication in the

00:40:49.780 north sea yeah and something gets fired at this russian ship and the russian ship it's just

00:40:56.720 automatic they fire back and now it's a bit more than just a diplomatic hoo-ha yes it's like wait

00:41:03.700 are we are we at war with russia and we've got a tiny army and almost no navy really to speak of

00:41:12.720 yeah like wait what what just happened that's what surely that's like the worry isn't it well

00:41:19.400 this is again like you know a lot of this is over my head though to be honest um but i don't really

00:41:24.740 understand why there is this kind of real hatred between the british and russian security

00:41:30.220 establishments because if you listen to you know sort of uh figures from the british you know

00:41:35.060 military and intelligence um apparatus talking about the hour the threats that oppose to to

00:41:40.900 britain they'll always say russia is number one and maybe that's true right because i mean russia

00:41:46.040 is i've certainly no friend of nato right of course although they were trying to join it

00:41:50.300 years back but leaving that to one side um you know do i think that russia is like is our friend

00:41:56.000 well obviously not no but the idea that i accept that the idea that they're the number one threat

00:42:00.580 to britain is just it's it's strange to me and i don't know what that's about and you listen to

00:42:04.940 for example boris johnson who was of course the prime minister during the ukraine war which is

00:42:09.580 still ongoing um and his you know and since leaving office the way that he just is always

00:42:14.760 every week ukraine ukraine russia russia russia it's always that one issue that he chooses to

00:42:19.660 champion why like what to quote tucker carlson what is that yeah you know yeah yeah isn't isn't 0.98

00:42:25.220 a bigger threat to our the stability of our society from giant enclaves of foreign nationals 0.99

00:42:32.580 which seem to rape and murder an extraordinary rate per capita yeah isn't that a bigger threat 0.99

00:42:37.460 yeah to the individual people than one would think the kremlin one would think i mean look

00:42:44.440 my personally my view is that we should have good relations with people like as a general rule but

00:42:50.580 obviously if they prod us and threaten us we shouldn't take that and we should stand up to

00:42:54.260 them and if Putin's going to say what are you going to do about it we should do something about

00:42:57.620 it right that doesn't mean start a war obviously but it does mean make it clear that we're not

00:43:02.040 going to be pushed around as a nation because I think the perception is on the world stage that

00:43:05.460 Britain can be pushed around yeah frankly to be clear on this as well I have to always make it

00:43:09.940 clear whenever I talk about this stuff because people will say oh you're in the pay of the 0.58

00:43:13.760 Russians why are you being a Putin apologist no no I've said before he's to me he's a gangster

00:43:20.700 and a murderer yeah he murders political opponents and unfriendly journalists quite a lot he's not a 0.96

00:43:28.060 good guy but that makes no secret of that and we are strategically enemies yes i accept that yeah

00:43:35.500 i mean i i've read a lot about this i'm fascinated by the cold war and everything that went on

00:43:40.380 between britain and russia during the cold war and it's all still ongoing now but massively dialed

00:43:46.700 down all throughout the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s massive amounts of espionage between the

00:43:52.880 soviets and our security services in london in britain yeah loads it's crazily how much really

00:43:58.660 and it all still goes on but just way you dial down right uh but it all just still goes on so

00:44:03.300 it's not that i'm pro-putin i'm pro-kremlin i'm not he is like he is a gangster but i just don't

00:44:10.520 by the angle that that we need to sort of poke the russian bear in the eye every single day yeah

00:44:17.640 are there not bigger concerns yeah you know right yeah i mean so this picture on the front of the

00:44:23.160 independent it's quite striking royal navy and russian warships very near to each other it's a

00:44:31.800 little bit alarming a little bit alarming i suspect our guys the royal navy are under very strict

00:44:37.880 told us you know don't fire anything yeah unless unless of course obviously unless you're fired on

00:44:43.920 but then that's the thing if the russians for whatever reason even if it was an accident even

00:44:47.400 if it was a miscommunication and they do fire something at us you know it's quite possible that

00:44:52.240 things start going into automatic mode of course the the captain on the ship has got no choice

00:44:57.680 yeah but to fire back for again for because of military doctrine and stuff and then once again

00:45:04.600 oh we're at war with russia now are we yeah okay yeah we see you put him warned over spy subs in

00:45:11.040 uk waters yeah i bet he's shaking in his boots i bet he's shaking in his boots all right the mirror 0.56

00:45:17.000 again we see you vlad you know they're quite close to each other aren't they if anyone

00:45:21.240 if anyone's watching this you can see with your own two eyeballs but if only is only listening to

00:45:25.340 it there's russian and uh british uh ships of war pretty close to each other in the sea and again

00:45:33.540 the timing of it is interesting because it's almost like in the you know in the whilst our

00:45:37.280 leaders are dealing with the iran situation and starmer is trying to as he does mediate between

00:45:44.180 the various parties russia pokes their head and says we're still here yeah almost as like a like

00:45:50.540 a taunt taunting them in this moment of uh in this very fragile moment yeah so you've got your

00:45:55.160 hands full have you guys interesting to know but that's the other thing i'll say about russia is

00:46:00.620 that they have very much got their hands full.

00:46:03.160 I mean, the Russian military capabilities

00:46:07.920 have been shown in Ukraine

00:46:09.380 to be not exactly world-beating, are they?

00:46:14.140 I mean, it's a difficult war, actually,

00:46:15.820 when you drill down into sort of the day-to-day

00:46:18.220 tactical realities of the war in the Donbass.

00:46:20.980 It's a pretty tough war, actually.

00:46:22.920 But nonetheless, Putin wasn't able to just tie that up 0.69

00:46:27.400 with a nice bow in like two weeks flat wasn't he it's uh okay so the guardian so gross netanyahu

00:46:35.020 calls for lebanon talks after israel airstrikes condemned so yeah bibby is not stopping is he

00:46:41.640 if anything he i feel like if anything he feels like he might be forced by rubio and trump to

00:46:49.340 stop so this is the last moment to put your foot on the gas right now if anything so it might only

00:46:54.720 have days left to do some bombing so he's going to get as much in as possible yeah maybe and beyond

00:46:59.340 that i mean i do wonder whether uh the just more broadly the israelis chose this moment to one

00:47:06.940 start the war with iran and then to be completely unrelenting in their you know in their attacks on

00:47:13.000 iran and lebanon and all the rest of it because they know they're never going to get another trump

00:47:17.000 right because american european british public opinion of israel and the war in iran is so bad

00:47:24.740 now they know they're never going to have another shot like this one with somebody as frankly i mean

00:47:30.400 i don't want to say weak but you know like the way that trump has been in relation to the israelis

00:47:36.420 is utterly supine right are they going to get another shot like that maybe not maybe that i

00:47:41.060 think they probably think they won't so they're just doing it all now it's funny on that because

00:47:46.020 trump so there's there's like clips of trump from years back years before his president

00:47:51.000 saying things like if it was up to me iran would never be able to get a nuclear weapon so there's

00:47:57.980 that obviously but then there's sweets he did during the george w bush year again long before

00:48:03.360 he was president the first time even saying adventures in the middle east are disastrous

00:48:08.080 and insane and not in u.s interest of course that's what he won in 2016 right he i'm the

00:48:12.640 never forever a forever war guy uh but then when he did get in in 2016 one of the first things he

00:48:19.420 said was about iran and that they can't have a nuclear weapon but then i'm i'm the i'm not into

00:48:26.260 forever wars look how many wars i've solved etc and one story that netanyahu himself said just a

00:48:34.740 couple of weeks ago when trump got in the second time he netanyahu went to mar-a-lago sort of right

00:48:40.780 away and apparently the anecdote was something like as soon as netanyahu walked into the room

00:48:46.120 trump said to him first we're going to do something about iran right bibi right that's

00:48:52.320 according to bibi but okay the point is i'm trying to make with all of that is that trump has both

00:48:57.440 been very bellicose about it for years but has also been against giant foreign adventures which

00:49:05.500 aren't in the interest directly directly in the interest of the united states so you can make the

00:49:09.380 argument both ways but yeah what something seems to have changed though hasn't it something seems

00:49:14.560 to have changed from his first term to this term with regards to and then there was that guy joseph

00:49:20.340 kent and there was some reporting that jd vance was against it and trump just completely overruled

00:49:25.520 him yeah or there's a story a few weeks back a week or more ago that jd vance was on the phone

00:49:30.500 to netanyahu having a go at him saying you miss oldest to us yes whether all that's true or not

00:49:35.120 both sides

00:49:35.500 break that down

00:49:36.360 but

00:49:36.560 there was one

00:49:37.680 I think it was

00:49:38.180 in the New York Times

00:49:39.000 distancing Rubio

00:49:40.740 Vance and others

00:49:41.760 at the top of the

00:49:42.700 American government

00:49:43.280 from this whole thing

00:49:44.000 and basically trying

00:49:44.560 to pin the whole thing

00:49:45.180 on Trump and Hegseth

00:49:46.440 yes

00:49:47.160 very interesting

00:49:47.660 manoeuvring

00:49:48.180 there was a story

00:49:49.520 about a week ago

00:49:50.340 and it said that

00:49:50.860 Vance rung up

00:49:51.940 Netanyahu

00:49:52.780 and said

00:49:54.120 you missold this to us

00:49:55.540 you mischaracterised it

00:49:56.720 to the Donald

00:49:57.420 you said this would be

00:49:58.840 a piece of cake

00:49:59.460 you said we need to 1.00

00:50:00.720 take out the Ayatollah 1.00

00:50:01.560 and it's done

00:50:02.180 uh what now yeah but both sides played that reporting down yes but all right all right

00:50:10.460 let's see what else have we got the financial times um oil prices spike over a hundred dollars

00:50:15.240 a barrel it's under a hundred dollars a barrel all right um the express it's it's a good paper

00:50:24.680 this is a different story talk about very briefly it says blockaded by french fuel

00:50:31.300 protest all it is is a story that corsica which is a little island in med between spain and italy

00:50:36.900 which completely belongs to france it's just french territory uh some french uh fishermen

00:50:42.340 people are doing a protest and blockading some of the ports in corsica preventing some cruise ships

00:50:48.740 well all the cruise ships from leaving so and there's and there's some brits affected british

00:50:54.960 tourists affected so there you go it's a little bit of a story for some reason the express

00:51:01.040 believes that's front page news today all right there's my line here again and the headline says

00:51:07.680 uh now red ed's green idiocy halts ai deal worth billions and it's the story that um was it open 0.86

00:51:14.740 ai the company that does chat gbt we're going to invest billions in britain and build a big 0.97

00:51:19.300 base a big hub yeah here and now they've just said we're not going to because of red tape and

00:51:23.860 energy costs do you know what's interesting about this tony blair must be seething about this because

00:51:29.220 i'm reading his because he loves ai doesn't he this is the thing so i'm reading on leadership

00:51:32.660 which is most his most recent book it's very interesting book and it's it's so funny because

00:51:36.540 it's kind of part sober objective analysis of the art of government or whatever and it's very

00:51:41.700 interesting for that reason just to hear about his view of these things but it's also part manifesto

00:51:46.060 quite explicitly it's about here's what's important here's what you should be trying to help himself

00:51:50.000 find out and i mean there's plenty on there in digital on digital id there's plenty on

00:51:54.240 ai and this this thing this his his obsession with ai is so apparent in this book um and something

00:52:00.540 that he says is that having data centers in your country is going to be an essential kind of uh

00:52:06.680 you know it's essential strategic infrastructure moving into the middle and late 21st century

00:52:12.700 because ai is the technology um of this of this era and you have to use it in government you have

00:52:18.240 to use it in business you have to use it everywhere you have to apply it to all problems and your

00:52:22.060 society will get much better and i'm i'm very skeptical of that view i understand where he's

00:52:26.440 coming from obviously because it's powerful technology um but there's a reason that he has

00:52:30.500 actually distanced himself from net zero uh i think and that's because he he recognizes that

00:52:35.660 it's driving up the cost of energy and making it very difficult for ai companies to uh set up

00:52:41.120 business in britain and in any country that prioritizes you know green energy and and all

00:52:47.360 the rest of it um so it's interesting to see this this discord between the blairites and uh

00:52:53.200 and the kind of i don't know the net zero faction of the labor party so at least in the dark lord's

00:52:58.700 mind tony blair knight of the garter um he if he had to choose between green energy and ai he's

00:53:07.900 picking the ai side of that ledger every time which which dystopia do you want green dystopia

00:53:13.160 or AI dystopia.

00:53:14.220 And he's on the AI side of that.

00:53:16.000 Yeah, crazy.

00:53:18.060 Okay, so...

00:53:19.260 Just very quickly on this.

00:53:20.560 Yeah, this is obviously a bad thing.

00:53:22.460 Like, we should be attracting business

00:53:24.000 and everything to our country.

00:53:25.380 And I do think, obviously,

00:53:26.300 AI is the technology of the future.

00:53:28.100 Now, how we use it

00:53:28.980 and how it's regulated

00:53:29.660 is a different question.

00:53:31.160 I'm not so convinced as Blair is

00:53:32.880 that it's this kind of silver bullet,

00:53:35.440 one-size-fits-all solution to everything,

00:53:37.400 which is what he seems to think it is.

00:53:39.580 But nevertheless,

00:53:40.360 it's bad that we have energy policies

00:53:41.800 that mean that companies like chat gpt aren't interested in doing business with us that's a bad

00:53:45.720 thing yeah absolutely and beyond just ai yeah beyond ai companies like open ai all right but

00:53:52.680 loads and loads and loads of different companies all sorts of manufacturing any type of company

00:53:56.680 really yeah just flee this country because it's ruinously expensive yeah as simple as that it's

00:54:03.000 ruinously expensive for them we'll just move to well anywhere else yeah like ireland loads of

00:54:08.760 of companies move to ireland or indonesia yeah vietnam anywhere anywhere that isn't ruinously

00:54:15.080 expensive i'll tell you something else that is interesting as well is um i'm just going to plot

00:54:19.720 the quote here uh about the relationship between immigration and ai it's a little bit off topic but

00:54:23.880 i think it's kind of interesting but alex carp ceo of palantir of course um he said recently that

00:54:30.120 it's uh the the trends in ai that blair is talking about and all the rest of it make it hard to

00:54:35.000 to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized

00:54:38.320 skill and people like him as well as larry think have all said that actually mass low skill

00:54:44.540 immigration of the type that britain has indulged in over the last 30 years uh is actually an

00:54:49.620 inhibitor to ai innovation specifically ai innovation in your country so it's interesting 0.99

00:54:55.400 like the relationship between these two articles of faith for our ruling class which is net zero

00:54:59.860 and mass immigration the way in which then those two things are now kind of turning things around

00:55:04.240 on them and making it very difficult for them to embrace this you know this so-called technology

00:55:08.520 of the future blair again must be seething classic yeah yeah yeah uh one one slight point

00:55:14.120 i'll make is uh i deeply deeply distrust ai yeah of course i would i would uh i would not be

00:55:23.260 interested in uh having uh oh maybe he's right that there's just no well he's probably right

00:55:29.800 that there's no real avoiding it it is already the technology of the future and if you're not

00:55:34.960 on board you will just simply get left behind okay i sort of this problem that's almost this

00:55:39.340 classic true but everything to be fair but i mean if it was entirely up to me if i was if i was

00:55:43.360 hegemon of the whole world let's put it that way i would ramp down a lot of ai stuff i would um

00:55:53.320 i would i would john connor it yeah i'd destroy it i do think something very interesting a few

00:55:57.960 years back you'll remember um tucker carlson did an interview ben shapiro in which he said he would

00:56:02.460 gladly if he was president uh block the introduction of um kind of self-driving um lorries and all that

00:56:10.160 sort of thing because lorry driving is a you know is the main i think the main employer of a huge

00:56:15.460 number of americans um and if ai was to be introduced in that industry uh it would put it

00:56:20.700 put millions of people out of work which would obviously be a bad thing and so in the name of

00:56:24.040 efficiency and profit and all the rest of it it might be good and ben shapiro was arguing for

00:56:28.220 those reasons that it would be good to automate these kinds of things um but it is interesting

00:56:33.220 i mean how are we going to deal with the uh you know unemployment that ai and automation is going

00:56:39.080 to cause i mean this blair is right to say that's one of the sort of key uh you know problems of our

00:56:44.740 of our age you know how are we going to navigate that and i'm i'm with you broadly i think that

00:56:48.760 you know even if it could be shown that ai and automation are going to lead to you know x percentage

00:56:53.180 increase in profits and efficiency and you know reduction in overheads and all the rest of it if

00:56:57.580 it puts millions of people out of work and then we're going to have to have some kind of like

00:57:01.540 universal yeah ubi universal credit thing like is that good is that good for our society the line

00:57:07.220 on the graph is going up sure but is that good for us i don't think it is yeah no you're absolutely

00:57:11.160 right my concern is even even broader than that it's the um and i know artificial intelligence

00:57:18.380 at the moment isn't truly intelligent in any real sense they're still LLMs right large language

00:57:23.520 models basically but my fear is that and I'm talking about decades maybe even centuries into

00:57:27.980 the future that we don't know what it would lead to and it could well lead to truly disastrous

00:57:34.240 things much much more bigger and more profound than unemployment yes it could lead to things

00:57:39.880 that we can't even truly imagine at this point where AI is allowed basically allowed to control

00:57:48.120 all sorts of elements of of human existence and we become i don't want to sound too alarmist to

00:57:55.920 tim forhat but we we in in various senses become a slave to it yeah and i'm not necessarily talking

00:58:01.580 about like in the the terminator universe where we're quite literally or the matrix universe where

00:58:07.760 we're actually slaves to it but in various senses yeah i think a lot of people already are in a way

00:58:14.320 yeah or even that it just rubs people of the essential elements of their humanity

00:58:20.400 i've got to say i mean where i've used it in the past and i have used it in the past

00:58:24.300 like i have felt it make me more dumb honestly that's the only way i never use it i never ever

00:58:30.700 ever use it it's one of those i've generated like three images on grok ever i've never generated a

00:58:35.280 single piece of text yeah with ai in my life it's one of those things and there's a few things in

00:58:39.420 life like this that we all have encountered where you do a bit of it and you're looking down

00:58:44.260 you're thinking do i want to go down that path it doesn't feel right like this you know it feels and

00:58:48.020 again the only way i can put it is it felt like it was making me dumber when i was using it yeah

00:58:51.720 because you're outsourcing your own thinking to this thing that isn't actually really thinking

00:58:55.200 it just gives you the illusion of thinking i don't i don't want to do that no i actively proactively

00:59:00.280 don't want that for myself yeah and i certainly don't want it for humanity no but okay so what

00:59:07.140 you're saying though is that net zero and mass immigration are good because it means that we 0.75

00:59:11.540 can't have terminator in britain exactly perfect all right we're getting towards the top of there 1.00

00:59:19.480 we can go past nine of course there's no massive restriction but let's have a quick look at what

00:59:23.820 we've got on the sun the sun if anyone didn't know it's the grand national at aintree this

00:59:29.280 saturday or tomorrow the sun goes with as aintree fever grips the uk and he's off his head and

00:59:37.140 they're talking about Dave Paulden, Zach Polanski, real name Dave Paulden, this freak, this absolute

00:59:45.200 freak as well, the leader of the Green Party, Dave Paulden, calling himself Zach Polanski for some

00:59:51.140 reason, and he says he wants to ban horse racing, he wants to ban horse racing and put a tax on

00:59:58.640 owning a dog, but legalise all drugs including heroin, crack, oh and legalise prostitution.

01:00:05.540 oh and of course complete open borders that's the sort of britain dave paulden wants for you

01:00:12.920 this this this is why i mean i've said a couple of things recently about the greens um and and

01:00:18.960 the fact that look there is a reason that they're popular we actually do have to address the problems

01:00:23.360 that they are at the very least diagnosing with our society like wealth inequality and all that

01:00:27.780 sort of thing statistic blew my mind the other day was the difference between the household wealth

01:00:32.360 of those who own their own home outright and those who are renting is is is so big it's like

01:00:36.980 household owners or home owners rather average wealth is about 600 000 pounds renters about 40

01:00:42.320 000 15 times larger right that's that's that's serious inequality and obviously that's largely

01:00:47.140 generational as well so there is a sense among the young which is why they're doing so well

01:00:51.620 in the under 50s under 30s demographic uh leading in those two demographics the greens

01:00:56.820 there is a feeling that wealth is concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people particularly

01:01:01.960 those over the age of 60 or you know whatever you know we can't own our own homes like that's that's

01:01:07.680 a distant prospect for many of us we're all renting we're all working jobs where the wage

01:01:11.640 isn't good and the tax is massive and we're watching our high streets and towns uh you know

01:01:16.600 deteriorate and all that sort of thing this guy zach polanski um comes along and says we're going 0.63

01:01:21.760 to fix this all for you by just arbitrarily stealing money from the wealthiest in our society

01:01:25.480 a lot of people they say they say he's at least listening right he's at least listening to the

01:01:30.040 problems that we have because you look at the likes of labor and reform and the conservatives

01:01:33.720 and they don't seem even prepared to address this issue which is an issue for a lot of people

01:01:38.020 um but the rest of their agenda i mean the wealth taxes you know as as one policy are obviously 0.96

01:01:43.840 stupid because they won't work they've never worked anywhere they've been tried in the i 0.92

01:01:47.540 think 15 countries they've been attempted in in the last 50 years never worked um so they won't 1.00

01:01:51.980 work to uh kind of alleviate that wealth inequality and will in fact exacerbate a lot of the problems

01:01:56.780 that we've got you add to that the open borders the the further liberalization of immigration that

01:02:01.760 they want to bring through that's going to massively accelerate the deterioration as well

01:02:05.680 and so i think the key thing with the greens is saying look we understand where they're coming

01:02:11.160 from when they address when they identify this this and this problem with our country but people

01:02:15.520 need to understand what exactly their program would do to this country the people who are looking at

01:02:19.980 the greens and thinking do you know what i might take a punt on them because they're at least

01:02:22.740 prepare to listen to the problems that ordinary people have what they would actually do to the

01:02:27.380 country if they were in power or if they were in coalition with labor or or whatever it would be

01:02:31.620 so bad it would be so disastrous um that it would make britain the britain of today look positively

01:02:37.060 utopian in my view and so and so i think you know just just educating like a campaign of public

01:02:42.080 education about what the greens actually want to do to britain i think is very important yeah and

01:02:46.320 showing that there is an alternative and look i mean obviously restore i'm going to say restore

01:02:49.620 as that alternative because we are prepared to address the fact that yeah it's impossible to

01:02:53.520 own your own your own home if you're a young person yeah your wages are probably pretty poor

01:02:57.580 especially you know compared to your parents for example when they were the same age as you

01:03:01.360 tax is absolutely uh intolerable and the social and cultural breakdown of our civilization is

01:03:08.580 evident everywhere wherever you go these are all true things but the solution to that is not what

01:03:13.840 ultimately amounts to more of the same because this is the thing with the greens the right way

01:03:17.000 to understand them is not as radicals they wear the costume of radicalism quite convincingly but

01:03:21.340 what they actually represent their policies mass immigration you know green like net zero to the

01:03:26.500 max uh liberalization in the kind of social realm drugs prostitution and all the rest of it um and 0.70

01:03:33.340 by the way this very strange alliance that they have with islam sectarian islam in the united

01:03:39.380 kingdom what this represents is just more of the same that's what we've had for the last 30 years

01:03:43.480 in this country and so what they're saying is the solution to the problems caused by those policies

01:03:47.540 is to lean even further into them to do more of it more intensely and quicker and actually our

01:03:52.580 position is actually what we should be doing say is saying enough to all of this no more mass 0.86

01:03:56.760 immigration no more islam no more net zero none of this nonsense right just put britain first put 0.96

01:04:02.280 the british people in their interests first you don't have to do all this crazy stuff it's common 0.89

01:04:05.960 sense right yeah so what you're saying is the green party have got some interesting points 0.96

01:04:15.080 the boomers are a lot richer than the zoomers so uh eat the rich is what you're saying yeah 0.97

01:04:21.500 yeah yeah revolution now exactly i'm abolishing it yeah we should go down the route of marxist 1.00

01:04:27.480 leninism got it got it okay yeah no no it's mad isn't it if they got into power they would

01:04:34.620 they would truly speed

01:04:35.980 do you think Labour's

01:04:36.680 speed running us

01:04:37.500 off a cliff

01:04:38.060 Dave Pauldum

01:04:41.000 Zach Planski

01:04:42.060 real name Dave Pauldum

01:04:42.840 would truly speed run

01:04:44.120 straight off a cliff

01:04:45.360 yeah

01:04:45.580 okay

01:04:46.100 quick whip through

01:04:47.920 the last couple of

01:04:48.860 front pages

01:04:49.600 just this guy

01:04:50.540 this is an odd story

01:04:51.980 the Metro

01:04:52.420 disgusting rag 0.94

01:04:53.560 that it is 0.91

01:04:54.120 decided to go with

01:04:55.060 this story

01:04:55.700 that

01:04:56.520 somewhere in London

01:04:59.640 a pub in London

01:05:00.440 in Soho

01:05:01.160 a Fabergé egg

01:05:02.620 had been on display

01:05:03.940 somewhere

01:05:04.520 And a woman

01:05:06.480 An executive 0.98

01:05:08.320 Just had it in her handbag 0.55

01:05:10.540 An actual Faberge egg 0.97

01:05:11.980 A Tsarist era 0.91

01:05:14.420 Easter present 0.51

01:05:16.180 From Tsar Nicholas to his wife

01:05:18.220 Or the other way round 0.91

01:05:19.000 She had a Faberge egg just in her handbag

01:05:23.080 As well as a matching watch 1.00

01:05:24.780 And this Algerian immigrant 1.00

01:05:26.820 Stole it 1.00

01:05:27.380 And then sold it for a pittance to buy some drugs

01:05:30.540 And it's never been recovered

01:05:32.240 homeless algerian enzo conticello

01:05:36.480 in britain it's sort of like a really bad horrible comedy sketch it's just how is that

01:05:45.240 real how can how can how can those events of i know it happens more it happens more and more

01:05:49.640 these days where you'll just have these stories that like just every aspect of it is just like

01:05:53.420 it's like okay so so this woman has a two million quid fabergé egg from zara in her handbag

01:05:59.360 and then this homeless algerian steals off her in london yeah yeah this happens in a pub in soho

01:06:07.800 yeah and then he obviously you can only imagine didn't really know what he had 0.51

01:06:12.100 yeah it's worth two million quid at auction or something what you're saying he looks like a very

01:06:16.060 lucid individual to me he knows all about uh what late 19th century uh priceless objet d'art

01:06:23.760 yeah no don't think so anyway so and it's but it's never been recovered yeah so all right uh 0.93

01:06:30.100 the fight i think the final one this story horrible i think this guy's nigerian again he

01:06:34.960 is a foreign national yeah and uh we he was allowed to drive without a driving license or

01:06:40.740 without l plates and uh mowed down this little old lady killed her this little old lady driving 0.82

01:06:47.740 being licensed to kill foreigners allowed on road without test pass there's a huge amount of that 0.96

01:06:54.940 by the way yeah yeah this country it's ridiculous legal loophole tragedy uh yeah yeah all right

01:07:05.340 they're the front pages shall we do our poll harry can you bring up a poll we do a poll every day

01:07:10.540 don't we delightful um let's have a look what does it say we asked you guys just shy of 15 just shy

01:07:17.100 1500 votes do you think russia plans to go to war with great britain a stonking win for the

01:07:23.720 no vote 80 of you say no 10 of you say yes and 11 of you your gut says maybe so that is a stonking

01:07:32.600 win 80 yeah i don't i don't buy it that putin's sitting in the kremlin with his generals yeah

01:07:38.120 how are we gonna attack and invade great britain i just don't i don't think so i don't believe

01:07:42.580 they're definitely playing games but oh yeah oh yeah they've always done that yeah that nothing's

01:07:47.940 changed in that sense during the cold war flying their fast jets right up to our airspace yeah

01:07:53.380 just saying like not constant but very very very common yeah so yeah this idea that a russian sent

01:08:01.080 a sub to look at our undersea cables like so that's sort of that's par for the course yeah 0.97

01:08:07.560 yeah they do that and again it's just it's just you know it's just being bullshit isn't it 0.67

01:08:12.460 showing us that they can do what they want which is not a great position for us to be in yeah 0.80

01:08:16.620 okay should we do a quick quick little look on this day in history people like this

01:08:20.940 people seem to like this so on the 10th of april down through the centuries what happened of note

01:08:25.060 uh the first one there i read these this morning before i come on in the first one i don't actually

01:08:28.760 know anything about i think i've i've done knocking 70 episodes of the bow show yeah and

01:08:34.060 I think only twice did this come up with something

01:08:36.600 I didn't really know about, but this is one of them.

01:08:39.300 It's something to do with early 15th century China.

01:08:42.820 I don't know about it, I'm afraid, so I can't speak about it.

01:08:44.660 The next thing, though, is very interesting.

01:08:46.640 In 1815, Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies,

01:08:49.760 which is, well, Indonesia, erupted,

01:08:52.760 and it's the biggest eruption in recorded history.

01:08:55.000 Blimey.

01:08:55.800 Not in, like, geological history, but in recorded history.

01:08:59.900 And it was so massive, it threw up into the atmosphere

01:09:02.280 something in the order of 150 cubic kilometers of material to the point where there's so much

01:09:12.740 material in the atmosphere of the whole world that it blocks out sunlight enough that in the

01:09:17.440 following year 1816 there was no summer in the whole world in europe in in the united states

01:09:24.100 the summer the next summer of 1816 loads and loads of crops failed in new england in britain

01:09:30.440 in france in the low countries and there was food riots and famines because all the crops failed

01:09:35.800 because that one volcano mount tambora erupted imagine something like that happened to this day

01:09:41.560 how the climate axis would go berserk i was just thinking that if something like that happened

01:09:45.560 today um but yeah it's sort of famous the year when there was no summer i mean even like even

01:09:50.920 the red shelly percy wrote about it and stuff it was like and europe was recovering from the

01:09:56.920 the polonic wars and um so anyway i think that's just an interesting thing that happened in history

01:10:01.680 um i know all about that one or god likes to remind us that it's there always under the surface

01:10:08.360 it killed 71 000 of the people living near it crikey anywhere near it so a gigantic barely

01:10:14.480 imaginable sort of volcanic eruption okay on this day in 1858 big ben is sort of recast

01:10:21.200 so that's interesting that the actual bell in saint stephen's tower big ben um on this day in

01:10:27.060 1972 the us the ussr the soviets and 70 other nations agree to ban biological weapons uh which

01:10:34.300 is good that would be under nixon wouldn't it that would be under nixon uh which is that's nice to see

01:10:39.440 when they came back from the brink like the salt talks trying to let's not have insane stockpiles

01:10:46.420 of nuclear weapons let's not keep um researching biological and even nerve agents that's probably

01:10:52.740 not a good idea but the brits the brits were at the forefront of nerve agents in various ways like

01:10:57.540 vx gas it's a nice thing to be involved in yeah important down and stuff we created a nerve agent 0.88

01:11:03.940 so toxic that the whole world went even during the height of the cold war was like oh let's not do

01:11:10.180 this yeah guys what are we doing it's like when they keep wanting to design bigger and bigger

01:11:15.380 nukes like tritium bombs or just a doomsday device you build a nuke that's so big it would destroy

01:11:20.260 the earth yeah and they're like uh yeah we've designed it we can we we're pretty sure we can

01:11:24.900 engineer one let's not yeah okay and on this day in 1998 the good friday agreement the belfast

01:11:32.580 agreement for northern ireland is signed by the british and irish governments that's obviously

01:11:35.940 under tony blair isn't it indeed get the queen to shake martin mcginnis's hand and all that stuff

01:11:41.860 so it was probably for the best wasn't it

01:11:44.000 it was probably for the best ultimately just about

01:11:45.740 well no definitely definitely

01:11:47.160 alright so let's do the Rumble Rants

01:11:50.040 and Superchats you don't mind sticking with us

01:11:52.460 for that okay do the Rumble Rants

01:11:54.180 first Global Church History in at number one

01:11:56.140 and still the reigning defending

01:11:57.400 he's always in number one

01:11:59.340 he says on this day in 238 AD

01:12:02.120 Thrax defeated

01:12:03.920 Gordian, Gordian the first and Gordian the second

01:12:06.080 at Carthage

01:12:07.520 Thrax was one of those great military Roman emperors

01:12:10.020 he was meant to be a giant if I remember

01:12:11.760 my history correctly. Thrax was supposed to be

01:12:14.220 like 8 foot tall, 9 foot tall

01:12:16.140 he obviously wasn't

01:12:16.820 he was just a massive bloke and he was a

01:12:20.240 military general and he was one of the great

01:12:22.040 late

01:12:22.420 crisis of the 3rd century sort of military

01:12:25.720 one. He also, Global Church

01:12:28.120 History also says that on this day

01:12:29.980 in 428 AD

01:12:32.100 Nestorius becomes

01:12:33.860 the ecumenical patriarch

01:12:35.480 one of the very late, one of the pivotal

01:12:37.980 ones in the very late western

01:12:39.920 roman empire and on this day in uh 837 halley's comet came closest to the earth at merely 3.2

01:12:47.700 million miles yeah we uh halley's comet is even depicted in the bay of tapestry isn't it is oh

01:12:53.220 yes so intermittently every 70 odd years you get to see it yeah and it's funny that and that's been

01:12:58.640 happening for millennia yeah so so when you're talking about that volcanic eruption i i i do

01:13:05.460 sometimes think like you know we busy ourselves with politics and you know geopolitics and war

01:13:11.080 and all this sort of thing it's like a comet a meteor could just come just destroy everything

01:13:15.480 yeah it would all be for nelt statistically yeah it will yeah statistically at some point probably

01:13:22.460 there will be a mass extinction event on earth yeah from a meteor or an asteroid or something or

01:13:29.600 a comet um hitting the earth if we're not if we haven't got the ability to sort of blow it out of

01:13:34.700 space before it hits us or something okay yeah it probably will well it will happen at some point

01:13:41.060 probably okay for team barber says morning bow and charlie another brilliant guest um this format

01:13:46.220 is really good or one guest as an interview and one in the studio did you see trump lash out at

01:13:52.560 tucker and co not sure what to make of that i haven't seen that so yeah i was going to mention

01:13:57.100 so he did a true social post um followed by a video uh basically naming i think it was candace

01:14:06.200 owens tucker carlson and alex jones uh basically saying that these people are a low iq the the 0.99

01:14:12.660 reason that they've been against me for so many years is because they're stupid and all this sort 0.99

01:14:15.980 of thing despite the fact that these were the people that won trump the election on i think 0.98

01:14:20.540 both times he won really i mean these were like the core of maga basically certainly tucker carlson

01:14:24.720 and alex jones um yeah so he he's basically turned on them and um is now attacking them by name and

01:14:31.540 they put out this this uh this video of like it was like a sort of like boomer slot video like an

01:14:36.980 ai thing of them all shouting at the camera and trump just sort of standing there type thing

01:14:40.860 very silly very childish really these these are the people that should be your closest allies

01:14:45.560 instead you've got jared kushner and steve witkoff whispering in your ear and it's like 0.94

01:14:50.200 it's so disappointing what's happened to maga i mean do you think it's dead do you think because

01:14:54.520 a lot of people are saying that. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think MAGA is sort of a concept

01:15:01.980 or even just as a slogan, won't outlive Trump himself. Whoever's next, whether it's Rubio

01:15:11.120 or Vance, it's probably likely to be one of those two, isn't it? Whether they will keep

01:15:18.040 talking about MAGA. I doubt it. Yeah, I kind of doubt it. Yeah. The actual policies is

01:15:23.180 something different whether they'll continue with very similar if not identical policies

01:15:26.820 that's something different but just the the moniker the saying of MAGA yeah wearing a MAGA

01:15:32.220 cap yes I feel like that will come to an end up when Trump's out of office yeah I agree I think 0.70

01:15:36.640 yeah maybe not but I think okay Fallen Firebird says if we had a proper country Russia's let's 0.59

01:15:43.520 take the piss incursions would be met with a missile barrage a commando squad and a public 1.00

01:15:48.720 trial the spikier you are the less enemies will mess with you i mean at first blush that's a fair 0.93

01:15:54.920 thing to say but i think in reality if you look at the cold war they're taking the piss incursions 0.80

01:15:59.800 were just as i say quite common it's just part of their strategies part of what they do yeah and

01:16:06.200 if he reacted with a missile barrage every single time yeah that's sort of i get the point and i get

01:16:12.200 the the sentiment behind it fallen firebird i understand you but um yeah in reality you can't

01:16:19.020 really ideally you'd have a situation where relations were such that they just have no

01:16:23.340 reason to do this exactly exactly right exactly that's the best that's the best scenario have a

01:16:27.800 relationship like we do with sweden where they wouldn't dream of doing something like that why

01:16:31.060 would they yeah there's literally no point to it yeah that that's all right yeah you're absolutely

01:16:35.000 right fictitious says the reason why the young can't afford a house is to do with government

01:16:41.040 policies not the rich of course yeah of course yeah yeah but the reason that there's massive

01:16:45.500 wealth inequality is also because of government policies and like that look people think that

01:16:49.960 that's like a communist or marxist talking point and obviously it's a talking point that's owned

01:16:55.200 by the left like wealth inequality and that sort of thing but like it is a real thing the idea of 0.95

01:16:59.300 like eliminating wealth inequality completely i.e communism is obviously stupid but the idea that 0.99

01:17:05.320 it like the other idea that it doesn't matter at all is also stupid right especially when it's a 0.99

01:17:10.700 a conspicuous thing that people can see and feel in their own day-to-day lives which i think a lot 0.96

01:17:15.480 of certainly a lot of young people renters can yeah you know yeah the idea of blaming the rich

01:17:21.380 that the problem is the problem is billionaires yeah and then millionaires and then the middle

01:17:26.560 class that's just pure commie nonsense it's all about incentives like and this goes from like the

01:17:32.280 the lowest level which is to say you know illegal migrants crossing the channel they're following 0.67

01:17:37.060 incentives right they are only coming here because of government policy because the government 0.93

01:17:40.580 is facilitating it by their own policies and equally at the very top level when it comes to

01:17:44.840 billionaires and corporations like amazon uh you know not paying what many people would view as

01:17:49.300 their fair share in taxes um equally that's just people following incentives it's people following

01:17:55.420 incentives created by the state and this is the point we have to create good incentives incentives

01:18:00.140 that don't reward greed and indolence which is the situation we have now but if you don't work

01:18:05.540 you'll be rewarded and if you uh work in such a way that screws other people you will be rewarded

01:18:10.460 but if you're prudent and you save and you do work that benefits your community you will be

01:18:15.000 punished you'll be taxed into the ground you'll be regulated out of existence you know it's so

01:18:18.880 difficult for small businesses to thrive in this country because of the amount of red tape they

01:18:22.040 have to deal with which is to say nothing of farmers for example and the fact that this this

01:18:25.740 crucial uh industry you know a strategic sector is under so much pressure by the government that

01:18:31.200 many farms are just closing and we're having to import more and more food which as we talked

01:18:34.460 about earlier in the show is a huge problem when the world is as volatile as it is today

01:18:38.100 so these are it's all about incentives so if you had a state that created good incentives that

01:18:41.880 incentivized good behavior that didn't allow uh people to screw each other over in business and

01:18:48.280 illegal migrants to come to your country and be rewarded for doing so then you'd be fine so yeah

01:18:52.720 the idea of like again the idea of just blaming the rich whatever that even means yeah it's kind 1.00

01:18:57.480 in my view it's kind of like blaming well maybe not it look i was going to say it's kind of like

01:19:03.680 blaming individual migrants for the kind of demographic situation of the uk and there is i

01:19:07.620 mean there's arguments be made of the fact like the ones who commit crimes and who have come here

01:19:10.920 obviously they've done so of their own volition right so there is a there's an argument made there

01:19:15.000 but again if you ever take your focus off the elites if you ever take your focus off the state

01:19:20.020 then you are basically you know you're you're targeting the wrong thing because it ultimately

01:19:24.320 comes down to that yeah like the incentives to create a business while our high streets are

01:19:29.400 just mostly boarded up yeah or just normal shops replaced with uh organized crime fronts for money

01:19:36.260 laundering and drugs and people trafficking nobody does anything yeah yeah and why i restore

01:19:40.960 policy is to uh remove incentives for people to come here yeah and to knock over those businesses

01:19:47.020 and in fact to give them incentives to go back home yeah if anything yeah uh okay all right can

01:19:54.780 you bring up the uh harry can you bring up the youtube uh super chats for me please all right

01:20:00.680 there's a fair few here so i'll try and whip through them a bit we've got stedman wheelers

01:20:06.900 okay says hail contentious chadicus contenticus contenticus chadicus thinker of wrongs

01:20:20.080 enrich injector of the most guilty of the higher crime of noticing um another greeting from texas

01:20:26.920 hi cool um enjoy your morning and i envelope myself in sleep okay very nice good all right

01:20:34.960 thanks for the super chat uh taradale taradale says the warmongering would be deliberate

01:20:42.600 and then you've put something i don't understand characters yeah but okay yeah well the warmongering

01:20:49.180 is deliberate isn't it of course yeah i don't even know particularly what war you're referring to

01:20:52.660 and yet you're correct yeah right it's russia or iran or israel or ukraine or anything all right

01:21:00.400 um principal dunserti said uh you might argue if there was a weapons parity across the middle east

01:21:06.340 then peace would finally break out that's an interesting broad point it's an interesting

01:21:11.180 broad point um it's impossible to say if that it's a very good point actually but it's impossible to

01:21:18.280 really say isn't it it's one of those things you may well be right i'm not saying that's silly and

01:21:22.060 wrong i'm not saying that yeah but who knows who really knows yeah i mean again as i said earlier

01:21:26.120 in the show like i do believe that as much as i dislike nuclear proliferation britain needs to

01:21:31.020 have a sovereign independent nuclear deterrent like it's just because the world we live in so

01:21:34.700 you know if everyone in the middle east had that had one you know strong fences make good

01:21:38.840 neighbors and all the rest of it who knows well if uh each of the seven emirates and qatar and

01:21:44.940 bahrain and kuwait and iraq and saudi and oman and yamma they all had nukes yeah that wouldn't

01:21:49.520 then everything would be safe yeah i don't think so actually it's interesting you talked about i'm

01:21:56.080 fascinated i'm going to do an epox at some point about the british bomb yeah how after world war

01:22:01.680 ii britain and france but in britain's case clement atlee of all people insisted we have

01:22:07.920 our own completely independent nuclear program start designing building our own bomb which he

01:22:12.560 did the americans hated it and tried everything they could to scupper it yeah but we did it

01:22:17.760 in secret when churchill got back in in the early 50s church became prime minister again

01:22:21.760 in the early 50s uh he didn't he didn't even know anything about it and when he got into number 10

01:22:26.080 and the the military chiefs are like by the way at least got a nuclear program he's like brilliant

01:22:30.560 i wanted to do that yeah wow okay and then it's so ruinously expensive though it's insanely expensive

01:22:38.080 and eventually was like america was like because america hated the fact that we were doing this

01:22:43.520 because it means we're truly independent yeah they're like look if you stop doing it you can't

01:22:46.800 afford it anyway guys if you stop doing it we'll sell you trident yeah or earlier versions yes and

01:22:52.320 we were like ah okay go on then yeah it's not great and then we're here and then we hear where

01:22:56.880 we are today yeah so i mean right now could we afford to to have an independent nuclear program

01:23:02.400 with our own at this point probably not i mean it's insane if savings were made elsewhere okay

01:23:08.320 yeah i mean maybe who knows yeah i don't know the actual numbers involved you know so true and they

01:23:14.720 they have a far lower they have a far smaller defense budget than we do that's true so it's

01:23:18.720 true north korea managed it on a budget has ruined their country but they managed it all right um 0.86

01:23:24.880 what else have we got here ljmv says starman loves ukraine because of ukraine i'll just say it 0.71

01:23:31.920 because of ukraine rent boys lj in these words not mine when that trial comes up i'm going to

01:23:37.440 be fascinated with the details of who those guys are and what they were doing why is no why is

01:23:42.480 like nobody talks about that what is that we mentioned it on um on state of politics from

01:23:48.000 time to time what is that when that trial comes up yeah conspiracy of silence among the entire

01:23:54.560 mainstream press like you know that's just normal it's normal for you three different ukrainian

01:23:59.120 men to firebomb the prime minister's house okay what like mandy and george osborne and epstein

01:24:06.320 epstein or being on nathaniel rothschild's yacht yeah don't talk about that don't talk about that

01:24:11.660 whatever you do yeah whatever you do lie by omission about that every single day without fail

01:24:16.760 yeah what okay same with the ukrainian uh rent boys if they are rent boys who knows what they

01:24:23.640 are really um mr dicky bingo it's all above board and normal perfectly normal just having a normal

01:24:29.180 one mr dicky bingo says i'd rather have a beer with putin than starmer i would love to sit down

01:24:35.900 with Xi Jinping or Putin

01:24:37.420 and have a conversation with them.

01:24:38.780 Yeah.

01:24:39.140 I'm not their fans.

01:24:40.960 I would love to have a conversation with them.

01:24:43.120 And what do you think about this or that?

01:24:44.440 Yeah.

01:24:44.700 If this or that happened,

01:24:45.500 what would you do?

01:24:46.160 Yeah.

01:24:46.480 That'd be an amazing conversation.

01:24:47.800 I'd just love to understand

01:24:48.660 what a day in their life actually looks like,

01:24:50.160 you know?

01:24:50.480 What time do they wake up?

01:24:51.920 What are they for breakfast?

01:24:52.780 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:53.100 What's your morning routine?

01:24:54.340 Yeah.

01:24:55.220 When you've got a free evening

01:24:56.360 once in a blue moon,

01:24:57.140 what do you do?

01:24:57.760 Yeah.

01:24:58.600 It would be fascinating.

01:24:59.580 Yeah, it would be.

01:25:01.600 Chris281 says,

01:25:02.300 I worked in Kazakhstan

01:25:03.960 near the Russian border

01:25:05.440 in the early 2000s that's very interesting and i noticed the uk's uh the uk's hatred of russia

01:25:11.360 mostly on the bbc back then putin is no saint but it was odd to watch from the other side

01:25:17.380 it's one of those things you know there's a lot of things like this obviously in politics and

01:25:21.580 you know just what happens in the world where if there it seems as though there's one detail that's

01:25:26.580 being kept from the public and if that detail was to become known everything would make sense

01:25:30.800 because there's something about as i said earlier in the show there's something about the the

01:25:34.100 attitude of the british security establishment towards russia that it's just it just doesn't

01:25:38.540 it seems as though there's something that the public don't know it's just weird it does feel

01:25:41.860 like that yeah yeah i mean and there's a big cabal of people in the state department it seems

01:25:45.700 that are hell-bent on demonizing russia not that they're actually good and aren't our strategy

01:25:51.480 enemy and putin isn't a good man but nonetheless yeah yeah but nonetheless like um yeah yeah no

01:25:58.380 it's odd it's like there's something we don't know yeah okay the next one says this is uh

01:26:04.080 this is a ripper ljmv says charlie can you get an interview between elon and rupert

01:26:10.400 i mean uh we speak to elon from time to time uh i mean he's you know he's a he's a supporter of

01:26:17.940 ours he's not giving i mean people say oh you're funded by elon like he's not giving us any money

01:26:20.920 but he's a supporter of ours which is obviously appreciated i mean he doesn't do he doesn't

01:26:24.700 interview people so i don't know if he would do that but i mean him boosting or just get them

01:26:29.480 together to have a conversation it doesn't have to be an interview yeah just get them to have a

01:26:33.220 conversation yeah no one's interviewing either on either side just get them to talk yeah that

01:26:38.520 would be it that's a good idea i think everyone in britain would love to see that yeah one way

01:26:44.220 another yeah that would be so cool yeah i mean elon follows you doesn't he on it i've yeah i've

01:26:49.140 spoken to him on multiple occasions that would be yeah that would be super cool yeah i mean if you

01:26:55.820 need a mediator yes of course okay uh chris then says as a colder country you say uk should be

01:27:05.080 dominating in data centers ac costs uh should make hotter countries more expensive yeah all right so

01:27:12.560 it's just simply colder you put it up on the hebrides yeah open ai the hebrides are the place

01:27:18.440 for you yeah okay interesting point um anime chad party that's not getting old for me finding that

01:27:26.260 name amusing is that registered by the electoral commission yeah i hope it is where did he come up

01:27:30.920 with that anime yeah being a chad right okay party anime chad all right okay i find it funny

01:27:36.460 he says uh hate to be a doomer but considering how bad migration is right now i have a feeling

01:27:43.780 restore won't win especially if immigrants uh are given voting rights yeah i mean look this is

01:27:50.920 something that we have talked about a lot and it's you know you'll hear rupert say that if we 0.99

01:27:54.380 don't win by 29 we being the country uh rather than just restore britain as a party yeah um then

01:28:00.440 it's kind of all locked in um and there's no there's not going to be a political off-ramp to

01:28:05.040 what is to come and i i mean i go back and forth on this view i think that you know if the will is

01:28:09.900 there britain can be saved no matter how bad things get um and i think in 2029 the demographics

01:28:16.060 will not be bad enough that a political victory by a patriotic party is impossible um but yeah i

01:28:23.960 mean it's going to be hard it's an uphill battle already is and we've only been going for what

01:28:27.600 nearly two months um so look i mean i i wouldn't black pill too hard on the the demographic element

01:28:33.500 of our vote um because there's a huge number of people out there who didn't vote in 2024

01:28:37.560 for uh the majority i believe of whom are uh british um who if activated if if presented with

01:28:44.700 a program that actually serves their interests um will vote i think and this is what we're finding

01:28:50.140 with the branches um the constituency branches that we are rolling out at the moment we've got

01:28:54.300 hundreds already set up people going out knocking on doors delivering leaflets and all the rest of

01:28:58.600 it including the swindon branch of course um and uh the the reaction that we're having i mean i went

01:29:04.500 to one in horsham uh last week which is a lovely you know uh idyllic town in sussex um currently

01:29:12.520 lib dem seat and before that was tory for 150 years it's very well to do place and we had over

01:29:18.360 100 people turn out to the branch meeting there and i asked them i said out of interest show of

01:29:22.800 hands for whom is this you know for how many of you is this your first political meeting 90 the

01:29:28.340 room put their hand up so we're already tapping into a demographic that has not been served by

01:29:31.800 the political establishment for a long time and if we continue to do that if we continue to put

01:29:36.760 forward policies that people actually like which we're doing a lot of already um i am confident

01:29:41.820 that we can do very very well indeed in 2029 the hitherto before now apathetic the disenfranchised

01:29:48.380 disenchanted yeah like that's half the electorate yeah literally yeah so um i agree with you that

01:29:55.120 hope don't be too black peeled the demographic as bad as it is is not as bad even in 2029

01:30:00.900 meaning that some a party like restore cannot win yeah i don't think that's the case yeah

01:30:06.760 come 2034 that conversation may be much more salient right right yeah but even then i still

01:30:11.700 think that political solutions are viable okay uh anime chad party again says hi charlie

01:30:21.100 glad to see more guests on the show thank you for that uh ljmv says uh beau you magnificent man

01:30:26.960 thank you very much uh charlie need help with cleaning up the country question mark

01:30:32.460 aussies enjoy doing physical therapy yeah well look i mean you're our cousins across the across

01:30:39.140 the pond and um you know i think anglospheric unity is only a good thing on the other side of

01:30:44.700 the world aussies well indeed yeah the pond yeah the whole world pond sorry yeah um okay so uh

01:30:50.660 Thundercook says, Russia should become a NATO province like Kosovo.

01:30:57.620 Okay, I'm not entirely sure of the angle you're getting at there, but...

01:31:02.520 Okay, I'll just move on from that, because I'm not quite sure.

01:31:07.460 Okay, GMAC999 doesn't say anything, it just gives ten bucks.

01:31:12.040 Cheers. Cheers, buddy, appreciate that.

01:31:13.460 And the last one here today, from Prince Paul Dunsert, he says,

01:31:16.520 Never before has the word arsonist been so funny.

01:31:20.660 oh is that in the ukrainian rent boys ukrainian rent boy arson comedy genius

01:31:28.140 all right that's the show charlie thank you for coming in it's been a pleasure it won't be the

01:31:34.260 last time certainly not it was a pleasure an honor and a pleasure as always really really

01:31:37.520 appreciate it i think you're on the main load seaters podcast double bill today so okay we've

01:31:42.140 got another guest as well uh not so obvious uh mark howton so that should be a good one tune in

01:31:46.340 for that at 1 1 p.m british summertime all right that's the show thanks to you guys for tuning in

01:31:53.220 the best among us the glorious band the chosen few it's just ticked 32 minutes past nine in the am

01:31:58.660 on friday the 10th of april in the year of our lord 2026 try and make the best of the day ahead

01:32:03.100 if you can type a dm seize the day it's the most valuable thing you've got is your time

01:32:07.200 all right until tomorrow morning oh well till monday morning in fact take care

01:32:16.340 Bye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 10, 2026

Breakfast With Beau ｜ Friday 10th April 2026

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