Polanski's by-election crash out - is he finished? | The News Agents

What was of most interest to us was not who won, but who came second. Zach Polanski chose to throw his hat in the ring when he didn't need to. You only do that if you know you're going to win. To fall short and to fall so significantly short really does embed the idea that Polanski has peaked. He's unleashed forces within his own party that he cannot control. Is he the useful idiot of these groups? And now he has served his purpose. well they might just try to dispose of him The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK opening up a world of opportunity this is a global production this is Primrose Hill in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency and there before you is London and London looking pretty much the same as it did yesterday because Labour have won this seat. There has been no gain. In fact, you could argue that the only patch of green that we can now see is what's before our very eyes, the green of Primrose Hill. So what of Zach Polanski? Did he need to fight this by-election? And if not, has he got a future as the party's leader? Has he led them precipitously close to the edge welcome to the news agents the news agents it's john it's lewis and before we go any further i would just like to congratulate you john because you know lots of presenters and journalists you know when they get to your status yeah as a sort of i'm an old school of journalism they give up the reporting you know they don't do i'm there you know but like you our fearless reporter from Primrose Hill giving us the dispatch the definitive dispatch from that constituency i was there look exactly guys and they say Jeremy Bowen's good anyway uh let's go down to the results so the Holborn and St Pancras by-election um john was saying that Keir Starmer's old constituency's parting gift to the Labour Party was his resignation when he said he wasn't going to do so and handed Andy Burnham the first by-election of his premiership and it was as was widely expected a Labour hold so the labour candidate who was the leader of Camden Council, Sagal Abdiwali, got 12,292 votes. That's about 45% of the vote. That's about 4% or 5% down from what Keir Starmer got at the general election. But, you know, even though the turnout was low-ish, sub-40%, perfectly respectable for a by-election and a very creditable result. Obviously, the interest in this by-election came from the fact that not only was it the sort of seat young, urban, graduate-heavy, significant muslim vote all of the sorts of uh people that have been drifting to the green party over the course of the last year away from labour so the green performance will be watched closely anyway but then that Zac Polanski the leader chose to throw his hat in the ring when he didn't need to to stand in this seat obviously all eyes were going to be on what happened to him and the green performance and although there was a significant swing to the green party from the labour party their 8,928 votes about 30 ish percent of the vote that is their second best by-election performance in history second to only to Gorton and Denton in Manchester which of course listeners of you will will viewers will remember they won earlier in the year nonetheless to fall short and to fall so significantly short after a year of such highs really does embed the idea that as We were talking about last Friday, John, that Polanski has peaked and the green bubble has burst. And Labour is able to say this morning, the Prime Minister will be able to sit very happily in Downing Street, able to say, look, I won in Makerfield, classic Red Wall sort of seat, and now we've just won in North London. We have secured, at least for now, both sides of the Labour coalition. I've seen off reform and now I'm seeing off the Greens, which is exactly what you asked me to do when you asked me to replace Keir Starmer. What's so interesting about this by-election is what was of most interest to us was not who won, but who came second. Because if it had been Labour that had come second in this by-election, we would have been saying that the burn and bounce is over, that the bubble has started to burst, that there is a peak and that Labour have faced a very serious threat from their left flank. As it is, we're now focusing on Zak Polanski. and when it was first announced that he was going to put himself forward as the candidate we sat here in this studio and said is that a smart thing to do is that a wise thing to do you only do that if you know you're going to win because the narrative otherwise is going to consolidate the idea that the Green Party has hit its high water mark and it's now receding and the tide is going out on that party and you couple that with the events of last weekend which were calamitous i think for Zak Polanski i think the vote itself his absenting himself from the vote and we should talk a bit about that as well and then you go into a by-election and you come second and i think that you know i think to the left the even more militant even more pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist, far left groups in the Green Party are saying, you're not delivering. And the more moderate traditional Greens are saying, you're not delivering. And that puts him in an extremely vulnerable position. Yeah, I remember us having that discussion at the time, John. I think we both agreed that, you know, this was a big gamble for Polanski to be doing it at this moment. I think there's no question, had this been happening, had this happened six months ago, had it happened in the dog days of Starmer had it happened at the same time as Gordon and Denton if he had stood in Gordon and Denton which he could have done because you know he's from Manchester there would have been a perfectly legitimate case to do so you know he'd be in parliament now I don't think there's any question he'd have won in Gordon and Denton and as I said if this by-election had happened then I think he would have probably won as as well but it was happening at a moment of potentially maximum weakness and actually since this campaign started for the reasons you just said he has got weaker and i was talking to people in the green party before the by-election and and at the time when it was called saying you know if he doesn't win this then he is you know potentially in trouble because the green party is particularly now with its 200 000 plus membership which is a success of his but it is a what's the word it's a vociferous it's a volatile party nice word thank you very much here's that polanski asking being asked on bbc breakfast whether he would stay on as leader The Green Party, when I became leader, had about 60,000 members. We've now got 220,000. And as I've said, the two best by-election results that we've ever had in Green Party history have both been under the current leadership. And so, yes, we want to grow. We didn't do enough in this election to win. But this is Andy Burnham's first couple of months. He's in his honeymoon period. We have a budget coming up. And I have no doubt if Andy Burnham does not do the things we need in this budget, then people will quickly look back at the Green Party. Let's just entertain this thought process, thought idea. Does anyone think that Zak Polanski handled last weekend well in the Green Party? Does anyone think that it was a smart bit of politics to absent yourself from this critical vote of Zionism is racism? and then today explain it the first time he's done a proper interview on it by saying I had to go because the people of Holborn and St Pancras were saying I needed to come back and campaign in the constituency well I'm in the constituency I don't remember a petition going up saying Zach we're missing you it was so disingenuous of him to say oh look it was the people they wanted me back I mean Brighton's an hour away from London I mean he could have gotten a train at any moment you did I did it. John Sopwell can do it. It's an absolute, feeble, disingenuous, dishonest cop-out to say that he had to be away for this vote. And they're making it worse, I thought, by saying, well, yeah, I probably would have voted against the motion. I supported the amendment. And if you're not there to lead your party in a critical debate like this, either to support the motion or oppose the motion or try to force the amendment, but just skulk away when you didn't need to. I don't think he wins any brownie points from anyone on either side across the spectrum of the Green Party for having done that. And let's just remind people that, you know, at the heart of this motion is a question of British Jews within the Green Party asking themselves whether they've basically been disbarred from being part of the party. Now, of course, there will be Jewish Greens who don't feel that way. And of course, Polanski himself is Jewish. But there are people, and we've heard from them, they've taken to the airwaves who do feel that way. Because Zionism, as we discussed last Friday, yes, the people behind this motion have a very particular idea of what they believe Zionism to mean. But there is simply another way of looking at it, which is simply that Zionism historically was itself a response to appalling racism and appalling anti-Semitism. And it was about trying to create a safe space, a safe harbour for Jews. Obviously, it doesn't mean that what Israel does now is everything or everything it does is good. It doesn't excuse anything that's happened in Gaza. But this was obviously a blunt instrument, which has, as you say, John, I think, cost Polanski quite dearly in his havering about it. Here he is being asked about it on Sky News this morning. Do you regret last weekend that the party passed that motion that you didn't support? Well, I was on the ground in Hove and St Pancras because so many people in Hove and St Pancras said they wanted an MP that cared about local issues and was visible in the area. So I made sure that I stayed in Hove and St Pancras. To the substance of the motion, though, as I believe you just showed a clip of me saying, you know, I grew up in a Zionist household. I grew up with this idea of a land without a people, a people without a land. But in recent years, I've been discovering what happened to those people in the land. They were displaced. and at the moment there's a genocide that our government is not just complicit in but actively selling arms licenses to and so I think that is an ideology that is under that is a racist ideology forgive me did you support the motion or not I would have supported the motion as amended it wasn't amended so no do you regret where what the Green Party did last week well what I say is that you know ultimately I agree with the substance of the motion where I disagree is the idea of you know the green party should be deciding what the future of the region looks like just a final thing what you've given there is what i would call a politician's answer trying to have it both ways isn't that exactly the kind of thing people thought that you stood against no i disagree so there were eight or nine amendments motions are complicated and people before that conference were saying how exactly are you going to vote and i said i think it's a very reasonable answer it depends on what's amended it depends what's unamended and when i see that then i'll make a decision the truth is i mean i think we can all agree that polanski has not handled this well at all um it is true to say that the green party is the most democratic of any of the major parties internally speaking the leadership is quite weak just structurally so even if he'd wanted to stop this he probably wouldn't have been able to um because such is the nature of the green party membership right now that that probably would just have had a brute force to it but clearly he didn't necessarily want to stop it because he was worried about alienating those same forces internally probably to protect his own leadership and i think what polanski has done look in a sense he's becoming a kind of victim of his own success and if you were to put it a bit less charitably you might say a victim of a monster of his own creation um which is that there are lots of people who could join the green party who are going to be great people really political or wanna make the world a better place and so on. It's also true to say that on the left, and we saw this in the Corbyn years, there are a group of hyper politicized, hyper active, factional kind of interests, which often commit entryism in left-wing parties. We've seen that over the decades, often to the Labour Party, but elsewhere as well. People associate with the Socialist Workers Party, militant Trotskyist organizations, and in some cases as well, certain groups which whose sole interest is to prosecute the israel gaza question and have a i would say an extreme view yeah on those things extremist forces basically and the thing is is that you know 200,000 people is a lot of people their membership has gone up enormously but of course 200,000 people in the grand scheme of things is not that many people but it is enough or the increase 140,000 people even a relatively small section of that is enough to transform a party and i think what you're seeing now what you're seeing is the old guard of the Green Party we saw this with Caroline Lucas the former leader last night on Newsnight basically really adverting to the fact that this is now a party which is if not in civil war is facing down the prospect or facing down a barrel of the fact that it has fundamentally changed and there are people and forces within the party now that the old guard of the party, including Polanski, cannot control. Listen to Caroline Lucas. Just in terms of your leader, Zach Polanski, what is the mistake he made? We know he's declined repeated interview requests since the vote. Isn't leadership about stepping up, pinning your colours to the mast? Yes, it is. He should have been there and he should have voted. And he should have, I would have hoped that he would have really been a very strong critic of this motion because the motion was flawed from top to bottom in my view it's dangerous it's divisive it tries to have a singular definition of Zionism when we know that there are many from you and other Greens i'm sure he will should he stand down i think let's just see what happens in the next in the coming days and weeks i mean obviously obviously he has been um completely uh taken up with this by-election i i i want him to speak now about what's happened I want him to show the leadership that was frankly missing on Sunday I think the jury is out about whether or not he will do that but I very much hope he will so going back to the vote last Sunday the woman who proposed the motion was a friend of someone who has been convicted of terrorism charges for wanting to blow himself up and anyone else around him up at Heathrow Airport and Zach Polanski was asked well you know did you know about the background of this person he said well I can't know the background of every single person proposing a motion at the Green Party conference yeah this is a slightly different and much more controversial motion that it might have been prudent to find out a bit more about and Lewis you said it's the most democratic party it is the party that is most susceptible to entryism because as I understand it you join the Green Party and if you turn up in Brighton you get a delegates badge or whatever and you can vote and you know what's to stop it, it won't happen but you know 10,000 Jews joining the Green Party turning up at the conference next year and putting forward a motion saying that Israel is great has done no wrong and everything is hunky-dory and what happens then you know I just think that the party has laid itself open in the way it organizes itself to this kind of militant entryism and I think that the dominoes could fall in a number of different ways now you know if Sir Zach Polansky is forced out and these people have you know been the entryists into the party take over the leadership then it will just become another fringe Trotskyist organization handing out leaflets outside events and not being the event itself and could spell the death of the Green Party and I'm sure what you heard there from Caroline Lucas was that fear that the Green Party could go that way well I think what you're yes indeed because um look you and I John over the years um have reported on exactly this sort of politics particularly in the Labour Party and the sort of people we're talking about we're talking about highly organized yeah highly committed highly political often highly radicalized people right that's not to say that everything they believe in is wrong but it is to say that they are fierce political this is their warriors yes this is their lives right this is what they want to spend their time doing they are they are they do political trench warfare these people and that is why in the end any time they've taken over parts of the Labour Party it has required the most fierce trench warfare in the other direction to expel them and i just don't think the Green Party has had to deal with anything like this before no you know because the Green Party you know has basically hitherto been a small fringe ish but mainstream um you know environmental movement really based on environmental politics and the politics of protest and and of minor civil disobedience and all of those things that we kind of associate with the Green movement this is a different order of political battle because you're dealing with people who frankly those things aren't their first order of priority at all and you can see within the Green Party elements of the old Green Party if you like who find this very dispiriting and worrying because they fundamentally think that what they should be talking about is the climate crisis and environmental issues and all of those things and instead it doesn't mean they don't care about anything else but this is a transition and this is what i mean about this is something that Pawlanski has has created he's unleashed forces within his own party that he cannot control and i know you know over the last six months he has been fighting a series of battles internally this this isn't a rare culmination obviously most people wouldn't notice any of this stuff there's sort of internal kneesing stuff going on within the Green Party but he's been fighting a series of battles over the last six months from a series of you know groups from within the Greens including part of the party leadership you know constantly criticizing him and the party leadership for being insufficiently anti-Israel I mean there have been people criticizing Polanski as himself being a Zionist right as himself being too pro-Zionist all of these sorts of things so he has unleashed an energy within the Green party that I think he is going to struggle to control and I I wouldn't be surprised if we do see him walk away at some point because it is so wearisome to have to deal with that but as I say to some extent um it's something that he wanted I mean look we we talked about whether it was political cowardice on his part that he absented himself from the vote last Sunday and said I have to be in Holborn and St Pancras there is another way of looking at it which is that is he the useful idiot of these groups that here was a perfect vehicle of somebody who could stand up and say he was Jewish, but yet would articulate the viewpoint of the kind of, you know, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian viewpoint that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide and all the rest of it, that would actually further their aims of getting a motion like this passed by a mainstream political party. And now he has served his purpose. Well, they might just try to dispose of him. And that is why the Caroline Lucases of this world, who want to cling on to the idea nobly that the Green Party like its sister parties in Europe is about the environment is about improving the lives of people is about dealing with climate change and all the threats that that poses to us and on the other side of it you've got these people who have pulled the party in a direction that is unrecognizable to what most people think of as the Green Party I just want one other thing just briefly I think that if um but I mean like the one person must be a very happy man all of this is he's a lucky general is Andy Burnham I mean you know Burnham is let's assume I mean look there are things that could go wrong and the Greens could come back we were saying that last Friday you know the budget's coming up Polanski's right that could be very very damaging within the Labour coalition decisions on Jackdaw and Rosebank in the North Sea oil and gas exploration that's obviously been deferred and put off till this by-election was out the way um and there are other things as well and so they could come back but if we assume for a moment that maybe this internecine battle kind of consumes them and it takes them off the pitch largely speaking because we should just say that like you know the green performance i mean i said there was a swing to them it's true but actually as you all know john was a local resident there was a local pro-Palestinian candidate at the last election who got about 10 and a half percent of the vote basically if the greens sort of stood still because they just absorbed what this guy got that guy got at the time and their own vote from last time they didn't really increase at all So it's, you know, pretty bad performance in a lot of ways. But Burnham could be looking at the prospect of a right which continues to be divided. And we saw the right wing vote again split between Restore and Reform and the Conservatives. Not the most right wing constituency, so not many votes all, but the same thing. Burnham could be looking at the prospect of a right wing which continues to be split, which this week after the Badenoch speech is there's less chance of reconciliation than ever before. at precisely the moment where the left is coalescing once again behind Burnham partly of his design and his skill but partly because of timing and luck and he's could be a very lucky general which is something you need in politics you know the lucky general thing let me just add one last thing to that if Labour are writing any thank you letters for those who've helped their campaign um they should be writing one to Zia Yusuf at Reform for the tweet that he posted about the Labour candidate, Sehgal Abdiwali, when he said, you know, something terrible is going on here. The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, in our parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what's happening? I mean, that was an absolute rallying cry for Labour supporters and actually for Muslim voters as well, because it was so anti-Muslim, what he said. And I think that undercut some of the appeal of Zach Polanski when this woman was under attack like that from Zia Yusuf I think it was a brilliant recruiting sergeant for Labour well the whole point of journalism of course is to be able to tell your grandkids that you were there at historic events and our very own Henry Riley from LBC is able to say that about the Holborn and St Pancras by-election how does it feel Henry it's quite an honour really um it was it was very I've done a lot of by-elections now yeah um that was exciting this is a particularly one in the particular wilderness of course being in Camden Is there any interesting candidates this time? Well, so not present, but on the ballot was George Galloway, of course, who's leader of the Workers' Party. All sorts of splits within there. Their deputy leader, Chris Williamson, you might remember him, former MP. I do remember Chris Williamson. He's now split from the Workers' Party because he's annoyed that George Galloway ran against Zach Polanski in that seat. Anyway, George Galloway stood. It's not like George to fall out with people. I know. That's weird, isn't it? He didn't knock on a single door because he is... So the Workers' Party not doing any work? well other people were doing the work just not George Galloway there were some leaflets again doesn't sound like George he didn't knock on a door because he's living in self-imposed exile as he describes it in Russia at the moment and he says he doesn't feel safe coming to the UK I mean he got 300 odd votes Restore Britain got sort of double that does show the weakness of the Russian state that they can't even throw a by-election for him and the other Barbie the Monster Raving Loony Party as is often the case stood and they had a man dressed in a beanie balaclava with sausages for a mouth and fried eggs for darts. Is this Mr. Brunch? This is Mr. Barmy Brunch who I think got just shy of 100. So that's how Barmy is his brunch. Well, he's quite a sensible character, actually. You expect to... I mean, Binface has got a bit of a voice but you talk to Barmy Brunch and behind the balaclava is just a sort of normal bloke, really. Sounds like an all-access documentary. I know. Barmy Brunch behind the balaclava. And Binface, our old friend Binface didn't stand. He's too senior for this sort of thing. Too grand. He's too grand, yeah. He only does the big ones. He only stands against Nigel Farage and Andy Burnham. No, he decided not to stand in this one. He did put a video out. I don't think he endorsed anyone, but he's up in space. And how much time did Zach Polanski spend at the count? I mean, was he kind of circulating and talking to people, or was he kind of just in for the result and then off again? He was in and out. He was a sort of tail between his legs. He came on for the declaration, made a real point during the victor's speech, Zach Polanski, of clapping at various points. but he was he was sort of ushered in and he had a sort of security cordon around him made up of activists who were worried that people would try and get too close to him he did one sort of pooled interview afterwards where he said i'm going nowhere i'm the green party leader i'm very happy but um he he was not readily available but then bizarrely i think did a few interviews afterwards this morning so yeah yeah i mean it's bizarre because i i saw a clip on the news yesterday where he'd been i mean running from the tv cameras and there was a beefy bloke who was permanently trying to put himself between the camera and polanski so they couldn't do any decent filming you're thinking it's a bloody by-election what on earth are you doing do you was your impression i mean that the greens knew that they'd lost very early on really early on i mean at the top of 10 o'clock um sort of when the polls slam shut you often get a message from all the parties with the sort of expectation management and whatnot and they basically conceded then at 10 o'clock saying we've run such a good campaign to run Labour this close in one of their safest seats is brilliant so we knew from that point it wasn't looking good i had a few uh green moles there who was sort of showing me the data and some what green moles green moles and they were um they were i'm tired and they were uh showing me the data and it didn't look great and so it was quite clear that it was quite clear that a few thousand votes uh was the difference and that Palansky was basically nowhere nowhere to be seen henry thank you very much thank you so back in 2009 there was a hideous case where a former army major killed 13 unarmed u.s soldiers at Fort Hood. He was a Muslim man and he had been in touch with an Al-Qaeda supporting priest who apparently had told him to do it. And so this guy was sentenced to death. But Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, or should I say the secretary of war, went on the television last night to say the death sentence had a new twist to it. Execution by firing squad. Army Major betrays his country, radical Islamist, kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're going to do it at Fort Hood. We're going to do it on a Thursday, we're going to do it at 1 o'clock, which is when he did it, and it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn't been since World War II since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win. Which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground. So it was radical Islamist terror attack. Remember what Obama called it? Workplace violence. I mean, that's what we're up against. That's the worldview we're up against is workplace violence. CVE. We know what it is. It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks. And so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things. Has Major Hassan made any final requests, reached out to the president, anything like that, to your knowledge? don't care we'll see him on december 3rd december 3rd ford hood ladies and gentlemen secretary of war Pete Hegseth i think like the um attitude we had in world war ii i mean what do you want to do bring back segregated units because that was also something that the americans had in world war ii i mean look yeah this is uh i mean Hegseth is a i mean he really is just a twat isn't he's just a real i mean i don't i can't even think i can't even think i'm trying to think of a more erudite way of putting it and it escapes even me at this point he's just he's a child right he's a man child the way he talks the kind of bloodlust and the relish you know saying that we're going to do exactly the same time it's just you know what's another way of putting it tiny dick energy like it's just it's it's pathetic it's pathetic it is truly pathetic and it is grotesque i mean the idea that you are now making it part of entertainment in the schedules december the 3rd don't forget to tune in you'll be able to watch this guy being shot by a firing squad so that everyone can see Well, one, will the firing squad want to be seen on television? Those people who are pointing their long rifles at him and cutting him down. I mean, will their faces be blacked out? There are so many questions that this raises. This is a country, John, right? This is a country, as you know better than anybody, this is a country with the most horrendous gun violence problem, which is an epidemic which literally kills, you know, hundreds of American school kids every year. You know, and he thinks it's a good idea in a country which has a genuinely sick relationship with violence and gun violence to basically show the state show the state not just the state killing people which we know it does or failing to do so as we saw in Tennessee the other day to show the state glory the state as part of like basically mass entertainment that it's to show the state killing people via firing squad and the message that that sends out that basically like this is how we deal with our problems and actually there's something quite thrilling about it There's something quite fun about it. There's something to relish about it. It's never occurred to him, beneath all that brylcreem, that there may be a relationship between the state glorification of violence and the fact that people literally go out and do it for sick, demented fun with his own country and innocent people suffer for it. Just a theory. Just a theory, Pete. Look, he wants to create a viral moment, and I doubt there'll be many more viral moments this year because there'll be kids you know eight year olds nine year olds who will be watching someone being cut down i mean it happens in Tehran where they put up a crane and they hang people in the public square and you can go past it it's sort of medieval the idea that the you know i personally opposed to the death penalty so you know i would be happy for this guy to be locked up for the rest of his life to never see daylight but i don't there's something about the death penalty that just you know i think it's irreversible obviously if you've made a mistake and if justice hasn't been served properly but if there is going to be the death penalty for god's sake do not make it a public spectacle like that haven't we gone past that isn't that something where we look back in history and say well those were different times and hopefully in our attitudes towards criminal justice we have moved on a bit and he sits there relishing glorying wallowing in this kind of nostalgia for public execution is just hideous i mean the other thing is that presumably it will get bogged down in legal challenge um which you know i mean it's a military decision so it has its own you know military law applies and so on but you know it will doubtless end up getting bogged down the whole thing delayed which they'll enjoy as well because that's the sort of thing they really like and you know whatever so it's probably also part of the plan i think it's part of just like a we've seen it from Hegseth in particular but it is this kind of like weird obsession with a kind of like this sort of macho sort of you know i say glorification of kind of violence and aggression and he's constantly talking he doesn't talk about soldiers he talks about warriors it's puerile right he revels in the puerility of it and he revels in people like you and me finding it puerile but there comes a point where it doesn't really matter what people like you and me think if that point comes very early but but the signal i think this set says or that sends around the world um about america as a republic and america is this beacon of democracy in the uk you can say that's been battered and smashed to bits anyway over the last decade or so but i think it does send a message around the world this is a country which is just regressing you know it's regressing in its political in in in its politics you know and and it is a country which is just basically it's not even now about being fascistic which is the accusation was made during campaign or anything like that it's just regressing to immaturity more than anything else you know what i mean like a sort of just a childlike kind of approach to all affairs of state it's it's just reasonable stuff but measure Hegseth against the reality and we spoke on the podcast yesterday about the kind of headwinds that Trump is facing in these midterm elections and how everything is going wrong why is everything going wrong the principal reason is the war in Iran that has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz which has forced up the price of fuel for American consumers and Americans are ever more hard pressed if you want to talk about what the military has done with Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of War is to look at Iran where no strategic objective has been reached millions billions of dollars worth of missiles and armaments have been fired at Iran the regime is in place it is still functioning and the Strait of Hormuz is still largely blocked what have you achieved Pete Hegseth indeed that's the point right is that you if we look at the second Trump term which has largely been devoid of achievement you know they kidnap Nicolas Maduro well what did he do you know the Maduro regime survives in all but name they used to talk about Iran domestically they cut a load of taxes but you know what else you know in a weird way we sort of talked about this a bit yesterday why why is Hegseth doing this well you know this is a Fox News guy this is a TV guy this is his one probably signature contribution to the defense slash War Department, he leads everything is about aesthetics right, everything is about the show because that's who he is, so he's just reverting to type, it's not like Pete Hegseth's got any great ideas for what American defense is going to look like in 2050 or 2100, same with Trump, why is Trump basically spending most of his time now, 70% of his time if the New York Times is to be believed on the renovations to the White House and to Washington DC itself and the arc of Trump for the Trump and all those absurd vanity projects, it's because he's running out of ideas, so he's reverting back to type which is he's a real estate developer and he's a builder and he likes building stuff and he likes building stuff quickly before anybody can object to it which has been his mo literally since his his Queens and then Manhattan days so in a way I think all of this is just I think we'll see more of this as the second Trump presidency slowly dwindles out of existence which is a lack of any real ideological prospectus after all that potential promise, no real big policy ideas which would be stymied anyway if the GOP-led Congress and just I think more and more sort of lurid spectacles like more and more even for Trump just pushing and pushing and pushing way beyond what sort of if you like polite society would expect to just make a bit of a show and a bit of noise and do a bit of a dance So Donald Trump is a builder who likes building and Pete Hegseth is a twat who likes twattery So John, Emily isn't here today obviously because she's been on the panel for the Nobel Peace Prize, um uh they finally got her and um anyway obviously not that much speculation this year as there was last year as to whether Donald Trump might receive the prize, is that, is that just me, is that just me or is that just uh have i imagined that well he hasn't won it and i think it's a giant miscarriage of justice given what he's given uh us over the past uh few months i suppose he doesn't need it does it because he actually was given it by Gianni Infantino yeah Yeah, well, and Infantino, but also the actual winner last year. Oh, yeah. She gave it to him. Do you remember, just as a sort of saying, well, I don't really deserve it, you can have it instead. Yeah. So, in a way, he's already had it. But I should imagine there'll be some furious post from Trump on Truth Social in the coming hours about the grave, grave injustice that it's gone to some South African woman. Jeez, can you imagine? Navi Pillay. Navi Pillay, who's judge of the International Court of Justice involved in a case in which Myanmar is accused of war crimes against the Rohingya minority in Rakhine State. Oh, that's bullshit. Who cares about any of that when Donald Trump could have got it? Came to prominence during the apartheid era where she secured better conditions for political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. Who cares? What's she done? What's she done? What have you done recently? So miscarriage of justice. Elect Donald Trump. First non-white female judge of the High Court of South Africa. Also serves as a judge on the ICC. President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. i mean look it's it's quite a strong cv i can see what emily and the other judges were thinking i can see why they were thinking about it i mean trump did say last year didn't he that because he didn't get it he might start a war you can't say he's not a man of his words it's always next year 2027 i think that is going to be donald's year for the peace prize we'll see you on monday bye-bye bye-bye the news agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK opening up a world of opportunity This has been a global production.