Trump Gives Wildest Speech Yet To UN | Novara Live

Welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight, Andy Bernham is in New York for his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. Former Chancellor and now OpenAI employee George Osborne weighs in on the backlash to UK data centers. I'm Amber Stani and tonight I'm so happy to say this. I'm joined by Ash Saka. >> It's been ages since we've done a show together. >> Have we? I mean, have we ever done a show together? That's what it feels like. Ash, >> you know what? >> With me hosting, >> I thought that you were avoiding me. I took it very personally, but um the mediators stepped in and they talked us down from from the cliff and now here we are. We're we're allowed to be in the same room. Now the restraining order has been dropped. >> We we did couples therapy with Michael Walker. Uh he's a real genius with that stuff. Uh if you'd like to support our work here at Navar Media, you can of course sign up at navarmedia.com/support. You can also listen to the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, you can like this video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and don't forget to let us know what you think in the comments below. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is in New York where he'll be addressing the United Nations General Assembly later on tonight, and he'll tell the world's leaders that the UK is not on the slide. Part of what has been briefed is a really upbeat message. Uh but that's hardly the main event because the big ticket item is a side meeting in New York where Bernham has just come for the first time face tof face with US President Donald Trump. Now that meeting was supposed to take place an hour ago, but it got pushed back. So we'll update you throughout the show with important moments as they emerge. Uh but what we know already is that the stakes going into that meeting were high with both leaders having traded insults regarding one another in the past. After all, it's only been a little over 5 years since Andy Burnham tweeted this. Any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now. That was, of course, in response to the capital riots where Trump supporters had stormed Congress, attacking police officers and calling for the murder of senior politicians. As for Trump back in June, he had this to say about Andy Bernham. >> I don't know anything. I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he's extremely liberal. Extremely. So that means he probably won't open up the North Sea. I mean Norway's got now$2 trillion dollars in the bank. And UK is uh dying. >> A little town called Manchester. You might have heard of it. It gave the world a little thing called the industrial revolution. Also, you heard it here first. According to Trump, Britain should have taken North Sea oil into public ownership. I guess like the Norwegians, because suddenly that's the template. only we didn't. So now we're dying. I wouldn't go that far, of course, but a few trillion in a sovereign wealth fund might be quite useful to meet future pension obligations. Ahead of their meeting though, Bernham tried to strike a more diplomatic attitude. Speaking to reporters on his flight to New York City, Burnham said this. We found a connection, so I will go with where I feel it's right to meet him where he's at and search that common ground, which I'm sure we'll find. I'm looking forward to it. That is the most Andy Burnham paragraph in history. Ash, what are you expecting from our prime minister's first meeting with the world's most controversial politician? >> So, I know this isn't going to be um necessarily wellreceived by people in our audience, but managing Donald Trump was actually something that Kia Star was fairly good at. if you just want to look at it from the perspective of Karma. I'm not thinking about the overall morality of the foreign policy positions that he took. But he was able to keep the UK broadly out of punitive tariffs. Um he was able to try and stake out a position on Greenland which wasn't completely uh you know up America's backside. There were obviously areas where Kisama was um particularly when it came to allowing the use of bases for the purposes of the war in Iran. He struck a sort of fudge position which is well yes if you're using it for this but no if you're using the bases for that. Um and broadly if you're Kiss Army you'd say that's a job well done. He wasn't putting himself in the crosshairs of Donald Trump's eye the way say Mark Carney has. Now you can say that there were missed opportunities as well. Um certainly wasn't doing what Macron has been doing which is trying to come up with a a middle power strategy, a medium power strategy, which is kind of what uh Mark Carney's been trying to do as well. So Burnham, I think, you know, the tweet isn't going to matter that much. David Lammy was previously foreign secretary and I think he called Donald Trump a Nazi when he was still in opposition. So people had have posted more harsh criticisms of Donald Trump and that didn't appear to matter. The way it seems you deal with Donald Trump as a world leader is you give him something that you were already going to do. Now, the master of this actually wasn't K Star Dama. It's Claudia Shinbal, the left-wing president of Mexico, who was able to both um cater to a domestic audience who does not want to see a Mexican president just completely in lock step with Washington and also appear to Trump that she was, you know, taking greater steps on drug trafficking, fentinel in particular, um than she'd been doing previously. Now, what she did was just repackage drug seizure figures in a way that to Trump seemed like, okay, no, she's really listened to me. And so, I think that that's probably something that Bernham's going to do. He's probably going to say, well, look at all this progress we've made on small boats. You know, that immigration is something which is, you know, um a rightwing and a far-right talking point uh amongst Republican circles at the moment. uh when it comes to Jack Door and when it comes to Rosebank, there's probably going to be some kind of fudge position reached there, which says yes, we're opening up the oil fields, but not doing it so much that it puts uh you know, the UK well out of whack with its climate agreements. Um, I think that he's going to try and build on the sort of uh I guess um ambivalent but overall okay position that Karma has staked out and probably borrow a little bit from Claudia Shinbound's playbook. >> So you think he's going to follow that kind of smothering mitigating approach rather than actually stake out a distinctive position like Carney like Macron where you know what you're going to put some noses out of joint but in the medium term it's it's probably a better direction for the country. you don't think he'll do that? >> He's given no indication that he's that kind of foreign policy guy. Now, I think when it comes to staking out um an industrial policy which is more independent of the United States, yes, that's something that Bernham is more likely to be interested in and that is his sort of approach to foreign policy. So, if you look at uh some of his advisers like Eevee Aspenol, all of them are talking about having foreign policy positions which ultimately reinforce your domestic strategy. So you can sort of see that there'd be an alignment with Macron on issues like that. But in terms of putting noses out of joint, I just don't think that Bernham is interested in doing that. I just don't think he's that kind of politician. So that does mean that when it comes to issues of, you know, real moral clarity, the genocide in Gaza, um, you know, Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, that means that you're going to find more of that kind of fudge position where he doesn't want to create too much disalignment with Washington. >> Yeah, I think that's really true. He's very clear and distinctive when it comes to domestic policy, on foreign policy, less so. On his flight to New York, Burnham told journalists his priorities for his meeting with Donald Trump, saying this. I will be making the case for closer international cooperation on AI, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and renewed efforts to bring an end to the conflict in the Middle East, because what happens abroad impacts each and every one of us at home. In his speech at the United Nations, Trump touched on a few of those and then some. On Iran, Trump uttered some words that may never have been said in that chamber before. >> But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide and I'll be here for two and a half years. The Republican party is running and I'll be helping them. But I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn't even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Now, this is a pretty crazy speech on a bunch of things, but this to me is probably the most important thing he said. And I also have to say I find it incredible that you have the president explicitly acknowledging he won't do very well in the midterms, or rather his party won't do very well in the midterms because that's what he's doing. Also, if you're a Republican, either in the November races or looking towards the next presidential election in a few years, you're probably quite concerned about what he's admitting there. Trump is basically saying, "I don't care how unpopular this war makes the Republican party. I don't care how unpopular it makes me because I'm not running again. So long, suckers." In other words, Republican activists, people seeking public office are just the latest individuals in a long line of idiots who trusted this guy and not a big respectctor of sovereignty of well anywhere. Trump also turned to Cuba. My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba where the communist regime is under great pressure, the biggest pressure they've ever been under. It's an absolutely failed state. It's failing like never before and it will fall. Marco Rubio is handling a negotiation. He's deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let's see what happens. will not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep. It's right at our doorstep. The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States. As our State Department has detailed, they've cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Democrat Socialists of America. >> I don't know if that's a mispronunciation. I I think the president of the United States in the UN called them the Democrats uh the Democrat Socialists of America. There you go. I think that speaks to the seriousness of the man. Before we go to our next clip, I think it's really important to say as well, if communism and socialism are such bad ideas, let them fail. Let them fail. If they're going to fail under their own weight, why do you need economic warfare for decades? And then you say, "Well, it's economy being destroyed." That's that's true. You're doing it. Uh the International Criminal Court also came under some scrutiny. >> The United States is equally opposed to the out of control. Thank you. Thank you very much. The United States is equally opposed to the outofcontrol institution known as the International Criminal Court. We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us. You're an evil group of people. I call on all nations that are members of the IC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately. It is equally unacceptable that with all the genuine atrocities in the world, the UN's top human rights officials spend their time criticizing the United States for protecting our children from transgender mutilization and transgender insanity and enforcing our immigration laws. What they do is unbelievable what they do. It's transgender mutilization of our children. very rambling. We'll talk about that more in a minute. Uh before we do, let's turn to what the president said about AI, though apparently we're not actually allowed to call it that anymore. >> The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now here and after officially called super intelligence. changing the name and that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It's actually amazing. But we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence- SI. Now, before we did this show, before we started, of course, Ash and I had a little chinwag, as you do, and I said, "You have to watch this speech. It's one of the craziest he's given because it's so wide ranging and he says so many strange things about so many separate issues. I mean AI for instance and I suspect that new rebranding of AI isn't of his own authorship. You had an interesting take though. >> So my take was this is that if you compare this Trump speech to the Trump of about a year ago. A year ago he was relentless in attacking America's purported allies. So that meant NATO, that meant Europe, that meant threatening to invade Greenland. And a Trump who is only concerned with violating the sovereignty of the longstanding targets of neoconservative wararmongering is actually a Trump who's deescalating. Now, that's not the same as actual deescalation when it comes to um geopolitics. certainly not going to be anything in there which is of any comfort to the people of Cuba or the people of Iran, but that shows that there is a slight change of emphasis and a slight change of focus. Um, I'm disincclined to read too much into those shifts of emphasis and focus because there's one thing that we know after, you know, however many years of Trump we've had, including the first administration, it's that he's volatile, um, quite mercurial, emotions. He's, uh, really shaped by what he's seeing on both social media and on Fox News. and there is nothing really that you can build a house on, right? It's constantly shifting sands. For me, the more um important thing is that this is now the mainstream of the Republican party. You've got a radicalized membership that's now reflected in terms of who's occupying Congress, who's in the Senate, who the rising stars are, who are the people who are building profiles for themselves in the sort of, you know, influencer and pundit sphere. And so if you're Andy Burnham or you're, you know, you you're any other NATO leader and you're thinking, okay, all we have to do is hold on until Trump leaves office. Well, I don't think you're going to see backto backto backto backto back Democratic presidents until you know kingdom come. This version of a radicalized Republican party is going to generate another president and that president is going to be operating on the presidents set by Trump which is a total commitment to might makes right. There is no kind of international coordination that Trump is particularly interested in. He's interested in deals which are temporary and contingent and can be torn up at any moment. That's not the same as a sort of global effort to either regulate AI or deal with climate change or whatever else it is um you might want to name. He's interested in creating a chaotic environment internationally because he thinks that he can, you know, with his deal making savvy and his, you know, brutality in the boardroom can get the best possible deal for America. That is going to be how subsequent Republican presidents operate. There is not going to be a return to normaly. >> There was a great quote by a French politician, I think it was a former French prime minister a few years ago. Do you remember this? And he said, "Europe can't outsource its interests and its security to swing voters in Wisconsin every four years." And it's such a beautiful formulation. It's true, right? Because I'm sure you're you're absolutely right. Democrats will win elections. Of course they will. But it's a two-part system. And these contests tend to be very close and even if you win the popular vote as Democrats have tended to do with the exception of the last election, you can still lose the electoral college. So if you're serious about future proofing the interests of your own country, industrial policy, foreign policy, energy security, addressing climate change, even if you think China is a threat or whatever, I don't. Russia, etc., whatever it is, you're not thinking that America is a reliable, long-term, consistent, rational partner. You're just not because, like you say, one of the two parties isn't actually interested in being any of those. Um, going into this meeting with Donald Trump, Andy Bernham may have played the one card available to him that might please the president. Uh last night the government announced it would help Saudi Arabia in its war with Yemen's Ansa, also known as the Houthis, uh by providing air-to-air refueling. You may have watched our show last night talking about that was very, very good. where David Wearer argued that this would be a really bad idea, especially given Britain's role in arming Saudi Arabia in the 7-year long Yemen war that started in 2014. That saw 377,000 people killed, around half them in direct violence, while the rest succumb to starvation and disease. That includes over 80,000 children who lost their lives in that war with more than 5 million people ultimately displaced by the violence. Despite that grim history, Defense Minister Luke Pollard explained what was in the deal. >> We are providing air-to-air refueling. So, it's an RAF Voyager tanker plane normally based at RAF Acriteri in Cyprus. That will be refueling the Britishbuilt Typhoon planes that Saudi Arabia use. That'll be for defensive actions where all actions will be in compliance with international humanitarian law because UK military assets are not used if there's any doubt around IHL compliance. And that is not only supporting our friends in Saudi Arabia being able to defend themselves against the attacks the Houthies have made on them, but it's also about supporting our own national security and the flow of navigation uh flow of traffic through the Babel Mande straight. So many of your viewers will know about the straight of Hamuz on the other side of Saudi Arabia on that big side of that peninsula is the Red Sea and the Babel Mandate, the other key navigational crunch point where we get much of our energy and our goods passing through. So keeping that open for and defended from the Houthies is an important part of why we're contributing this. >> It's interesting to hear Luke Pollard describe Saudi Arabia as operating defensively in the current hostilities given it's literally a war that they started back in July. Riyad triggered a fresh round of crossber strikes with the Houthis by bombing the airports in Yemen's capital SA preventing an Iranian airliner from landing in the Houthi controlled city. But Pollard also mentioned the real reason behind Britain's involvement in that clip. Last weekend, the Houthi seized a swave of new territory running south along Yemen's west coast, essentially taking control of the Bab al-Mindab Strait, that narrow passage he refers to, which allows transit of vessels from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. Until now, Saudi Arabia has been able to export oil from its west coast by using its cross-country pipeline to transport it from the Gulf to the Red Sea. Control of the strait means that for now the Houthis control that part of the Arabian Peninsula and its geography. How much if any of that oil is allowed to pass through the Red Sea and into the wider world is therefore down to them and that of course is not a situation global powers can allow to continue. Now US has not been keen to get involved. Last Thursday, Donald Trump dramatically called off US air strikes on Houthi held areas in Yemen with bombs reportedly ready to go. The New York Times reported that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman personally called Trump, imploring him to launch strikes. Houthy fighters responded by moving to seize yet more territory in order to further cut off Saudi forces from the Red Sea coast, making it impossible for oil tankers to leave the territory. And Andy Burnham cited the impact of high energy prices when he explained why the UK would help the Saudis, saying this. I go back to the point I made about cost of living pressures and acting to secure the interests of Britain and the wider region because of course Saudi Arabia has been experiencing attacks, is looking at potential further disruption, and we need to keep those pathways open and hence our agreement to the request. A few countries have been as heavily impacted by rising oil prices as the US with voters like to take their anger out on the Republicans at November's midterms. Although, of course, Donald Trump doesn't seem to care about that. That's a real headache for Trump though, with the Democrats vying to take control of both houses of the US Congress. So perhaps putting a British military asset in the hands of one of the world's largest oil producers is just the kind of gift you bring when you're a prime minister meeting a president for the very first time. And at their meeting today, Burnham seemed to reference the Saudi deal. >> You know that we're still ready to play our part in the Middle East in terms of helping you stop the conflict, open the straight. Um, obviously we're with you that Iran must never be a nuclear power. We accepted uh a call from Saudi Arabia where the foreign secretary for support. So we are prepared to to play our part. So we're we're we're there. So before I come to you Ash, I think it's really important to say the Saudi Arabian defense budget, defense budget, the attack budget in the case of Yemen is $83 billion a year. $83 billion against one of the poorest countries in the world. I mean, you could you could justifiably call Yemen a failed state in many ways. $83 billion a year against the poorest country in the world. If they can't win, something strange is happening. Furthermore, if we're not being told they can't win by the Western media, why aren't we being told that? There's a there's a phrase for this kind of military. It's called a palace army. The Saudis seemingly have a palace army despite all the money that they're spending. Ash, it's it's not helping defensive action if the people you're helping to defend themselves started the war. We saw this with Iran as well, right? We're going to defend the Israelis. They've got a right to defend themselves, but hold on. They're killing school children. They're murdering literal heads of state by helping them defend themselves who are actively contributing to what is an offensive war effort. So, the first thing to point out is that that 7-year war on Yemen, which was the joint Saudi UAE coalition attacks that initiated one of the worst humanitarian crises on Earth. You're talking about starvation, which wasn't just attacking, you know, Houthi fighters or whatever. Um, which starvation which uh impacted tens of thousands of children, hundreds of thousands of civilians being impacted. It was an absolute horror show in terms of the impact on the people of Yemen. And this is one of the things that I feel that none of our leaders in the west are willing to be honest about which is the realities of asymmetric warfare which is when you have a situation say um Israel and Gaza or Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Yemen where you have an immensely powerful well-resourced and wealthy neighbor attacking and violating the sovereignty repeatedly of a neighbor that that's not going to create the conditions of peace. You're not going to end up with a state of surrender even if an appointed government gives you one because the people who live there will never ever forgive you. If you kill somebody's wife, their husband, their children, their parents, if you push them into situations of absolute destitution, they will not want peace. They will never want peace. And of course then you have to factor in uh Iran's access of resistance strategy which is Iran for decades looked at the Houthis looked at Hezbollah and also looked at Hamas as being part of a a firewall um against the the uh influence and the the spread of Israeli imperialism but also as a mitigating factor for the Gulf States as well. So you've got an alignment of interests there. One is a very natural human response which is I will never forgive you for what you did to my country, to my community, to my family. And then you've got the geopolitical interests of Iran. And that is not something you've ever heard, you know, the sainted Andy Burnham talk about. You've never heard Macaron talk about it. You've never heard M talk about it. Certainly, of course, you've never heard an American president talk about that either. um no no prizes for guessing why that's the case but not one of our leaders has been honest about that dynamic and instead you end up in this sort of um idiot paring of lines which really mean nothing anymore well of course Iran can't have a bomb morally why not why can't they have a nuclear weapon when that's clearly the only guaranter of sovereignty for you know nons superpower nations you know why haven't you invaded North Korea well it's because they've got nukes that's why you haven't invaded North Korea That's why you're talking about Cuba. That's why you're talking about Iran. That's why you uh deposed the president of Venezuela because they don't have nukes. The reason why we've done it to North Korea is because they've got one. Um or, you know, the sort of bleeting which, you know, blessedly you hear a tiny bit less of from today's Labor Party about a two-state solution. Totally meaningless. Totally meaningless. Israel's never been interested in a two-state solution. They've never offered the Palestinians a viable state. Um but it just becomes this thing which is um uttered in order to to fill up media minutes. It seems it's something which only exists in conversation between western leaders and the media and their electorates. It's not something which has ever existed in any kind of meaningful reality or analysis of the situation. >> Yeah, it's definitely one of those things where he said well of course we agree arom this is just playing for time. this is just how center left politicians for decades have done foreign policy to play for time and then you do do what Washington wants you to do generally speaking in in London that's so in Paris um and I think the point you made about Iran uh is a really really important one um if you look at the asymmetric warfare sort of aspect of this stuff again we're just not being told about this the Iranian military the IGC in particular have been thinking comprehensively about asymmetric warfare for literally 45 years there is a reason why they're still done this fight, right? They they don't have a particularly impressive conventional military. They basically don't have an air force. They basically don't have a navy. I did laugh at the start of the conflict when you had these press statements coming out, oh, we've destroyed the Iranian Navy. We've destroyed the Iranian Air Force. They don't have an air force. They have F-14 Tomcats from the 1960s. What they do have though is medium-range missiles. They have drones. They have ballistic missiles. They have um uh automated uh sort of ordinance that's naval. We don't really know much about that because again it's one of those things we can't talk about but it's being used comprehensively in the straight of Hammoon. Clearly working clearly working because loads of boats are being blown up and it's just another one of those stories where h how little are we being told? The Saudis are spending 83 billion a year on their military uh at home. And there was a great comment a minute ago. It's that 83 billion is about internal repression. That's what it's for. It's not a real army. I'm not just saying this because I'm half Iranian Ash. If the Saudis and the Israelis actually, but if the Saudis in particular didn't have US backing, Iran will be able to roll over in a week. I'm being serious. Not occupy it because of course then you have guerrilla warfare and so on. But I'm saying in terms of two conventional militaries, it wouldn't last 10 minutes. It wouldn't last 10 minutes. And I have to say I I kind of like Andy Bernham. I'm under no illusions about who he is, what he's done, his track record, voted for Iraq, all those things. But I think he's learned lessons on domestic policy. So on outsourcing, privatization, public ownership. I think he has genuinely changed his position. I see this and I think on foreign policy, my goodness, you haven't learned a thing. And he's talking about, well, we have to do foreign policy. That's in our own interests as well. And he's talking about energy. What about refugees? Yemen has 43 million people. People don't know this. Yemen has a bigger population than Saudi Arabia. If you take away the foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, Yemen's population is twice as big. Again, how many people know that in this country? 43 million people. We're already seeing significant uh undocumented migration now to Djibouti because, of course, this flank of Yemen is being pulverized and people are are moving. So if we start getting lots of Yemeni nationals in small boats crossing the channel because they have family members here which is why people do it by the way generally or they can speak English. Are we going to have the same voices like Farage and some people in the Labour party saying we have to get we have to get tough on small boats and the criminal gangs THEIR HOUSES WERE BLOWN UP BY A MILITARY you support. How many times does the same story have to play out? I mean, serious. Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq twice, Iran twice. I'm going crazy. Uh, Bam and Trump have now finished their press conference at the United Nations. It wasn't very long and it was pretty thin if I'm honest. Trump picked GB News's Bev Turner from the press pack for an early question. >> Mr. President, you just built a very strong case for patriotism over globalism. So I would ask your advice for the UK if we were to pursue that same vision. And if I could ask Prime Minister Burnham as well. Your predecessor famously said he was happier in Davos than Westminster. Are you happier in Manchester or Manhattan? >> Oh, this is that's a risky question. >> You want to go for this? >> Well, I like to um I like to remind uh the president every now and again to be called the great city of Manchester. You know it so well. Bev's a man so much. Uh she's great. >> You once called it some town and you know we don't hold it I don't I don't hold it against you as the former the former mayor but um obviously I'm very much at home Makerfield Manchester but here here too. I love love love coming love coming here, but I I'm patriotic as well. And you know, I was explaining to the president today, Britain has been uh in too much turbulence, a sense of just not knowing where we're going. And I think you responded when uh I said, "We're going to lay out a plan for Britain, a 10-year direction. The country's got so much going for it. Uh and it's time to turn the story about Britain to a positive uh story. we get some uh hopefulness going around the country and I think you were saying today that very much is how you see it >> and there's you know a great opportunity for us as we go forward >> well Bev always asks good questions but I think there's a tremendous patriotism in Britain and you call it United Kingdom Britain they call sometimes England they go back to the old it's got more names than any other place in the world right and sometimes they have to be educated and so on but Uh there's great patriotism in the country. They want to see great things happen. Tremendous potential. I mean I see some countries and I'm with the leaders and I don't say it but I don't see a lot of potential. They've got a tough road to this is a country with great pat. They love the country. The people love the country as much as any other country I can think of. And I think it's just waiting for success, waiting for good leadership. Foreign Secretary Ed Miban sanctions against Israeli or West Bank settlements also came up >> earlier this month. Um the UK sanctioned certain uh settlement organizations in the West Bank. What did you think of that move? Did you discuss? >> Well, I don't know about the move. Uh do you know about the move? >> Uh yes. Um obviously we took uh that decision the foreign secretary and I and you know did uh call you just to say why we taken that. You know, I I take this view on this uh this issue. We've all spoken over the years about the importance of a twostate solution. If we face a situation where there's a tender to put settlements on the West Bank, in effect make a two-state solution nonviable, what do we do? Because if we do nothing, then it further erodess people's trust in politics. They think, well, you're all talk. when it comes to it, you're not prepared to follow up on that talk and and do something. You know, we condemn the Hamas attacks of 7th of October completely and we will anti-semitism wherever we see it. >> A very strong condemnation >> completely. But on that issue, you know, we uh targeted action the foreign secretary proposed on the banning the imports of goods from the from the settlements because you in the end of the day have to have meaning behind your words otherwise trust in politics will further evaporate. >> At the end of that meeting, Andy Bernham seemed to get the presidential seal of approval. >> Mr. President, relations between the US and the UK have been a little bit up and down lately. >> No, I think you're up. What sort of state would you say they're in now? >> They were with the last prime minister. Let me put it that way. >> Ash, one read on that is that look, Bernham looks very uncomfortable there. >> Is that on purpose? I suspect he's probably told by his media people, look, don't look too comfortable. Don't look too chummy. What's your view? >> It's tricky, isn't it? Like again, I don't want to get too into um here's my PhD on what Trump likes and what he doesn't like. Because when it came to Mandani visiting him at the Oval Office, Trump was looking up at him as if Clark Gable was there, you know, you had the sort of Mandani dimple and you just had Trump looking up in adoration. I don't necessarily think that Mandani dealt with that by sort of sitting and squirming in his seat and making himself look smaller. what we know from Karma in terms of how he chose to handle Trump, which is when Trump drops his papers, Kiama gets on his hands and knees and he gathers them all up for him. Um, so I don't necessarily think that there is one route to mitigating Trump's volatility, right? There have been different styles and and different ones have worked. I wonder if there are some talking points that Trump is almost always receptive to. So, one is uh Mandani led on his love for the city of New York, which is something that he and Trump have in common, right? What they think that love means is clearly on opposite ends of the spectrum, but that was the sort of shared ground. I wonder if Andy Burnham just came in and rather than trying to talk policy, just talked patriotism, patriotism, strength, strength, strength, plan, plan, plan, and that was it. and he didn't try to put any kind of clear water between himself and Trump on substantive issues. He just tried to use the kind of language that Trump likes and that got him over the line for this moment. The thing is is that again the volatility. So far, Andy Bernham's government has gotten away with staking out a different kind of position on certain foreign policy issues, most notably uh Israeli settlements in the West Bank. How long that can go on for and what the tradeoff for that is going to be, we still don't know. And I think that um you know obviously a relevant conversation for our audience is where does the Green Party fit into this or any other kind of party that's to the left of the Labor Party is that there are going to be immense pressures on Andy Bernham and Ed Milliband to bring foreign policy into closer alignment with Washington. That's pressure that's obviously going to come from the American government, but that's also pressure that comes from the Labor right. And so the role of the Green Party in part is to be a disciplining force against that kind of um you know Atlanticist drift because it's not just a a sort of anti-imperialist position though I think that that's a really important political position to stake out. It's also one about what is in the interests of people in this country. Trump does not care about the interests of people in this country. He doesn't even care about the impact of rising you know gas and oil prices on his own country. Um it there is there's never been a more dangerous time to argue for an Atlanticist foreign policy in my view. >> Yeah. A question because you mentioned the Greens and this bi-election. It doesn't look like Andy Bernham's worried about being caught on the hop for these kinds of positions. I wonder if Zack Palansky was tearing up trees in Hoben and St. Pancress. If the Greens were polling 5% higher than where they are, you know, if we were back a few months ago where the Greens were actually in terms of the polar polls, in terms of the averaging, they were getting within a couple of percent of the of Labor, which is a really serious thing. Then you start to think about losing, you know, 150 MPs or whatever. >> That's ebbed a bit and we'll see. But right now, the Greens aren't fighting, I don't think. I don't know. But from what I hear, what I've seen, the Greens aren't fighting an outstanding campaign so far in Hoben and St. Pancress. That can change. It's a couple of weeks left. But it feels like maybe Andy Burnham views foreign policy as something where he can make concessions to the right of his party. Whereas on domestic policy, public ownership, etc., he's like, "No, this is what I think. If you don't like it, you can go screw yourself." >> For for for the present, I think that's true. And I think that's because of the particular place that the Greens are in now. Right. One is that the Greens seem to be more membership and activist facing than they are electorate facing. So you think about the really big debates within the Green Party. You're thinking about the motions which are going to be debated at conference in just a week's time. That's something which is taking up a lot of energy. The second thing is that I think when it comes to the campaign in hobbitance and pancreas, there are obviously some things that uh the Greens have done very well. There are obviously strengths that the campaign has. the name recognition of Zack Palansky is an advantage that he has uh over his rival candidate in Labor. There are certain things where you go, I don't think that this has gone quite right. So, take the erdo video. So, I think that doing videos which um speak in the language of communities that you're trying to appeal to within a given constituency is a smart move. I think it makes you look in touch. I think it makes you look uh savvy, makes you look personable. And then the other thing that you can rely on it to do is that the Telegraph and the Times are going to utterly themselves about it and that's going to boost your message for the kind of progressive voters that you want to win over. The problem is the language of erdo which is not the most commonly spoken second language in the constituency of Hoben and St. Pancreas. It's not even the most common South Asian spoken language in the constituency of Hoben and St. Pancreas. If you wanted to do it, you'd be speaking Bangler or Cleti, right? There's a there's a decentsized Bengali uh population in Hoben and St. Pancress. >> I think it's second in terms of foreign languages after French. Right. >> So you just sort of go not quite not quite and I think that this is you know this is the difference for Bernham's position and Palansky's position right now. Burnham can afford to lose in Hoben and St. Pancress. He can afford for there to be one more green MP in his parliament. Labour still have an overwhelming majority. Bernham's still enjoying his honeymoon period. It's still within his gift really to determine when the next general election is going to be. Zack Palanski cannot afford to lose Hoben and St. Pancress. It's difficult to be a Nigel Farage type figure, to go for a constituency and lose, to go for a constituency and lose, to go for a constituency and eventually win it if you don't have that kind of big money backing you and you don't have the sort of support in mainstream media that Nigel Farage has had. >> Um, and I'm I'm not sure that the Greens have been contesting this bi-election from what I've seen like it's an existential matter for Zack Palansky. Um, yeah. I mean, it's something I've been thinking about a lot. If I was in the constituency, which way would I would I vote and so on? Um, I think I would vote green. I mean, I voted green in the last general election. I think I would vote green. Of course, the concern is that if the Greens win, you undermine Andy Burnham internally and the Labour right gets the upper hand because then they can say, well, look, you can't win the left anyway. So, the sort of star position is the right one, which is obviously bad news as well because I think that basically opens the door to reform. But I think I would vote green on the assumption that you want it to be really close. I think a per a perfect world, even if you're on the Labor, particularly if you're on the Labour left and you want a different kind of foreign policy, is you want Labor to win as a Labor member by maybe 1500 votes, right? Because then it's a signal saying, okay, you still keep these seats, but Camden Labor is the most effective political machine you have in London. You've just kept it. So on foreign policy and on things like public ownership, etc., You've really got to be on your toes. My worry is we still got a long way to go. Who knows? I have no idea what's going on there. I will go to the constituency. We'll make our video. I'll have a really good grasp of the facts and then I'll tell you about it. My worry is if Labour win handsomely. You then have a general election called and Andy Burnham and the people around him make a conclusion not irrationally on the basis of that bi-election result. Well, look, yes, we need to focus on Israel, particularly the West Bank, and we need to talk, you know, a lot about the international order and and international law in a very sort of legalistic, liberal way, >> but we shouldn't really think about reconfiguring British foreign policy in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia or North Africa. I think we obviously should, by the way, you I know you have strong views on this as well, but I do feel like a big win for Labor in Herbert and St. pancreas will basically be a prompt to do precisely that. >> A big win for Labor in Hob and St. Pancress means that sort of what the Greens have been able to do so well, which is discipline the Labour party is that that really recedes in quite a significant way. And I think that is in some ways more important than simply the question of how many MPs did the Greens get. It's how effective are they at exerting a sort of gravitational pull within the political landscape before they're able to build up their parliamentary presence in the way that I know that they plan to do. Now just within the constituency of Hibern St. Pancress I think there's reason to believe that Zach Palansky has been leading some of what Sagal Abdi Wallally has been saying. So, Zack Palansky has been talking a lot about Temp's water. That's been a huge part of his campaign, talking about him being the one to actually hold uh Temp's water to account and make the demand for nationalization. What did I see today? It's a video from Sagal Abd Abdiwali um talking about Temp's water. So there is a degree of at least within that you know microscopic version of you know the country at large of one constituency that in this campaign Zack Palansky um is sort of creating the room in which to move to go for progressive voters. >> The thing is is that that doesn't work if you lose um and and the sort of tolerance for um electoral um failures. I don't want to be too harsh about that, but you know, not winning in an election, the tolerance that exists for that for the left is always smaller than it is for the right. Nigel Farage can fail multiple times and it doesn't really matter. Um because one, it's the Nigel Farage show. Brexit is the Nigel Farage show. UKIP uh Brexit party now reform. It's all built around one man. It's not the same way for for um uh the Greens and Zach Palansky. He's going to have competitors, I think. looking uh at the leadership if he's not able to win. Um and then the second thing is just the media environment is completely different. Um and it's it's tricky, right? I'm I'm looking forward to your video because I'm looking at this from a certain amount of distance. I'm talking to, you know, people in the Green Party, people have been out on the doorstep. I'm looking at it through the lens of what I'm seeing in the media. But you're going to be out there this week, aren't you? >> Yeah. Friday. Friday. I I I feel like the Greens aren't getting stuck into the Labour candidate. I feel like they're not getting stuck in. And you know, they got stuck in in Gordon and Densson, right? And it was it because it was easy to get stuck in with Matt Goodwin. It was easy. It was easy. Super easy. You know, very right-wing guy, big smile, flashy suit, Rolex, Daytona watch. Super easy. But if you're going to win, you know, lots of seats in lots of different places, they're not all going to look and sound like Matt Goodwin. Very, very easy to do that. You know, you've got somebody who's literally the literal polar opposite of your politics. That's not what it is in Hogan and St. Ara. So, you've got to you've got to be far more strategic about what you're trying to prize apart. And I should say this, the Labour Camden machine is the most maybe the most right-wing CLP in the capital, London Labor region, um, or Labour London region rather, is incredibly right-wing. And I don't feel like any of this is actually being communicated to a wider audience by the Greens. And I don't know why. >> I mean, look, two points. Two points to I think, you know, just so we're not the voices of doom. One is is that um Sagal Abdiwali is accountable for the decisions taken by Camden Council um in a way which puts the entire labor record in the constituency on the table for criticism. The second thing is that I wonder if the sort of makerfield effect of constituents not just thinking about who's the most locally relevant candidate who's got the deepest roots in the area, but perhaps wanting a national status politician to be the one who's representing them. That that's something which might benefit Zack Palansky. >> It should. Like I said, I I would want him to win personally. I think it's still a good thing for the Greens if it's very close. My worry politically and I think by the way everybody on the left should be really even if you love Andy Burnham and you don't like Zack Palansky. My worry is if the the sort of the Greens come a really distant second, you know how fatuous the media is. All of a sudden they'll say that was yesterday's story. The story now is Labor versus reform. We don't want that because of course that drags the whole of the national conversation to the right. People across Britain are objecting to the building of new data centers in their backyard. There are currently 500 of them across the country with hundreds more approved or currently awaiting approval. Uh that's a pretty quick process though with many of them classed as national infrastructure by the government meaning they can bypass normal planning regulation and processes. Uh the UK now has the second highest number of data centers in the world even more than China. Pretty remarkable. Now people make a lot of different arguments against these developments. They use a lot of water for one thing. With Water UK warning there isn't enough to cover all the data centers presently being planned. Many of them also use lots of electricity uh meaning more greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, we've not decarbonized electricity in this country. Uh some with higher emissions than one of England's largest oil refineries. Uh the backlash the sentence may also be fueled by a rejection of AI. The public is increasingly identifying the technology as something they're not really sure about or they don't really want. But for former Chancellor George Osborne, none of those are valid concerns. No, for him it's all just nimism. And Osborne, who just happens to hold a senior position at OpenAI, the developers of Chat GPT, feels these actions are actually holding Britain back. Speaking at the Big Brew Festival in Somerset on Sunday, the former chancellor said this. I think a lot of the opposition to data centers is very much like not in my backyard. There's an enormous building boom going on in the United States of data centers. Even as the political opposition undoubtedly is growing, they're going to be built elsewhere. And you know, that's a loss of some sovereign control over the physical location where these things are. He has literally no idea what he's talking about. If it's a data center owned by Google, that's not sovereign infrastructure. It's an American company, you might uh have realized. I hope so. Anyway, the former politician has the title of head of AI for countries at Open AI, a position that sees him represent the interests of the company to governments across the world. AI leaders will be present at the UN General Assembly this week. There they'll be meeting politicians from around the world after a host of prominent tech figures wondered aloud about whether their technology will indeed destroy civilization. Early this month, a senior employer, Anthropic, said he felt there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could quote kill all humans. Don't worry, though. George Osbborne thinks it'll be just fine, just like he said, austerity. It was a good idea. The former chancellor said this. The fact that corporate leaders are sitting down with the presidents and prime ministers of the world and the UN Security Council, I would say actually shouldn't be alarming. It's actually reassuring that people are beginning to try and use the kind of institutions of the world to think about how we regulate this new technology. Uh Mr. Osborne isn't the only person inshed in the nexus of AI, politics, and interest representation in Britain with money from the big tech lobby currently flying into Westminster at record rates. Elsewhere, former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson took up a position at Palanteer last week. Meanwhile, the Tony Blair Institute, which had a major influence on labor policy under Kama, has been given hundreds of millions of dollars by tech mogul Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest people in the world. Osbborne's comments in support of AI come as his employer faces a lawsuit over a school shooting in Canada. 18-year-old Jesse Van Ruteller killed eight people, including six children, in a horrific shooting in February in British Columbia. Prior to the attack, his interactions with Chat GPT were flagged by members of the firm's safety team as he made repeated references to gun violence, but the company failed to alert authorities. And now, the Canadian province has launched a lawsuit against the company with British Columbia's attorney general saying this. To date, Open Eye has not taken meaningful steps to address the concerns raised by survivors, families, and the Tumblr Ridge community. The company still has an opportunity to demonstrate accountability by strengthening safeguards, improving transparency, and taking concrete action to help prevent similar tragedies in the future. All very sensible. Open's chief executive Sam Alman said in an OpenAI letter to the victim's families in April, quote, I'm deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement. The company did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC in response to that lawsuit story. Crim stuff. My goodness. Six kids have died. Uh Ash, it's a pretty lucrative game, isn't it? Lobbying for American big tech and these firms valued at a trillion plus dollars. >> Well, look, I'll tell you why they're doing it. It's because public opinion is hardening against AI. And that's for a whole number of reasons. People are worried about jobs. People are worried about what's going to happen to their data. People are worried about the environmental impact, the use of electricity, and the use of fresh water. And all of that is combining into a sense of AI skepticism, not about whether or not the tech can do or the things that the companies say that it's able to do. There is a sense that most people believe the claims being made of the transformative power of AI. It's much more about whether or not this is going to be beneficial to society and to their lives personally. And I think that this is why George Osborne's comments are so offensive. He says, "Well, this is nimiism. this is just not in my backyard. No, it's actually a desire for some kind of democratic oversight of the economy. What is technology going to be used for? How are we going to decide the allocation of resources? Who is it going to benefit? Who's going to get rich? Who's going to be on the losing side of this technology? Now, you would say that those kinds of questions should be part and parcel of a healthy democratic society. That we should of course have some kind of say over what this, you know, allegedly transformative technology is going to be used for. But I think people feel more disempowered than ever. And so I don't think it's necessarily that people are saying I object to energyintensive forms of technology or water inensive forms of technology or economic activity. It's why this one and so far there's been no compelling answer to that other than cures for cancer which are yet to materialize and transformations to the workforce which are going to result in mass white collar unemployment. M we've come out 20 years of really bad regulatory decisions on big tech and social media and smartphones and I think people quite rightly are saying let let's not make similar mistakes over the next 20 years. Um personally I think a lot of mental ill health and anxiety uh is down to our relationship to smartphones. I have an unhealthy relationship with mine for sure. uh people walk down the high street, they see what e-commerce and Amazon have done to small businesses and they say, "Look, you know, there's been some advantages. It's convenient. Uh but maybe we could have done things slightly better." Um and I think that's the same with AI, right? >> But I think AI is potentially even more more dangerous. So I think individualized screens of which social media is just one part, that's been obviously um hugely uh deletious to our attention span. And I think that's got massive implications for how we can behave morally in the world. When we're disembodied, when we're insulated from the realities of human labor, when our own behavior is insulated because we're on the other side of the screen, we become worse people. So, you've got this this weird combination of social media making everyone feel surveiled, but at the same time, it's a poor policeman of ethical behavior, right? We don't we don't become better, more generous, more kind just because we think we're always being watched by camera phones and social media. AI, the reason why I think it's potentially even more dangerous is that while it's still a bit, you know, TBC about what the impact on the economy is going to be, it's already hit education like a bomb, it has made take-home school work and take-home coursework completely worthless and meaningless. And friends of mine who work in higher education say that, you know, upwards of 60% of take-home essays that they're grading bear the hallmarks of AI. >> Yeah. >> And the reason why that's so dangerous is that social media has already nuked our attention spans. What AI does is that it threatens and inhibits our cognitive development at the most basic level. People won't read. They won't reason. They won't work things out for themselves. They're not taking themselves to the gym as it were of doing mental hard work. That makes you a more, you know, thoughtful, reasoning, intelligent person. >> And I worry about that. I worry about what it means for our entire species. And I also want worry about what it means politically if we are these sort of atrophied beings whose attention span can't last longer than an Instagram reel or the average length of a Tik Tok. and our comprehension abilities are absolutely in the toilet. What kind of politics do you think that that creates and that's not something which I've heard politicians talk about. So in my work of of you know doing mainstream media stuff I do end up talking to Labour politicians and ministers and all of them sound like they've had labbotoies. I'm sorry. They just go well you know it's like a calculator you know it's about how you use it. We can't be left behind. And I just think you haven't thought about this for five minutes. And and it's the sort of um lazy complacent attitude that let children be prayed upon by predatory social media companies. They're now taking the same approach when it comes to AI and young people. And that's something that really worries me. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. James Marriott, great book about moving to a post- literate society. It looks at AI precisely through that lens. I mean Jonathan hate who's talked extensively about social media and mobile phones he says imagine in the 80s if you had a kid going to school and you said you know what you can take a TV into school and you can just watch it whenever you want you'd say that's crazy that's kind of what we've done with mobile phones it's fair to say Zora Mamani is the most impressive left-wing politician in the angophone world right now elsewhere Claudia Shinbal and Pedro Sanchez they're deeply impressive as is Luda Silva in Brazil but across North America the UK Ireland and the antipities we have to be honest The mayor for New York City is presently in a class of his own. That was true when he campaigned, overwhelming Andrew Cuomo in a shock defeat to win the Democratic nomination last year. But it's also been true in power. After all, Manny presently has a 58% approval rating among New York City residents, which is significantly higher than when he won. It's quite the achievement given the zeitgeist of anti-incumbent populism. Uh that reflects a widespread recognition for his achievements to date. improvements to infrastructure, most notably basic repairs among them. Uh memorably the city fixing over a 100,000 potholes in Mamani's first 100 days. Then there were expansions to New York's free child care and transport offer and a pilot with that publicly owned grocery store. But yesterday, Mandani did something a little different. Speaking at the Urban 20 summit in Los Angeles, a global conference featuring mayors from major cities in the G20, the world's 20 largest economies. Mandani who remember won his party's nomination as a member of the Democratic Socialist of America said this in New York City there are certain words that have taken on ideological associations. One of them or certain phrases one of them is quality of life. Over the last few decades quality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. uh efficiency, especially in the age of Doge, efficiency has been taken on as a right-wing concern, rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern. And there has been a sense that if you are to admit to an interest in those, then you are assisting the right-wing when in fact what I think the truth is is that if you ignore these things, that is what the assistance is. These are in and of themselves incredibly important things that we have to deliver on and not allow there to be some kind of an ideological monopoly on who cares and who can deliver on them. And frankly to me quality of life which is used to describe potholes, speed bumps, a tree on your block, if politics cannot deliver on the block where you live, why would you trust it to deliver anywhere in your city? And so frankly, the smallest concerns are often times the most important concerns. because that is where you can build the early blocks of trust and faith with a constituent that this government could somehow be bit different than those which have preceded them. And to us it is it is part of why we are so passionate about paving potholes in our city. Uh because if you are making a New Yorker's life a little smoother, so too you are making their journey to believe in government's ability to deliver for them. And so just as we are delivering on universal child care, just as we are delivering, you know, 2,000 seats of free child care for for families who have 2-year-olds across the city, we have to pave 200,000 potholes. We have to pave 757 lane miles. The distance from New York City to Nashville is what we have to pave in roads at the same time. And all of this creating a greater faith, a greater trust, a greater relevance. uh because often times if you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say that's who did it. And it's not enough for us to tell people that's wrong. We have to actually explain what's right and how to do it together. Ash, before I come to you, and that was extraordinary, by the way, I want to repeat this line because it's really important. He said it towards the start. The smallest concerns are often the most important concerns because that's where you can build the early blocks of trust and faith with the constituent. That's why we're so passionate about paving potholes. This is so so important because often if you talk about fly tipping or litter or antsocial behavior, some people, not entirely irrationally, will say, "Why do you care so much about something which is relatively trivial? We need to focus on bigger things like the climate crisis and socializing elderly care. I agree. But here's the thing. If the state can't keep streets clean, how the hell is it going to rapidly decarbonize our energy systems? >> Ash, >> so I love to see my influence. You know why? Because I texted you that clip earlier this morning. >> And lo and behold, is on Navara live. I love to see it. Um, so I just don't think that there's anyone doing it like Zoran Mambani. And I think that what he's able to do is carve out a space which has real integrity but never loses contact with the people whose support he really needs. So he's not embarrassed about holding progressive social views. He's not shy about it. He doesn't hide away from it. But he's not easily distracted. He doesn't get pulled into culture wars issues. and he refuses to allow himself to be disciplined by leftists who are highly online but fundamentally not representative of the kinds of people whose votes that he needs. He's relentlessly focused on the material conditions of workingclass people. And I think that that's his strength. It's both of these things together. It's not being shy about the values that you hold but not being easily distracted. when it comes to the sort of substantive point about things being rightcoded. So quality of life I don't think is rightcoded here in a UK context but it has become rightcoded in the United States because it's sort of seen as a shorthand for uh visible homelessness, visible substance misuse, the state of the streets, feelings of safety, etc., etc. And one of the things that really influenced some of my thinking around this is um really good friend of mine is a local counselor, local green counselor and in the area uh that he represents. The estates have not only a lot of drug problems, but the impact of those drug problems are being felt by people who also live on the estate. So, you know, he's heard from residents who are, you know, 6 months pregnant, 7 months pregnant, and having to step over someone who's passed out in their doorway, right? problems of I'm not just talking about litter and dog mess you know human feces urine that kind of thing. So the first thing is that there is a sort of left-wing culture which would say well any way in which you try and broach this conversation is going to be punching down on vulnerable people right people who have been um you know abandoned by the state to you know their addictions. The thing is is that one, it's impacting other working-class people, people who are also vulnerable in their own ways, but also two, if you take that line, it means that the only solution to these issues is going to be right-wing ones. Whereas, if you say, actually, all right, we want to improve your quality of life. We want to deal with the fact that it's not nice to live in an estate where, you know, you don't feel safe, right? Drug addicts aren't always the most predictable of people. Makes you feel uncomfortable, makes you feel tense. having to step over somebody who's passed out while you're pregnant. >> But we're not going to deal with that through saying, "Let's just arrest him. Let's just lock them up. Let's just shift them somewhere else." The solution is going to be, "What kind of care are we going to provide?" So, if you avoid issues because you go, "Well, this is rightcoded." You then say, "Well, the only solutions to them are going to be inhumane. They're going to be carceral. They're going to be oppressive. They're going to be right-wing." I don't think that's the same as triangulating necessarily on issues like undocumented migration, right? I don't think it's the same as saying, "Okay, well, that means that we have to start talking about illegal immigrants every 5 minutes because we don't want to see that conversation to the right." Though, I do know that that's what Blue Labor thinks. I think that it's sort of saying that rather than thinking of things like family, safety, um you know, quality of life in the American context, uh inefficiency, waste, rather than rather than thinking of these as being right-wing things, we have to go actually what's the left answer to that? And it has to be credible. It has to be a credible answer. >> Yeah. This idea of efficiency. People might think I'm a bit crazy going from the US Democratic Party to Mao, >> but you know, in in the little red book, he says we need vigilance and we need um what's the word I'm looking for? When you're prudent with your money, >> uh fiscal discipline. >> Uh it's a great word. It doesn't matter. We need to be clever with our money. Basically, Ma talks about this is a particular word that they use. And look, actually, postwar socialists and social democrats in Europe were were the same. you know, if you're going to build up the the the country and you're going to put working people first, you got to be really really smart with how you allocate resources. And in recent decades, that's been lost as a framing by the left. I think personally because of the of the liberal professional managerial class. I mean, I would say that, but I think it's also somewhat true. Uh you want efficiency. It's a good thing, right? And I think if you give that over to the right, I think that's very, very damaging. There is efficiency in the public sector. Here's the thing, though. You can probably find five billion, okay? You can't find 55 billion. And so when reforms say we're going to do all this and this and that and we're going to do it by by finding the waste, that's crap. You know, could you do one or two really good things? Could you extend, you know, paid maternity leave and uh you know, in terms of state backing for it, could you have a few more national bank holidays? Could you uh increase a little bit of money to local authorities from central government and the central government grant? Could you do that? Let's say you're going to spend nationally 67 billion and find waste probably. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not what reform is saying. I don't think like you said that's not triangulation. That's just a sensible empirical politics which is grounded in putting working people first. >> Can I give you just a tiny example of inefficiency? So, um, a play area in my local park is being done up and that is going to cost £700,000. >> Wow. >> Right. >> Wow. >> A huge amount of money. Not necessarily because you're getting the bells and the whistles, you know, the most topsp spec play area that you can have for kids. It's because play equipment is exported from basically one country in Denmark. And that's become hugely more expensive, hugely more inefficient since Brexit. So you've got this massive inefficiency which is we sort of killed off our own industrial base in this country. We became dependent on suppliers from overseas. Then we decided to make it more difficult and expensive to import goods from our closest neighbors. And then we get surprised when things are really expensive because we wanted two things that directly contradict one another. We wanted to nuke our own industrial base and we also wanted to nuke a free trade agreement with our closest neighbors. And then we're surprised when things are slower and more expensive. >> Yeah. I'll say this in the local authority where I live, which is Portsmouth. It's a unit authority. Do you know how much it costs to have a raised zebra crossing? So not traffic lights, a raised zebra crossing. So it's kind of like speed bumps meet zebra crossing. >> I don't know you. How much does it cost to get the policeman to lie down? >> Stupid joke. >> This is a shark, ladies and gentlemen. >> Sorry. I'm so sorry. >> No, no. In a good way. One of the funniest people I know. Um, on a ser True. On a serious level, how much you think it costs? >> It's outsourced, obviously. Colass, French company. >> Let's say quarter of a million. >> You You've undermined, as Johnny used to say on the big on the big breakfast, you've undermined the stat. >> Uh, £120,000. Jesus Christ, that is >> £120,000 for slightly raising the road and painting some sort of, you know, some lines on it and having two lights there. £120,000. And if the leftwing position is no, frugality, some people are saying in the comments, it's frugal. Yes, Ma said frugality and vigilance is what we'll build national restoration on. Um, if frugality means saying, "Hey, you know what? That's that's a little bit too much. Why don't we bring it in house and pay a little bit less? Uh, sign me up. That's not a right-wing talking point, Ash. Any final comments? >> You know what? Let's I don't want to impose my dad jokes on the good people of Navara Live any longer. >> Okay, before we go, I want to say this is a great show. If you like what we're doing here at Navara Media, building a new media for different politics, go to navara.dia/support. Look, it's there. It's there. One pound a month. Our support people say, don't say that. I say, why not one pound a month? So easy. One pound. What do you buy for one pound these days? Even pound shops want more than a pound. Uh we're trying to do something I think um important which is build a long-term political institution that does journalism different in this country. Ash, why should people support Navara Media? >> Um we should support Navara Media because I don't think you understand how small we really are. We do Navara live. We do downstream. We do if I speak. We do do your own research. We do the Cortado. We do articles. We do socials first news. We do ops. We do design. We do events. I must be missing something as well. I think we even have like another podcast or two that I've failed to mention. Um, we've got social media accounts. We're doing this on, you know, our staffing numbers fluctuate, but normally it's between 20 and 25 people. And we do this thing as an organization which is when we've got a good idea, we don't go what's the most sustainable way to do it. We just go we're going to do this as much as we can for as long as we can. So we didn't try and make life easy on ourselves and go Navara live once a week. It's good enough. Other people do their live streams once a week. Good enough. We went we're going to do this every day and we're going to have research and journalistic standards baked into the scripting. We're gonna have the best kit that we can afford. We're gonna have poor old Alex Noble spinning 30 plates all at once, uh, you know, with nothing but Pro Plus to keep him going. >> Flight of the Navigator over here. >> And I think that that's the thing that I always wish people um could see about the organization, that it's run by people who are not as well resourced as they are deeply committed. and just a little bit more money is going to help people do an awful lot more. >> We're about to hit a million followers on Instagram, by the way. So, we have this huge footprint, 1.6 million on YouTube, 1 million on Instagram. Ham Zumlot, the uh the ambassador, Palestinian ambassador to Britain, he came in a few weeks ago to talk to Michael Walker, and he said, "You make such a loud noise from such a small place." I love that. So, it's very, very Arab, very poetic. I think it's very true. We do. And if you agree, why not support our work? Go to environ./sport. /sup support. Ash, this is a bit of one-off, but I've really enjoyed it. I'd say make it a regular thing, but she's so busy. It's not going to be. It was great talking to you, though. >> It was great. You know what? We should do this more often. >> Well, it once a month. Uh, once a month. Let's try. Uh, thanks to all of you guys as well for tuning in. Come back tomorrow for another show from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Navar Media. Good night.