The News Agents: Met corruption and Britain’s biggest unsolved crime

It's just over six weeks now since a private detective called Daniel Morgan was found dead

in a car park of a pub in south London.

It was gruesome.

He'd been killed with an axe.

That was from BBC Crime Watch in April of 1987.

It is a murder, a crime that still has not been solved.

It is the most investigated crime in British history.

And overnight it emerged that documents relating to that murder had just miraculously appeared

somewhere in New Scotland Yard, the home of the Metropolitan Police.

And the reason that this matters is that part of the investigations, the many investigations

that have taken place into this murder have focused on the police's role.

The independent panel inquiry into Daniel Morgan's murder found that the police had

acted in a way that could be characterised as being institutionally corrupt in trying

to block information about how they handled it.

And lo and behold, these documents have now emerged.

Today we'll be talking you through the consequences of what that means for the Met Police, for

Daniel Morgan's family, for Londoners who want to trust in the police force that runs

this city.

And we'll be talking to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, about his response to what he's

just learnt.

Welcome to the News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's Emily.

And it's Lewis.

And in terms of the Daniel Morgan murder, maybe this is something that you haven't followed

or aren't aware of, maybe you're too young to certainly really remember this.

I mean, this is a really old case.

It goes back to 1987.

And Daniel Morgan was a private investigator whose body was found outside a pub in Sydenham

in South London.

He had an axe on the back of his head.

And obviously that is dramatic and it is big news in itself.

As we were saying at the start, the reason this case has kind of ricocheted over and

during the last 30 years is because and arising from the way the Metropolitan Police handled

it.

No one has ever been convicted over Morgan's death.

He was a father of two.

And the Metropolitan Police over that time has admitted corruption hampered the original

murder investigation and had to apologise to his family.

And his family believe that police corruption and reluctance over that time to confront

the consequences of that corruption help explain the murder and the many failed investigations

into his killing.

Yeah.

This is the most investigated case in British policing history.

And it led the way for an inquiry into what went wrong, which concluded in 2021 that,

as we've been saying, as Lewis said, the Met was institutionally corrupt.

Add that on to what we heard from Louise Casey last month, that it was also institutionally

racist and homophobic and misogynist.

And you have a clear example of a force that is quite simply not functioning right now.

And even though this inquiry scrutinised 110,000 documents and the report made more than 12

hundred pages of detailed explanation of what they felt went wrong, what we now know is

that a whole heap of papers was never handed over because they were in a locked cabinet

file that had in quotation marks not been used for years.

And that is jaw dropping in itself.

But what was even more jaw dropping about this is that during that in the panel process,

they actually said that the then commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Dame Crestedadick,

had herself been personally responsible for obfuscating and denying the inquiry all of

the full access to the resources and paperwork that it needed.

So this is a story that went up to and goes up to the very top of the Metropolitan Police.

And although we're not saying that they are personally connected in terms of the early

stages of this inquiry, it's worth noting that one of the theories behind the reason

why the police had acted corruptly over this period is that Morgan is supposed to have

potentially been on the brink of revealing corruption at the police at the time, given

as I say, he was a private investigator.

Well, one man who's done a lot of work into this is Peter Dukes, the investigative journalist

who's done a podcast series called Untold the Daniel Morgan Story.

And we wanted to ask him before we go to Sadiq Khan, what he, Peter, had made of this revelation

of the newly discovered locked files.

I mean, the problem with the Daniel Morgan murder, which is apparently the most investigated

murder in British history, at least five investigations, is the amount of lack of disclosure from the

Met.

There were in the trial, the pretrials that collapsed in 2011, estimated over a million

items of evidence over those investigations.

And that's really why the trial collapsed.

I mean, there was a problems with the supergraph's evidence.

But what kept on happening in the pretrials, they'd find more boxes of evidence because

it's right across the Met, all their different departments, their different hierarchies.

This was found on the seventh floor.

It is this incompetence of the Met.

But of course, on this, you have to ask, is it organized incompetence?

Why were there so many files missing?

Was there willful blindness involved?

And that's why I think the panel report said there was, you know, institutional corruption

in the Met, following on from the McPherson report into Stephen Lawrence saying, institutional

racism.

In that, the organization now over, what is it, 36 years has shown itself incapable of

scrutinizing itself.

And in terms of the potential importance of these files, what might they contain and

why might they be important?

Well, I mean, you know, as I said, there are a million items.

What it is is there was clearly police corruption in the first murder investigation that has

been accepted by the Met for 10 years.

And then they had to accept the panel report.

The second investigation deliberately turned a blind eye.

The subsequent three investigations, many questions asked about why they fell apart.

There was obviously a lot of media involvement, right?

Because that was sort of Alistair Morgan and the family didn't know about that until around

the phone hacking trial.

There was close proximity between these police officers and major media figures.

So it would be about, my feeling is, depends on the days of these documents, what you've

got, it's got the original Clear Cart Southeast London, many convictions corrupt policing,

and that's around the murder of Daniel.

But then you've got three decades of institutional cover up.

So there's a kind of second level of corruption, which is senior Met officers going back several

generations now, not able to admit their own dysfunction.

And one of the prime jobs, it seems to me, of most Met commissioners the last couple

of decades has been trying to cover up things like this.

So they're managing, they're managing the corruption they already face.

It's like being in a building with dead bodies on the floorboards, and where do you dig?

Where do you hide the smell?

And where do you ignore?

And that is, people say, oh, it's a few rotten apples.

Well, the problem is, we are seeing the fruit of a poison tree.

The Met is clearly, structurally bound to face these forms of corruption, whether it's

competence or collusion.

There is something structurally wrong with the Met, maybe because it's a national force

and a local force.

It really is an extraordinary story.

And of course, despite the political ramifications and the contemporary ramifications for the

police, obviously we shouldn't forget that at the very heart of this have been Daniel

Morgan's family.

And the saddest reaction in a way, I think, this morning was that from his brother, Alastair

Morgan, who's obviously been at the center of this throughout and has criticized like

the rest of the family, the police throughout, and his reaction was to say, I'm not even

surprised.

I mean, it's shocking, but I'm not even surprised.

Such is the familiarity that he and the family have had with what, as they see, have been

a completely inadequate and they've accused the police of corrupt response throughout

the course of the last 30 years.

35 years.

I mean, they've been looking for justice for 35 years now.

They are no closer to finding Daniel's killer, but they are closer to understanding all the

different stages at which this investigation went wrong.

So the person who is partly responsible for the Metropolitan Police and oversees their

work is, of course, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

He has come into the news agent's studio today to talk about this case and his reaction

to it.

We'll be hearing from him on a wider selection of issues towards the end of the interview,

but that's where we start with Daniel Morgan and these newly discovered files.

So Sadiq Khan, welcome to the news agents.

I mean, this is an extraordinary case, Daniel Morgan.

When you heard about this, what was your reaction to it, this missing file or set of files that

has suddenly turned up?

I was speechless.

I was gobsmacked.

I was told this last week.

I spoke to Alistair, who's Daniel's brother, this morning, and I began by apologising to

him and expressing my condolences for not just Daniel's murder in 1987.

In fact, up until today, no justice has happened, nobody's been prosecuted.

No police officers have been disciplined.

And you're right, the independent panel found institutional corruption, including the delay

in the former commissioner handing over documents to the panel.

I was reassured all the documents had been handed over.

The former commissioner wasn't happy with the findings of the panel.

I was told last week that a filing cabinet, which was locked, was in New Scotland Yard,

was forcibly opened.

And within that, more than a thousand pages of documents were found, directly relevant

to...

A thousand pages?

More than a thousand were found in relation to InvertCom's Daniel Morgan case.

They were then gone through to see if they were duplicates of papers that were already

handed over to the panel.

And unfortunately, unfortunately, some of those documents hadn't been handed over to

the panel.

They've now been sent to the panel, who've agreed to look at them again, reconvene,

if you like.

The police have apologised again to the family, but the reason why I'm less speechless is

because all the reassurances that I've been given, the family being given, clearly were

without merit.

You can understand why Alistair, the brother, and others are suspicious.

I assume you asked pretty quickly for an explanation as to why these documents had just not been

found and only handed over.

Now, what have the police told you?

So the explanation is that this was a cabinet that had been moved from the Old Scotland

Yard to the new one, and nobody looked inside it.

I understand the news is this wasn't a search for additional papers to do with Daniel Morgan.

This was an unparalleled phrase, and I may get the detail wrong.

There's a cabinet here.

Do you believe that?

Well, the independent watchdog is going to look into this, as is the panel.

And so I think it's...

Yeah, but when you hear the police say, oh, we just forgot to look in this locked cabinet

that has a thousand pages of really useful documents, which could have helped convict

a murderer.

Do you believe them?

Well, I'm relieved we have a new commissioner who opened up that cabinet, right, and found

these documents, because this is why you can understand Alistair Morgan and others were

concerned about the previous commissioners.

And so this is why it's right and proper that now the new commissioner's team has found

these papers.

They've told the family, they've told the panel, they've told me.

But I do understand the concerns people have, particularly in the context of other issues.

But they're not your concerns?

No, they are.

Of course they are.

That's why I've asked the questions.

What I do is to answer the very important questions you're asking without me myself

knowing the full facts.

Of course.

I've said I was speechless, right?

I'm very really speechless.

I've been mayor for seven years.

I can probably think of a handful of cases where I've been speechless.

This is one of those.

It feels very convenient, though.

Let's put it that way, doesn't it?

It's potentially convenient.

Do you think it is credible?

Do you think it is actually possible that that explanation is true?

I think the explanation of the former commissioner, all stones had been turned over to find

the material.

Everything to be done in cooperation with the panel does need reexamining.

I think it is believable that we have a new commissioner.

He's only been in post for six months, within three or four months he found these papers.

He disclosed them to the panel.

I don't think, with the greatest respect, that fingers can and should be pointed at

the current commissioner.

But let's wait and see what the panel concludes.

You might as well know that these papers are found in January February, not now.

That's just for sake of accuracy in relation to them.

You only knew about them last week, but they were found in January?

January February, yes.

Why weren't you told about it till last week?

My assignment is that the police were sifting through the papers to make sure that they

were not duplicates or had already been sent, because actually the papers are copied and

so forth.

And it took six months to do that?

They did that sifting.

Well, I was told about it last week, right, so they did that sifting and then realized

there were new papers and that's why they disclosed them to the panel and let me know

as well.

Last week, we saw the Met Police giving new powers over protesters.

Do you believe they are using those new powers correctly?

Do you trust the police to use them correctly?

Look, there are legitimate questions I have and others have in relation to how the police

used these new powers over the weekend.

Why do I say that?

Because complex police operation, you know, 11,000 final officers did it by a large extent.

I do have concerns in relation to the arrests of those members of the anti-monarchist group

Republic who arrested using these new powers, section 2, the locking on, equipped to lock

on, and also concerns in relation to the rest of those three volunteers for Westminster

City Council as well.

So I ve asked the commissioner a number of questions, including whether these new powers

and the use of those in the short space of time was used properly, but it s right and

proper that we ask these questions because these powers have recently been brought in.

I was against the new acts provisions that were used for the first time during the coronation

and it appears the police made errors.

They arrested people when they shouldn t have been arrested.

They kept them in detention longer than they should have been kept in detention and was

using these powers.

Is that the police s fault or were these powers not fully explained properly because they

came in three days before the coronation?

Well, there are a number of questions about the new public order act.

Some of the provisions I do welcome.

I think there are issues around national infrastructure and protection, you know, things that are

important to the national infrastructure.

I think there are questions in relation to the definition of serious disruption.

There are questions in relation to what locking on means, going equipped to lock on.

This was the first big protest since the new legislation, but I make this point, which

is a really important point that the police need to hear and so do those in parliament,

that actually the right to protest is not just enshrined in legislation, the Human Rights

Act Article 10, but it s long-standing British right we ve had going back centuries before

the Human Rights Act came in and that includes the right to protest when it s unpopular.

It s not simply a right to protest when it s popular.

That also means being inconvenient.

So I think it is perfectly lawful and proper for republic and other groups who are anti

the monarchy to protest during the coronation.

We can t lock them away because we ve got VIPs in town and because it looks bad.

But what I say to those protestant is please make sure it s lawful, peaceful and safe.

It appears in these two cases this weekend, the republic members who are arrested, in

my view, wrongly and the three volunteers for Westminster City Council who are arrested.

There are questions that demand asking.

I ve asked the commissioner some of these questions and I ve also said to the commissioner,

it s really important his answers are made public because the public will want reassurance

that the police come at the same time as keeping us safe, making sure these big events take

place safely, people are allowed to protest in a way that doesn t lead to them being arrested

wrongly.

I said at the start that the Met really seems to be out of the headlines, usually for bad

reasons.

A year after a year we see different controversies, we ve seen some even in the last six months.

There s a new commissioner, partly as a result of your actions.

When should we, the public, start to expect to see an improvement in the Met s performance?

I mean if you could give them a date, would you say are they on notice before the end

of say your term now or perhaps a term of yours in the future?

So probably in the police for me is an integral part of my mayoralty.

There have been many occasions over the last five, six years where I ve been the only person

being critical of the Met Police Service leadership.

Often in one corner you ve got the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Police and Minister,

Majesty Inspectorate, a lot of the media and the other corner is me in Londoners and you

know that s not in the sense of bragging or asking for pat on the back because I m vindicated

but it s because one of my jobs as the mayor is to be the Police and Crown Commissioner.

Supporting the Police but also holding them to account.

I think the new commissioner deserves and needs time.

How much time?

He would say if he was here two years before you ll see the real progress you want to see

but the good news is in the first six months we re seeing some progress.

I ll give you examples of the progress we re seeing in the first six months.

Record numbers of officers kicked out of the Police Service during that six month which

is no source of pride to me but it shows he s bringing about change.

In the disciplinary processes, Dame Louise Casey who did the report a few months ago

which found the Police to be institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic, institutionally

homophobic, she found on average a disciplinary case was taken 410 days and so he speeded

that up which is really, really important.

He s also now articulating just the government, the changes in law that are required to make

it far too easy to become a police officer, far too difficult to get rid of a bad officer,

he s changing that as well but the culture needs to change.

Two years, would you agree with that timescale because of course you ll stand in career election

next year so by the time that would be in your third term so by 2025 you would say

you need to see improvement in the Police or what?

So Mark has accepted if there s no improvements in two years he himself will have questions to

answer. In two years time you d expect to see improvements in the Police Service in terms

of the culture being changed in terms of the Police Service looking more like our city.

Just to clarify you are standing again next year.

Absolutely, you know I m running to be the Mayor of London again for next May.

And one of the biggest problems for younger people in London, I mean younger probably up to

like 45 realistically is housing, rent, finding somewhere to live. You ve called for rent controls,

would you like that to be part of Labour s manifesto? Would you be urging Keir Starmer

to say rent controls should be part of the Labour manifesto for the next general election?

Yeah can I explain why which is for a number of years successive decades we ve not been building

in London sufficient amounts of genuinely affordable homes that we need so the supplies

don t be meeting the demand. So we get the problem I just want to ask so rent controls

should be something that Labour puts in their manifesto? Yeah I want the next Labour Government

to give me the powers to set up a private rent commission which will then bring in rent controls

in London, a bespoke system for London. A step before that is I would like us to

be freezing rents in London like the Scottish Government was ready to do last year.

And what would that mean? What would a freeze percentage look like?

So in Scotland for six months they froze rents in the private sector for six months.

No right raised for six months. The second six months they ve agreed an increase of

3% during the second six months. When I first lobbied the government for this last year we

calculated that a two year rent freeze would save an average person renting about £3,000

during that period which I think is crucial during a cost of living crisis.

If landlords take their properties off so I don t want your rent freeze I can get 10% inflation

somewhere else. Well that s the whole point of rent freeze. If landlords say I m going to

sell my property I don t want to be restricted. Well that s what the prediction was in Scotland

in cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow. It s not happened. And so these sorts of fair

mongering takes place and I understand it. But listen the choice is tenants who are renting

privately see an increase of 20% year on year and therefore really struggling to keep head

by the water. The reason why we re off sleeping has gone up in London one of the big reasons

is not just welfare benefit changes made by the government but also landlords

the race and rents to huge levels where people can t afford to pay.

So you talked about the damage Brexit is doing to London. I assume since you made those comments

you haven t changed your view on that that Brexit is continuing to inflict further damage on the

city. Do you think the Labour Party is ignoring this to its cost and to London s cost? Because

right now as you know it s not something that Keir Starmer wants to talk about. I mean do you

think that looking again to the next Labour manifesto Labour s got to have some sort of

commitment on this? No I think to give Keir Starmer anti-steeming lead and Rachel

Reeves and others credit is you know they ve talked about you know trying to make sure we

get a good deal with the European Union. Look the problem with the Brexit we have is not just

that we ve left the European Union which is bad enough as it is but we ve got an extreme

hard Brexit right. You know we re talking about divergence rather than convergence and I think

what the Labour government would do is you know the likes of David Lammy, Rachel Reeves,

you know Keir Starmer is you know make sure we work closer links with our closest trading partners.

Single market would you like to see at least talking about that at some point?

Yeah one of my jobs as the Mayor of London is to be speaking up for this city on most occasions

that means me being in agreement with the Labour policy sometimes you know there s a difference

between me and the National Airport so I think it s possible to be outside the European Union

which is what the British public voted for but to be members of the single market in fact you

know being members of the single market is one of the least damaging ways outside the European

Union and look you know except we re outside the European Union but actually it s all consistent

with being outside the European Union if you remember as a single market and yeah I was

last night at an event with more than 300 business leaders including start-ups and scale-ups and was

here in first hand the consequences of this extreme hard Brexit. So I kind of know you ve

got to go but very nice to have you in here. It s great to be here look forward to seeing you soon.

In a moment we re going to be taking you to Manchester in New Hampshire that was the scene

last night for a Trump Town Hall in other words a televised debate with a live studio audience

where things went horribly badly wrong. This is The News Agents.

Welcome back. If you were with us on yesterday s episode you will have heard the story of the

jury in New York that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation after he accosted,

assaulted a woman in a department store back in the 1990s. He was made to pay her damages

but yesterday at a Town Hall event where he was speaking in New Hampshire on CNN

he decided to make light of the whole episode. Have a listen. I never met this woman. I never

saw this woman. This woman said I met her at the front door of Bergdorf Goodwin which I rarely go

into other than for a couple of charities. I met her in the front door. She was about 60 years

old. This is like 22, 23 years ago. I met her in the front door of Bergdorf Goodwin. I was

immediately attracted to her and she was immediately attracted to me and we had this great chemistry.

We re walking into a crowded department store. We had this great chemistry and a few minutes later

we end up in a room, a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodwin right near the cash register and then

she found out there were locks in the door. She said I found one that was open. She found one.

She learned this at trial. She found one that was open. What kind of a woman meets somebody

and brings them up and within minutes you're playing hanky-panky in a dressing room.

Yep, 48 hours later still joking and not just joking but getting an audience who were mainly

comprised of Republican voters and independents but nonetheless an audience hollering and laughing

at him making light of his conviction for sexual assault and I mean in a sense this was the thing

I thought watching it is look he just has not changed a bit. I mean we shouldn't expect him to

but he is still exactly the same candidate just like he was exactly the same president. He kicked

off almost immediately still lying still lying about the election saying it was rigged and it

was a perfect microcosm of so many of the problems covering Trump because it didn't matter how many

times Caitlin Collins who was the presenter and moderator for the event said no that's not true,

no it wasn't rigged, didn't matter because the audience was with him, Republican voters who

still want the fight they still adore him and still there is a huge appetite on that section

of the political spectrum for his life. Right so if you can't change Donald Trump maybe the

bigger question is do we change the way that we as journalists as broadcasters operate and I think

one of the questions for CNN which hasn't actually platformed Donald Trump live since 2016 and didn't

have to under electoral guidelines were not even in a primary season is why on earth they would

choose this moment literally the day after he was found under this sort of guilty liable verdict by

a jury of his peers why would you choose to give him this completely open platform

with an audience who as you say was sort of shrieking along enjoying his insults to the host

and his descriptions of sexual assault abuse and I think it begs the question and I've spoken to

people at CNN who are actually kind of furious that this happened it does suggest that nothing

has actually been learnt because we remember Jeff Zucker who was the CNN chief back in the 2016 days

and they had huge ratings off the back of Donald Trump later admitting I mean he's left now but

later admitting that it was all a big mistake and that they gave him too much of a platform

and they shouldn't have run him live and interrupted and let him say outrageous things that weren't

true so the difference here is yes you have a fact checker and clearly Caitlin knows her

shit does her homework and was able to say at each step that's not true that's not true no the

election wasn't rigged or the rest of it but fundamentally you had an audience that treated

him as a stand-up comedian and loved it and that was on primetime tv so are we literally just going

to make the same mistake all over again in the run-up to 2024 yeah I mean look she was set up to

fail and it may have been one thing clearly there was a public interest case in interviewing Trump

the day after this verdict two days after this verdict had taken place but to do so with a

effectively an audience which was on his side is an extraordinary editorial decision I think I think

we can just listen to a moment where Caitlin Collins did as she did many times robustly challenge him

on a point of fact and this is what happened are you ready can I talk yeah what's the answer

can you mind I would like for you to answer the question okay it's very simple to answer that's why

I asked it it's very simple to you're a nasty person I'll tell you yeah you would not want to be

in her seat because there was an ambiance I think in that audience of not just pro-trump

but anti-media and it doesn't really matter what the moderator was saying at that point

the media has been set up by him to be the enemies of the people not the person who's trying to

interpret or differentiate between fact and falsehood but the person who's somehow getting in

the way of this great populist leader trying to talk openly and friendlierly to the audience

and I do think if you step back from this and say all those lessons that we thought we had

understood all that question about you know false equivalents and both sideism and trying

not just to add balance for the sake of balance but call out the difference between truth and not

truth you're now back in exactly the same position and yet it is completely possible

that Trump could be president within two years time and look I think the sort of darker thing to

consider with it right which a lot of people were saying in the aftermath of it which is

not only have we not learned the lesson but is there something again about the symbiotic

relationship that there is between Trump and the media that we all know what's happened to news ratings

since Trump left office that the Trump period was a golden period for many media outlets because he

was box office in every sense he was deeply corrosive to the republic he was deeply corrosive

to international politics all of the rest of it that everybody knows but he was sensationally good

for many media outlets you heard what he said actually to Caitlyn he said let's keep this

interesting yeah when he's asked about Mike Pence and whether he should actually apologize to Mike

Pence his vice president who was being threatened with a noose hanging on the riots of January the

sixth he said let's keep this interesting shall we so that is where the schism goes that news and

we've talked about this before but he's the entertainer that's how he wants to get elected

as an entertainer as somebody who people like to come and hear because he's good value and he will

cheer up their lives and he'll make them laugh and then you've got us who were just put in this kind

of position of being really boring sort of holders to account you know fact checkers which is not a

particularly attractive role for the media to play but it is to I say an essential one for actual

democracy yeah and look and they know that if they put Ron DeSantis or anybody else in there

it wouldn't have been a is electric or b drawn ratings it had but as I say that's they probably

wouldn't have done it and they probably wouldn't have done it I think in terms of kind of zooming out

though beyond the media stuff in terms of other stuff that we learn policy or politics wise two

things I'd think if maybe we knew this to some extent but it was reaffirmed two groups of people

who can be extremely worried about the prospects of another Trump presidency starting in 2025

one is the Ukrainian government he again would not be drawn at all on whether he would give any

support to Ukraine he just said he wanted the water stop which he claimed he would be able to do

in 24 hours I think everyone knows what that means it would have huge geopolitical consequences

assuming the war is still going on or even if it isn't and the second is women in America

because the thing that we've seen one of the consistent threads throughout the Trump years

has been the rather odd alliance between Trump the evangelical base the anti-abortion groups and not

only of course was he largely responsible for the overturning of Roe because he appointed those three

supreme court justices he is now not being drawn as he was at the event last night he wouldn't

confirm whether or not he would oppose a national abortion ban if it started in congress and you

had a republican congress that's the politics of where we're going to be and of course why wouldn't he

say that because he knows just how fruitful for him politically personally

his relationship has been with those evangelical groups they were part of the reason he ended

up in the White House in the first place so of course there was this chorus of disapproval

from republican colleagues there wasn't of course that was a joke we haven't heard anyone

criticize Trump in the last 72 hours either for the sexual assault case for the defamation

for his failure to confirm he would stand by the results of any future 2024 election

so when you say yeah it's bad for Ukraine it's bad for women it's also kind of not great for anyone

who believes in the electoral process in the United States because you have somebody who is at the

moment the front runner for one of the main two parties refusing to confirm in brackets again

that he will abide by the election result will you commit tonight to accepting the results of

the 2024 election yeah if i think it's an honest election absolutely i would will you commit to

accepting the results of the election regardless of the outcome woman answered again if i think

it's an honest election i would be honored to so if you thought that january the sixth

was going to turn everything on its head if you thought that was going to be the beginning of

the end of people not standing up to basically narcissistic megalomania then god we were all

very wrong indeed well he said he'd pardon some of them in the event last night he said he pardoned

some of them and the fact of the matter is is that once that was always the problem with election

denialism that trump unleashed as soon as that genie is out of its toxic bottle it is very very

hard to put it back in again because there are already huge swathes of america i mean you talk

about people no longer believing in the electoral process we're already there right we're already

there in there are just huge numbers of people who already believe the last election is rigged and

almost whatever he says we'll probably believe that the next one will be as well we'll be back in

just a moment this is the news agents

welcome back so before we go we thought we'd just share with you a little bit of high drama

in the commons this afternoon you might have seen or follow the little mini saga over the shredding

of brexit regulations or e u regulations that was supposed to take place rishi sunak had promised

that all e u regulations were going to be off the statute book by the end of the year well it turns

out calcifries that that was just a campaign promise trying to out brexit this trust and they've

actually looked into it and turns out that the mass shredding of regulations can have just occasionally

some unintended consequences anyway this was i mean to be fair it is worth saying that rishi sunak

was quite sort of grown up in the room at this point and was like yes i know you don't want to

be tied to brussels but if i do all this too quickly it will actually just tie you to the civil

service arrangements rather than brussels and it's worth thinking about this a little more thoughtfully

much to the ire of the brexiters to his right yes there are some to his right yeah indeed

although i mean he had been he turned up in a twitter video during the trust sunak campaign

with a massive shredder and said we're going to shred all this stuff anyway this was leaked

last night that that is not going to happen and kemi badnok who is the business secretary had to

come before the house of govans to explain it now anyone who knows about lindsey hoyle the speaker

of the house knows that he really hates it whenever there are leaks in the media before it's announced

to the house because convention is that nps hear it first which almost never happens it's something

he brought up in a relatively gentle way and then there was a bit of back chat from the dispatch

box and this is what happened thank you mr speaker i'm very sorry that the sequencing that we chose

was not to your satisfaction i was to order order order order that is totally not acceptable not

who do you think you're speaking to secretary of state i don't want i think we need to understand

each other i am the defender of this house and these benches on both sides i am not going to be

spoken to by a secretary of state who is absolutely not accepting my ruling take it with good grace

and accept it that members should hear it first not a wms or what you decide these members have

been elected by their constituents and they have the right to hear it first and it is time this

government recognized we're all elected we're all members of punk and use the correct manners secretary

of state pure head teacher vibes that pure being called before the head do you know what i mean we

know that lindsay hall is in the right in the sense that that is the rule that you come with your

government business to parliament first and my sense is why he was so angry about that apart

from the back chat is because there is an undercurrent which we talked about in yesterday's episode

of ignoring parliament don't forget this was the parliament that the conservatives under

boris johnson tried to prorogue for five weeks this was the parliament the prorogation of which he

lied to the queen to effect this was the place that was totally cut out of part of the brexit

negotiations because boris johnson thought it didn't come up with the right rules and just yesterday

we heard suella braverman talking about the will of the people so i wonder if there is it wasn't

just the back chat and it wasn't just yesterday it is this growing sense that this government or its

ministers at least have forgotten that we are a parliamentary democracy and not something that

operates under a referendum yeah it was easy to get now that when heil was elected he the government

it was felt that because the government was so keen to get rid of burko who had had such a

terrible relationship with conservative governments over over that time they were very pleased that

heil was there i think what you've seen is a gradual worsening of relations between the speaker

heil and both boris johnson's government and now sunak's government because he just feels

repeatedly that parliament is being undermined is being is being undermined and partly as well

heil personally gets a lot of flak for not being so-called as strong as burko but of course what

people forget to some extent is that burko was speaker for quite a lot of his time during periods

of hung parliament or very small majorities when parliament is much more powerful when you've got

situation like you have at the moment when the government's got very strong majority basically

and they always all the tories at the time used to get annoyed with burko but partly it was just a

result of the fact they had no majority when you've got strong majority parliament is much weaker

and you're seeing that tension between the speaker as the kind of he used to term himself defender of

parliament in the commons and the executive in the government anyway it was a bit of drama

bit of color bit of color we like that all in a day's work all in a day's work back tomorrow

though of course well maybe not well well yeah i'll see you monday low suspect tomorrow bye for now bye bye

this has been a global player original podcast and a persophonica production

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.