The News Agents: Rupert Murdoch resigns

This is a global player original podcast

So fucking spicy, so true, something everyone knows but nobody says because

they're too fucking lily-livered

That was Logan Roy, the infamous succession de facto title character.

Just before, in the series, he died, refusing to go gently into that good night.

It was often said that the character on which he was surely based, Rupert Murdoch, would be exactly the same, dying as he lived working.

He's 92, his career in British news, American news, Australian news, remaking news, global news, stretches back seven decades.

But today, he announced that that was coming to an end. At three o'clock, a news flash, Rupert Murdoch was stepping down from the two companies which he had dominated for so long, Fox and News Corp.

It is a truly massive moment. He has been courted by prime ministers and presidents, kings and princes, celebrities and tycoons alike.

Whatever you think of him, and there are many who believe his influence on British and American politics has been nothing short of toxic.

He is without doubt one of the most powerful figures of our time, one of the last remaining great figures of the 20th century.

And in his departing statement, handing over true succession style to his son, Lachlan, he committed to remaining a force in words that, weirdly, were not so different from that last Logan broadside.

In the statement, he blistered, self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose.

Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.

Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth, the outgoing chairman of Fox News there.

Sometimes the news aligns when you're working on shows like this.

As that news broke, Emily and I had just finished an interview with one of Murdoch's star former employees, the ex-editor of The Scottish Sun, the former deputy editor of The Sun itself.

One of Murdoch's many prodigal sons, Gordon Smart.

We're going to be bringing you that interview in full tomorrow, where we ask him about his relationship with Russell Brand, among other things.

But before then, we couldn't help but ask him to come back into the studio and give his reflections on Murdoch, the man, and what happens to his empire now.

Welcome to The News Agents.

Now, anyone, anyone who believes that I'm getting out, please shove the bunting up your ass.

The News Agents.

It's Emily.

It's Lewis.

And we're going to start by reading you out a letter that Rupert Murdoch has just sent to his colleagues at Fox.

I'm writing to let you know that I've decided to transition to the role of chairman emeritus at Fox and News.

For my entire professional life, I've been engaged daily with news and ideas that will not chain.

But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate principal leader in Loughlin, his son, who will become sole chairman of both companies.

Clearly, if you have dabbled with succession at all, you will know that the very first episode sets up this premise of what happens after the Rupert Murdoch character retires.

And we have with us Gordon Smart, who has worked very closely with Rupert Murdoch, editing his papers.

Fair enough to say, Gordon, that this was the question on our lips that we wanted to ask you. Who will be the Murdoch successor?

And it is now Loughlin. Are you surprised?

It's not me. Cousin Greg has missed out.

No, I'm not surprised at all. I think that's been on the cards for a number of years now.

In fact, going back to when I was working very closely with him around the Scottish referendum, I think Loughlin was by his side when he came to visit.

And it was pretty clear that he would be, you know, hands on the tiller when it came to the future of the publishing business in the UK.

What changes will he make? I mean, will this be continuity? Will it be succession?

I think it's continuity, yeah, exactly that.

More of the same?

Yeah, exactly that.

So anyone saying once Rupert Murdoch is at the picture, all these things will change, the culture will change, or the writing will change, or the ownership will change, they're wrong?

I think so, yeah, I think Loughlin has been by his father's side for a long time and you'll have a very clear idea of what he's going to be doing next.

I don't think there'll be huge changes at all, no?

We're told that he's going to become chairman emeritus of the two companies, of Fox and News Corp.

Do you think realistically, is he going to have any continued involvement in any kind of substantial way?

Yeah, I remember a conversation about retirement where he didn't believe in retirement.

We should say he's in his early 90s.

Early 90s, yeah. I think his mother lived to 107 as well, so, you know, there's still another 15 years to go based on genetic information, right?

But I remember a conversation about retirement and I've always got the sense he frowned upon anybody who retired, so the notion that he won't be hands on, I think, is just unrealistic.

I'm going to read you out one more paragraph.

In my new role, I can guarantee you I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas.

Our companies are communities and I will be an active member of our community.

I'll be watching our broadcast with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest,

reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas and advice.

When I visit your countries and companies, you can expect to see me in the office late on a Friday afternoon.

I'm not sure if that's a promise or a threat.

Bit of both. Why has he done it?

Gordon, why do you think he's done it?

Well, I think he's 93, isn't he? 93?

I mean, at some stage you have to consider the march of time and the physical demands that that's placed on you, the travelling, all the rest of it.

And I think he's probably been encouraged to slow down a bit.

It's a massive moment, though, isn't it, in the history of media and the history of news, and that's not hyperbole to say.

He has been an absolutely dominant, massive figure in not just the media history of this country but the United States and elsewhere as well.

Yeah, well, I'm 43 and in terms of my engagement with the news, he's always had a close involvement with the newspapers

that were being sold in my grandfather's news agent all the way through to my career, through the referendum in Europe and Scotland.

And yeah, it's a seismic moment, isn't it? There's no two ways about it.

And do you think this was his decision or do you think this was a board decision?

Do you think somebody took him aside and said, if you want everything to carry on, you have to quietly move aside?

I'd love to know who that person would be that would take him aside.

I just don't believe anyone in the world.

No, nobody, nobody.

Definitely not his children.

Not from my experience, I don't think anybody could do that.

Were you scared of him?

That's a great, great question. I was intimidated by him, yes.

I once sat in a car with him, right, driving from Aberdeen Airport to Rose Hardy, and it's the toughest examination of my life.

How much is an acre of land in Scotland? Why aren't there satellite dishes on the houses?

Why do the Scots tend to hate the Tories so much?

Give me a sense of the working class culture of the East Coast against the West Coast of Scotland, Gordon.

Can you tell me why the old firm is such a bitter rivalry?

Question, question, question, question.

By the time I got out of the car, it was like being on this bloody podcast.

And what makes him tick? I mean, is it just knowledge?

I remember him sitting with a pencil in long hand working out how he thought the referendum would go and doing the arithmetic.

And he was to the percentage point on the Scottish referendum.

I saw him do it again later on in a general election.

But yeah, he's fascinated by the news agenda, loves Britain, I think, and how it ticks.

What motivates him? What's motivated him to keep going as long as he has? What interests him?

Is it power? Is it money? Is it all of it? Is it politics? What is it?

I think that's his entire MO, isn't it? It's power and influence, the size of his business.

I think he's motivated by his family as well, actually.

I think that since I got from him the time I had, that he really did care a lot about his children and their future.

And about British politics?

As I said to you before, I think politics is really the game. It's about the operation of the business

and who's best positioned to make that even more lucrative and successful.

That is what Logan Roy would say.

Gordon, we'll be hearing from you more on Tomorrow's Podcast

where we go into a little bit more about the culture of the sun at the time that you were working there

and just who you were working closely with. Thank you.

Anytime.

Right, as I say, we're going to be having much more of that interview tomorrow.

And believe me, it is an insight into the tabloid world you will rarely hear.

But coming up, as the dust settles on Sunax, you turn on green policies.

We're going to do the show we were planning to do, which is look at where the politics of all this is going.

Stay with us.

This is The News Agents.

So let's talk now about where the politics now is on net zero for Labour and for the Tories and where it might be going.

Overnight, we heard from Al Gore at the UN General Assembly, who was disappointed, he said, in Britain's position.

And we'll be looking at the political fallout for this.

How does each party respond to this new division that has opened up between them?

Yeah, because I think there's a feeling in Westminster today, and this is a good reason to reexamine the events of the last 24 hours.

There's a feeling that this was, as the dust has settled, a really quite big moment in the Sunac premiership.

That might not mean by the way that it yields or materializes any great transformation in his standing in terms of the polls,

but nonetheless, he's made a decision.

He's taken a gamble, the first serious gamble of his premiership.

And as we were sort of saying yesterday, he kind of has no choice.

I mean, at the moment, there is absolute certainty about which way that he's going.

There has been this feeling that he is this kind of steady Eddie, this Prime Minister who, this is horrible phrase,

always gets regurgitated, but I suppose it is the best thing we've got, that he steadied the ship after the kind of shipwreck.

Well, all he had to be was not Liz Truss.

He had to be not Liz Truss, and he had to restore just a sense of order, right?

I mean, it's easy to forget now, because in a sense, Sunac has been pretty successful at it.

He has calmed it, where we have perhaps forgotten the extent to which basically throughout the whole of 2022,

we were spending week after week after week speculating with some credibility about whether this was the week

that the government of the day was going to fall.

And indeed, twice in that year, it happened under Johnson and then Truss in quick succession.

You know, we haven't been in that space this year.

Okay, you might argue it's like a really low bar, but we haven't been in that space this year,

and that is obviously down to Sunac and down to a certain level of exhaustion within the Conservative Party

that even they, full of bloodlust, often as they are, cannot really credibly think that they could replace a leader again.

But there has been a sense in Downing Street, and that has led us to where we are yesterday and today,

has been a sense in Downing Street that clearly, manifestly, that is not enough.

It is not enough to simply be the guy who made the chaos go away.

He's got to have an agenda of his own, and partly as a result of the Uxbridge by-election,

partly as a result of the fact that there is little else in the locker.

This is what they were lighted upon.

Yeah, and I think this is not the end of the moment.

It is just the beginning.

And what do we mean by that?

Well, we may very well see legal battles about this.

We may very well see people arguing that he has broken legal commitments,

which are actually pretty much set in stone in the run-up to that net zero target of 2050.

And there is also the question of votes.

Some of this will need voting on in Parliament, and that is the point of the detail as well,

which will have to be provided.

That's when we see if the wheels come off.

And I guess that's why you'll find Rishi Sunak probably trying to do a lot of the

boostering of his own ranks over the next 24, 48 hours, saying,

just to reassure you, if you're looking at, you know, overseas development

and whatever concerns you have about our standing in the rest of the world,

we will get this together.

But I think a couple of things have emerged overnight.

And one we touched on a little bit yesterday,

which was the idea of the seven bins, right?

And the seven bins, the seven deadly bins.

Your seven bins, all right?

I've put my seven bins out as well.

I've got 14 bins at home, just to make sure everything...

You have to choose which of them go out and which stay in.

I like to make sure that we've got just enough bins for everything.

But, you know, you will have seen in that speech and in everything that ensued from it,

the policies that weren't really policies that then got ditched,

you know, we're not going to force people to give up meat.

Oh, I didn't think that was ever going to happen.

We're not going to force people to carpool.

I'm going to say this.

I carpooled in the 70s, you know, on my way to school with all the neighbours.

And it was just a really sensible thing to do.

So why would you hail this idea of,

we're never going to make you give a lift to anyone?

It's a kind of crazy thing.

But it's also not a real policy.

So when you sort of combine this, you realise, I think, just what a bind

Rishi Sinep might have got himself into,

which is some of the policies he's looking for reassurance that he saved people money on.

Some of them were never, ever going to come into existence anyway.

And that is a very easy target for labour right now.

And what I'm hearing from the labour front benches,

and I actually asked if they were, you know, concerned about this in a political way.

And I think they feel that while it might have had a real impact if it had been done cleverly,

this is a scattergun.

This is just sort of too much, too fast, taking too many people by surprise,

not least as we've heard, big business and the car industry and all the rest of it.

And it's made him look quite chaotic at the centre of his own government.

Yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit more about the labour reaction and what they might do about it later.

But just on the legal stuff.

I mean, I think this is what's really important to note about why it is that

Sunak has left the 2050 target in place,

but dismantled, as we were saying yesterday, some of the means of getting there.

Truth is, he wouldn't have the votes in Parliament to take away the 2050 target,

even if he wanted to do it.

He wouldn't have the votes to do it.

But he's not.

But he's not. No, no, no, he's not.

But he wouldn't have the votes to do it.

That's why you go for the stuff that sort of lower down the pecking order.

I think as well, what we can now see, though, and the reason why it's sort of interesting to kind of

consider the sort of politics around this, we can now see and hear,

because Sunak and his ministers have been on the rounds this morning, the broadcast rounds,

exactly how they plan to articulate, to use this issue and the sort of green retreat,

how they plan to use it to frame Sunak as a man, as a political player, as a Prime Minister

and as their strategy going in to the general election.

So this is, let's listen to this, this is Sunak in front of a field of sheep,

not a field of wheat, of course, that's the Theresa May thing,

a field of sheep addressing journalists this morning.

I'm here at Rital College in Essex talking to apprentices who work in our farming sector,

and I've been talking to them about the changes that I announced yesterday,

ensuring that we're going to deliver net zero, but do so in a proportionate, pragmatic way

that minimises the impact on working families, all while hitting what our world-leading

targets. Now, as I've been talking to them, these changes are particularly important

for our rural and farming communities who were facing huge costs

and are the backbone of our local economies.

Now, I'm going to make the big decisions that are right for the long-term interests of our country,

even if those are difficult, because that's how we're going to bring change,

that's how we're going to build a better future for our children.

There is no PMQs at the moment because of the conference season,

but when you hear that clip and the little meh-eh-eh coming behind you,

this is me at my best.

There is a sort of hint of the back benches going,

yeah, all right, all right, all right.

You think the sheep were on his side?

I do.

I think the sheep were like, yeah, no, Richie, absolutely.

All standing up trying to ask a question.

I think it's slightly hammy to sort of say,

ah, climate change, ah, green, find me a field.

I need something with livestock in it,

otherwise people won't believe that I'm on their side.

But I think this whole idea that his plan is bringing change,

his plan is building the better future for our children

is very inconsistent with the facts.

I mean, you can't just keep saying change the whole time,

when what you're really talking about is regression.

Well, I think...

And make no mistake, that is what this is about.

He might try and talk about net zero in 2050,

and we know that he is legally bound to that.

But what this is doing is taking us out of that pole position of leadership.

And why would we as a country,

why would we at this point not want to be ahead in the field as leaders

in something that was the direction of travel?

Well, I think that that line in particular was very telling

about how number 10 now intends to frame him as a sort of political personality.

He said, this isn't about doing the easy thing, it's about doing the hard thing.

Now, it's a funny thing, right?

You can sort of say, well, that is precisely the opposite of what he's done.

He's actually made it easier.

We've decided to do the easy thing.

He's lengthened the timetable.

He has basically ensured that the status quo remains for long.

It is mirror world stuff, isn't it?

It's where you take something that should apply to progress

and change and hard graft and kind of just invert it.

Yeah, no, exactly.

He is essentially saying that what he has done is taking the tough decision.

Whereas, you know, you can make precisely the opposite argument

that what he's done is take the easy decision.

But nonetheless, the fact that he feels able to frame it that way

and the fact that number 10 are framing it that way, as I say,

I think does tell you something about how they're going to proceed.

I think they're going to try and repackage Sunak as the kind of the truth teller.

And this is in a way a mode that he was in,

if you remember during the leadership contest with Liz Truss last year.

I mean, that didn't work for him then, I suppose it's worth remembering.

But nonetheless, you know, he framed himself as the guy who told uncomfortable truths,

hard truths, who were sort of grounded in a sort of conservative realism

against someone like Truss and he'll try and do against Starmer.

And so I think you will see this on issue after issue now.

Now, again, you know, we can be skeptical about it

and we can sort of say, is that very credible in all sorts of ways?

But I think that is the way that they're going to try and frame him going forward.

I mean, electorally, this is the one question, obviously, that we still have

is whether it is a politically savvy thing to do.

And we know that people might say one thing, but actually vote in a completely different way.

So everyone wants to be, you know, sort of virtually signaling about green issues.

Everyone wants to feel that they're on the side of saving the environment.

When it comes to that vote, will there be people saying,

well, actually, you know, whatever he's told us, he's going to save me £5,000.

I won't have to do that boiler now for another 10 years.

That might save me £10,000. Clearly, this is not a saving in the long term.

It's making everything worse.

But if you're hearing that as a voter going into the next election,

does that pull you away from Labour?

If you cast Labour as the party that wants to push you into these kind of spending plans,

does that help Rishi Sunak sort of shore up his support from people

who might not be saying it out loud, but will quietly be relieved at this?

Yeah, and look, this is clearly another way that the government at number 10

intend to frame all of this stuff.

It's around Coston, who's on your side and so on.

We saw some of that come out in terms of their digital ads last night.

Obviously, as we were saying yesterday, that has to be tempered alongside the fact

that this has created some political instability, volatility within the Conservative Party,

lots of voices, including people like Greg Barker on the show yesterday

expressing skepticism about what the government has done.

Someone who's been at the absolute forefront of that is someone, another Conservative

who is at Unger, the UN General Assembly this week, Lord Zach Goldsmith,

who I think it's fair to say, you know, has had his problems with the Sunak government before.

He criticised in the strongest terms yesterday what Sunak has done.

Kenny Badenock, the business secretary, was doing interviews this morning.

This is what she said in response to him.

I fundamentally disagree with what he has said.

We are listening to the concerns people are raising with us.

Most people in this country don't have the kind of money that he has.

Don't have the kind of money that he has.

I mean, it is true. Goldsmith is a wealthy man.

I would just say, as a way of framing this,

the ministers probably have to be a little bit careful about going down that road

because there is a very obvious repost to that, which is, now, let me just think,

who is the richest Prime Minister we've ever had?

So if you want to legitimise that point of view, and I'm very happy for us to do so,

I think there are legitimate questions about, you know, the wealth of politicians

and how that puts them out of touch with the public.

But you know what? Just be very, very careful which road you go down there.

Except what she can say to that is, that's why Rishi Sunak is cognisant

of people who are struggling more than him and his family.

Zach Goldsmith is pushing everyone into a place where wealth, you know,

it's fine if you're wealthy and it isn't if you don't.

I mean, I think that's why you need to get to the nitty-gritty

of how much people really were being asked to spend on these policies.

Because if you step back and just say, as a framing, it works, right?

If you say, would you like Lewis to have to replace your boiler in your car next year,

you'll be like, no, I don't think that sounds very expensive.

Yeah, and you can't choose what kind of boiler you want to replace it with.

You can't choose, and you have to buy an electric car.

No one is actually saying that.

And I think that's the key to this.

If you read the small detail, I don't think Labour is saying,

I don't think the Lib Dems are saying, you have to buy an electric car next year,

you have to replace your boiler next year.

They're just saying, at the point where this becomes essential,

this is what will be available.

And even then, you've got a 10-year sort of reckoning to it.

But I think that's why the actual detail of this is pretty important

to sort of step back from how we know the political arguments will be framed.

It's about who pays.

And that's the crucial political question at Labour.

I've got to answer and we can come on to that.

I think that just though there has been a bit of a narrative this morning,

again, about kind of how wealthy you are

and how much you're going to pay for this,

poor people are going to pay for this.

And again, slightly in response to that, Badenock point,

because something else that she was asked about today,

Jane Saker on Sky said to her, the poorest people don't have cars

and Badenock really went for her and said,

that's such a London-centric view, go to rural areas.

Well, actually, again, we've written about this,

but it is part of this idea of this myth that is central to British politics,

which is this idea of the war on the motorist.

There's always that the motorist is this sort of uniquely persecuted group

and they're all really poor.

It is true that there are poor people who run cars.

It's also true that according to the government's own research,

many of the poorest people who have cars would rather not have cars

because it's so expensive, but they have no other choice

because public transport is so poor.

And if you look at the government's own statistics show

that the poorest 10%, only 35% have cars.

So it is true to say that the poorest people don't have cars.

That's not to say that all poor people don't have cars, clearly some do,

but many don't or many would rather that they did not have to.

It's just that the provision, which has happened under this government,

is so poor in terms of other public transport.

Look, I think you have to bring in the electoral map,

which is most of the poorer people in this country who vote Labour live in cities

and most of the poorer people in this country who vote Conservative

probably live outside the cities in rural areas.

Therefore, it is more important as a Conservative Home Secretary,

a Business Secretary or Prime Minister to talk about the people

in rural parts of the country who are forgotten.

And I think that's why every time you hear that this is not a political gesture,

you should be raising an eyebrow at it.

100% because the fissure on this is actually around the government

looking at polling, which shows voters who are most receptive to this dividing line

are first time 2019 Conservative voters, many of which in former Labour areas.

But that is exactly why there are place people and MPs in the so-called Blue Wall

who are concerned about this and the messages that it's sending.

But one of the big messages of this week has that we've seen that

Sunak is placing his chips firmly on those first time Conservative voters in 2019.

Rather than trying, as many people speculated he might,

when he came to office, adopt more of a kind of 2010-2015 liberal,

Tory, Cameroon-style Conservatism, which is clearly now just out the window.

So we're joined now by a Conservative MP, Craig McKinley,

who is very much in favour of what the Prime Minister has done, MP for South Thanet, of course.

Craig, thanks so much for being on the newsagents.

PM said today that he's not about doing the easy thing, he's about doing the hard thing.

But he's not done the hard thing, has he?

He's actually retreated from the commitments that we had.

He's done an easier thing. What does he mean?

Well, I think when he's done, he's actually being honest.

He's being honest that, well, we've heard a lot of over the last day

and I've used it a number of times thus far on shows I've done, is pragmatism.

We have not been approaching the whole net zero enterprise with any honesty about cost,

what it's going to cost either the taxpayer through support and grants and all the rest of it,

or the actual householder and the electorate in terms of what this is likely to cost them.

We haven't been honest about actually the pathway,

because I think what is driving more than anything else, what we heard yesterday,

is the realism that we do not have enough of an electricity supply in the UK

to actually match these ambitions that never been legislated for,

but obviously have been iterated by many over many years.

And I think there's that realism as well.

But more importantly, what am I here to serve?

I'm here to serve the public.

I'm here to serve my constituents.

The government is here at the bidding of the public.

And on all of these issues, I think the public have become a little jaded on all of this,

being told that this and that is going to be banned,

more charges and costs on pretty standard sort of stuff that we all know and love.

I mean, that's a very strange way of the position we got to.

But I'd never before in the history of a capitalist country of the UK

that we've actually started banning things, putting quotas on things

and pushing things on people that have not proven themselves and they don't actually want.

Well, we've banned loads of things, Craig.

We've banned child labour.

I mean, we're a capitalist country.

There are all sorts of things that we've banned.

But I just want to just like pick you up on that question there around the public loving what we have.

Do you think the public have loved paying £3,000 on average

for their fossil fuel energy bills over the course of the last 12 months?

Well, if we have an honest debate about what renewables actually mean,

because what we've had to date is obviously quite cheapish renewables

when the wind is blowing optimally.

It is absolutely useless when the wind doesn't blow.

We've not had that debate as to how we're going to actually store this energy.

Because as you'll be very aware,

the only means of storage is either batteries or creating more water uphill

so it can be used for water, power and hydro when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.

I mean, it's not uncommon during winter periods.

You get a very big anti-cyclone sits ahead of the UK and Europe and the wind doesn't blow.

And it's just the time that you need a huge amount of energy.

Nobody has actually been talking robustly and sensibly about what that storage mechanism would actually cost.

I mean, my plan for energy is wholly different.

I'm very much in favour of a nuclear future, whether that's small modular reactors.

And we've also got just this week the potential for a judicial review against size well seen.

So even ambitions that are net zero related, i.e. more nuclear,

there seem to be activists who want to stop that as well.

I'm starting to wonder what people really do want on this process and ambition.

Greg, were you embarrassed by Rishi Sunat's makey-upy policies

that emerged over the course of the last 24 hours?

Talk about the things that weren't going to happen that had never actually been discussed,

whether it was the seven bins or the ban on meat or the ban on telling people to car share.

I mean, is it embarrassing as a Conservative MP to go out and have people sort of laughing at the stuff

that this is all just fiction, that he was trying to create a fear about things that were never going to happen?

Well, two things there, Emily. There is a defra document that was actually proposing

six different types of recycling, but just put that aside.

So there were some departments of government thinking about these type of things.

But if you examine...

The Prime Minister was never thinking about that, was he?

The Prime Minister was never actually thinking about that.

I don't suppose you've ever seen the light of day, but it was in a defra document as a proposal.

Or the meat tax, or the car sharing.

If you examine some of these groups, like the C40 group of 96 mayors around the world,

of which the car is one of them, these are exactly the type of proposals that they have been and have been putting forward.

So what the PM has done is said there is no way at all that this Conservative government would actually do that.

So I think that was a statement of honesty, but of course none of these are legislated for,

but there are certain people who would rather like us to go down those particular rabbit holes.

He's just put a block on those.

Craig, we've talked a lot from the Prime Minister and the Conservatory MPs over the last 24 hours about saving people money.

For example, around deferring the ban of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035 rather than 2030.

How many poor people do you know who buy brand new cars?

Well, they can't afford them, no.

But they're not going to be able to afford them at any point in the future either.

The point is, is that that doesn't save hard-pressed families much money,

because most hard-pressed families don't buy brand new cars, they buy second-hand cars, as you know.

Let me put you straight on a number of things.

Would you, as a consumer, or if you're a low-paid person,

you probably, if we go up this EV route in with great enthusiasm, thankfully it's been delayed,

I think it's common sense, or of a global norm, would you seriously buy an 8-10-year-old electric vehicle?

We have not yet tested the market on second-hand EVs.

If you are of lower income, you will obviously be buying a second-hand car.

And you buy a second-hand car knowing that there might be the odd thing go wrong from time to time.

You might need a new water pump, you might need a new belt, whatever it is.

It's little and often costs.

The difference, of course, with the EV market is if these things go wrong, you're into a serious cost.

Potentially 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of a new battery, which will make your car completely worthless.

I mean, this at least allows normal vehicles, ICEs, to actually go on that little bit longer.

So the market, for exactly those people you are now claiming to support,

will have access to cars for that little bit longer.

Great, Mick Inley. Thanks so much for joining us.

Oh, wow.

We will be back in a moment.

This is The News Agents.

Well, you heard from Gordon Smart at the very top of this show talking about that imminent resignation

or stepping back of Rupert Murdoch from the family business.

We've got a lot more to talk to Gordon Smart about not least his time as the showbiz editor

and his friendship, colleague ship with Russell Brand.

He tells us all about that time and that's coming up in The News Agents tomorrow.

Sometimes the news gods sort of just smile at you.

Gordon was in talking to us about Russell Brand and his life in tabloid newspapers

and then we hear the news about Rupert Murdoch.

It's an absolutely fascinating conversation.

Be on tomorrow's show. Make sure you listen.

Bye for now.

Bye-bye.

The News Agents with Emily Maitlis, John Sople and Louis Goodall.

This has been a global player original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.