The News Agents: The Sun, The Scandal and the BBC

This is a global player original podcast.

We thought we'd start you off with a little paper of you. I've picked up the Financial

Times and the main story here is that NATO Allies are piling pressure on Germany and

US over Kyve.

But look at any other British national newspaper and you'll see a common theme. The Sun suspended

BBC man's panic calls, the Telegraph BBC calls in police, the Times BBC refers sex

photos presented to met, the eye BBC in crisis, the Guardian BBC talk to police as presenter

suspended, Beebe's briefs crisis and on and on. In the rest of the British press, in the

rest of the British media, there is only one show in town.

Welcome to the news agents.

The news agents.

It's John.

It's Emily. It's Monday and it's coming up to a quarter to three in the afternoon.

And we are going to talk about the BBC today, not NATO, because we figured it's probably

what you want to hear from us today.

But I think we're going to start pretty gently because there are lots of things that we don't

know about this story and it's good to remember that. And there are lots of people involved

whose lives have or will almost certainly be turned upside down, possibly rather destroyed

by these events, whether it's the child in person or their mother or the presenter or

his spouse or potential children.

So I do think this is first and foremost a story of devastating damage to individuals

before we get on to the wise and wherefores of the media, of the BBC, and yes, even of

the Schadenfreude of people expecting a great figure to tumble.

It's also easy when you've read some of the newspaper headlines to try to create a simple

direct narrative about what has happened and what we think we know.

And I am just guessing from reading some of the coverage and I've read a lot of the coverage

is that the truth is much more complicated and nuanced and there's still so much that

we do not know.

We know that the BBC is being put in the dock over its handling of it and sure there are

going to be questions to answer about that.

We've also seen the very odd specter of this weekend presenters outing themselves as not

being the person concerned and you can imagine the right flanger they felt when they were

suddenly across Twitter as you are a nonce, you are this, you are that, you're a terrible

human being and you've done terrible things when they have absolutely no part of it.

And we heard a bit of that today when Nicky Campbell was presenting his five live show.

It was a distressing weekend.

I can't deny it for me and others falsely named.

Today, I'm having further conversations with the police in terms of malicious communication

and with lawyers in terms of defamation.

Jeremy Vine did something very similar as well.

He talked about being smacked around on Twitter.

This is something that is actually hurting and affecting quite a lot of people and I

guess one of the big questions that you're thinking about is the naming or not naming

and we are in this slightly odd universe at the moment where many of you listening will

know exactly who the presenter in question is and we think in this room in our gallery

we probably know exactly who the presenter is and on social media sites you will understand

that people are talking about this individual and yet in the wider world, in the world of

television broadcast news or the newspapers or the public court actually, people won't

know and they will still be asking and it does create the slightly curious division between

people who think they're in the know at this point and people who are still wanting to

be brought into the conversation because they feel that they're being left out even by the

story that broke the news itself and that was the sun and we'll be talking in a moment

to David Yelland who is a former editor of the sun, it belongs to the Rupert Murdoch

Group News UK and he's going to guide us a little bit through how those editorial choices

are made at the newspaper and also remind us of just what commercial vitriol there is

between one Rupert Murdoch owner of the sun and the BBC who they quite like to see brought

to its knees on something like this.

And I think it is very interesting the sort of naming, non-naming aspect of all of this

because as you say Emily, I can't believe there is a newsroom in London or a legal group

that don't know who the name of this person is.

I thought it was very disingenuous when I heard on the BBC a presenter saying, well

we still don't know who this presenter is and I thought, well no, you do know who the

presenter is, it's just that for the moment you're not naming this particular person.

And we're not naming them either because just to show our workings we have our media

lawyer sitting across this listening to everything that we're saying to make sure that we stay

the right side of privacy laws which is what lies behind this.

We have no proof, we have no evidence and we frankly have no right to start naming people

who's previously would be destroyed by this.

But then you get to the question of the sun coverage because it is my belief that although

the privacy laws have changed, if the sun had 100% confidence that they had every aspect

of this story squared off, just as we have seen on other scandals in the recent past,

the person in question would have been named and it kind of raises all sorts of interesting

issues.

And I've heard the legal explanations about why they have not been named so far and I

kind of think journalistically they only make so much sense.

There is something that we still a lot that we don't know that the BBC probably doesn't

know itself about what has happened and is still trying to figure out and that is why

I think that people who are just going to try and be too black and white about this

need to pause and take a breath and just consider how complicated this might be.

At this point we should probably explain the story that we're talking about which is we

understand police are in discussion at the moment with the BBC over a top presenter who

the sun alleges has been making payments to a young individual who may have been only

17 at the time this started for indecent images and just so you know what the law is around

that you cannot be under 18 and sending indecent images and you certainly can't be paying for

indecent images of a minor.

At the same time that the age of consent is 16.

So you can have sex with somebody at the age of 16 but you can't solicit photos from that

person until they're 18 because that becomes a criminal offence.

Because it's a digital age which has really long lasting effects and I think just to go back to

what I said at the beginning which is this kind of odd horrible very useful word of shard and

Freud I mean the reason that there is so much front page so much coverage throughout the whole

media is because I think television stars or television presenters attract a huge amount

of attention right if you put this in context and I think it's quite sort of useful to do this

you look at how many Westminster MPs are currently suspended from their parties in parliament right

15 at the last count right that's more suspended MPs whipless MPs and there are Lib Dems it is the

biggest fastest growing political group and whether you've got Gareth Davis accused harassment or

Scott Benton accused of the gambling sting or Christina Reese the bullying complaint or Julian

Knight the police inquiry or I can go on the sexing scandal my point is they will not individually

dominate a story in the same way because there is something about the status of the person on the

television the BBC is a public service broadcaster it's known around the world its brand recognition

is huge it is one of the great cultural institutions of this country of the world of the world and so

when you have a high profile presenter which is what we're told watched by millions is what we're

told that's what's been in the public prints and that's what the BBC is also say then of course

it is going to attract attention like nothing else I've just been contacted by someone from a US

media outlet saying you know what can you tell me this is global news and it's partly celebrity

it's partly also that it is the British Broadcasting Corporation

We're joined in the news agent studio by former Sun editor David Yelland and David you've been

on the podcast before it's always good to have you back look what has happened with this story

because I kind of think I understand journalism and how stories get reported yeah I've heard

all sorts of explanations about why no name has been in the paper about the mystery BBC presenter

and I'm not sure I still understand it because it doesn't seem to make sense

if you're confident of the story don't you publish well the first thing to say is they

clearly absolutely 100 know who it is because sometimes with these stories when you see a

silhouette it's because the paper itself doesn't know who it is so they without a doubt they know

who it is so they've taken a conscious decision not to name the person they could name the person

they have the financial resources to back that up so they have decided not to do so

for other reasons other than purely financial so what are those yeah

reputational for themselves there must be something else and there's something else for

me must lie in the complexity of the facts this is not a simple binary situation this is a complex

situation difficult to talk about without going into into just to try and help you think it could

be extortion rather than payments or that's one possible I should be absolutely clear I don't

know I don't know but I have dealt with you know I've been out of newspapers for 20 years now mostly

advising people on dealing in mostly advising businesses on corporate public relations but

also individuals occasionally and I have come across more than one situation where there was

extortion and because the very simple narrative presented in this coverage yeah is that it was

said presenter paying for services yeah whatever you want you know leave that to your imagination

on a phone call or whatever else from the recipient who was getting paid it could be

equally possible that the person who was getting the money was black man was whatever else has

happened here when we find out the full facts that there will be far more complex and complicated

than it appears in the sun just to go back to that question of reputation though because we don't

think of the sun as being nervous you know of its reputation in that way is it because it's

scared of getting it wrong is it because it's scared of bringing down you know a sort of household

name is it that it's scared of where it's sort of commercial sponsorship there's a number of

things going on here one of them is the situation at the salon at the moment is they're very happy

because they have the BBC and Tim David the director general where they want that institution

which is in trouble you have to remember that the sun and most of the rest of what was Fleet

Street has an ideological and commercial hatred of the BBC so from Victoria Newton's point of view

is the entry of the sun at the moment she is a heroine in her own company at the moment with

Rupert Murdoch and everybody else because the BBC is in the dock so the situation at the moment is

really great for the sun they don't need to name as soon as the name comes out and more facts come

out it may be the story becomes a different kind of story so actually it's not in the sun's interests

necessarily to name the person for that reason there are other reasons as well one of them

is advertisers when I was editing the sun you know the paper was still selling 3.6 million

the revenue came in 20p bits it came in from circulation it now comes from advertisers

and advertisers they don't like this time of story even if it sells more papers well the

fact is it doesn't sell more papers nothing sells newspapers anymore really the sale might

bob up a little bit here and there what this is about is a really an editorial competition between

the papers to break stories which you would do as a journalist anyway because that's what you do

but it's not going to sell newspapers so the advertisers as we've seen with GB news and

certain other that you know there is a risk there and the other reason they may not name this person

they may know in their heart of hearts when they're closeted with their own lawyers and

senior executives that this story is much more complicated than they're telling the readers

at the moment so is it possible that this presenter hasn't broken any law it is entirely

possible that the presenter hasn't broken any law if you look at the gamut the situation is either

the one end one extreme this person has broken the law and is going to prison for a long time

that's the one extreme the other extreme is that no law has been broken that this person has been

the best very unwise followed by a situation in which they for some reason and we can speculate

paid this person money but you're just taking us through all the potential outcomes of this which

is not that we're looking at a slam dunk scandal yeah at all well it's not black and white it's

not a black and white it's a scandal whichever way you look at it I guess clearly the presenter has

it would appear being unwise let's put it this way well there could have been some

charitable involvement which we don't know also David just take me through something else which

I found fascinating it was a huge story to break on the saturday morning yeah there was a big splash

right front page yeah and then you turn the page and there's not pages there's nothing else no

so normally on pages two three four five six and seven it wasn't there no that's what what should

we read into that I was surprised particularly because I missed it on saturday because of doing

other things I went back on the sunday and looked at it and I thought is that all they did they did

a three paragraphs on the front and then a single column on the right page five I think it was no

leader you know the leaders have come later by leaders I mean editorial comment attacking the

bvc it's almost as if they were unprepared to do it at that time maybe there was competitive pressure

from another newspaper that they thought had the story if I was still editing the sun there are

things that would there are question marks I would have about the story which is where are the bank

statements because there is mention of bank statements but I'm not seeing the bank statements in the

paper now you can rag out his fleet street that means printing something and ragging out the edges

so that's what they do they make it look good they make it look like a real they make it look like a

real yeah so you could do that if you had the bank statements but it maybe it appears that the young

person has the bank statements but the mother who's gone to the paper doesn't have that she's seen the

bank statements and she's talking to the sun she's saying she's seen this presenter in his underwear

waiting to do something but she hasn't seen that whatever that something is you don't think they're

on the same page the mother and the child I think this is probably a very tragic situation involving

class A drug use where the the young person isn't talking to the mother for whatever reason

the mother has gone to the sun but it's certainly not the two of them together would you have run

the story do you think I don't know whether I would have run the story but I've had lots of

questions about it and the first one would have been around is there any element of blackmail here

because I don't know whether there is by the way but I mean that would that would be that would

have been a question I would have asked because if there's any element of blackmail that itself is

a crime so you are at risk of giving publicity and supporting someone who has themselves possibly

committed some kind of crime themselves I know we're in a situation where it may be difficult to

say that but in publicly but that if you were to ask me would I run the story the answer is

I don't know but the first question I would have asked the team would be is there any

element of blackmail here because these payments are regular payments large payments and I you

know I don't know I had no idea I don't even know who the person is I don't know but when you run a

new story that creates more questions than answers you're in difficult territory and that

professionally is where the sun is now it's running this story but there are more even if

whether you were a reader or you're you know a media person or you're at the BBC the BBC is very

easy to portray the BBC as being in chaos but they themselves can't get as I understand it the facts

out because the family are not talking to them in a way that you would expect in the situation

I'll ask another question I would have asked if I was an editor would be why have the family not

gone to the police first because it's difficult to put yourself in this position but just for the

sake of argument you have a child who a very major BBC celebrity appears to be paying money

for indecent images the first thing most people would do would be they would go to the police

I mean you know that's what you would do you wouldn't particularly is it because then I mean

you know you want to protect your child probably first and foremost so you don't want the police

getting involved because then your child might be you just want it to you want the sun to be

involved well well presumably they went to the BBC first the first thing that appears to have

happened is the mother went to the BBC and what do you think went happened there what went wrong

with that process well the BBC is vulnerable there because clearly the BBC has various protocols

and it will have been handled through the particular protocol this will happen all the time by the way

people will make allegations about famous people on the TV to the BBC and ITV and everybody else

on a weekly basis there are lots of people that claim lots of things about lots of people

so the BBC will be very used to handling that you know there will be so it may turn out I don't

know that this should have been better handled by the BBC but what you're saying is they might get a

lot of false claims all the time and not want to respond to them yeah and if everyone there was a

complaint about was taken off air you'd have no one able to present any program there was one other

bit of it I thought that was interesting as well that in the Sun's reporting of it where the Sun

said we didn't pay any money that you know this woman came to the Sun and has not sought payment

which I think gives the impression that you know look there are a lot of people who go to newspapers

and think how much money can I make I've got a fast and tell exactly yeah so she hasn't gone to the

Sun because she's wanted to bolster her own bank balance no what people probably need to understand

about the Sun is that the relationship between the Sun and its readers he's very close so if this

woman is a Sun reader it will be quite natural for her to go to her paper yeah and every day presumably

in the Sun newspaper there's a tip number or whatever there is there is there is whereas I

suspect if you want to find out how to make a complaint to the BBC and how to navigate with

and how to navigate that is probably much trickier where does this go yeah well I think the next step

probably is the individual concerns whoever it is will make a statement I think so the

the BBC presenter the BBC are in a bind they can't name the person and they're going through

their processes but there's no way the BBC are going to suddenly name the person the Sun could

name the person a third party could another newspaper could but the most likely next step I think

is that the individual makes some kind of statement but that will depend on the facts

and the facts here I suspect are pretty tortuous complicated embarrassing at one end could be

career-ending whatever's happened they could easily be career-ending even if no illegality

hasn't happened at all David does it matter that we are sort of in this parallel universe

where people who are sort of comfortable on social media sites will have a much better

insight into who we're talking about right now than people who just read the Sun newspaper

actually or watch the BBC main news I mean yeah it is a weird place to be where we're sort of talking

about you know Twitter or Reddit or Quorum or you know Facebook whatever the site is yeah that you

know we'll be having this conversation and naming this presenter and that probably has real life

consequences as well doesn't it I mean as well as we've seen the Gary Linnikas have come out and

said it's not me we saw how upset Jeremy Vine and Nikki Campbell were this morning yeah I mean

that's sort of unsustainable isn't it well the privacy law stands as it does in this country

at the moment is it is entirely possible actually that the you asked me what the next step was it's

entirely possible that the presenter doesn't make a statement and this passes and we we carry on in

this situation for quite a long time and that's because the privacy of individuals is protected

by the law in this country no matter what happens on social media so yes you know I mean I see names

coming up in social media and going down social media I personally don't know whether whether

the person named or not but social media I mean I heard Kelvin McKenzie talking earlier

about it was obviously ended the sun before I did talking about the good old days and actually the

good old days were very simple when you had no social media a tablet can I just say sorry I've

just got to say this the good old days for Kelvin McKenzie when he maligned and insulted

horrifically the people of Liverpool so I think we you know let's just get that out the way because

I'll be people listening to this who don't want to hear Kelvin McKenzie talk about the good old

days of the sun no I mean I couldn't agree more I couldn't agree more but in this context

pre social media the editor of the Daily Mail and the editor of the Sun together

pretty much controlled what people knew about things like this social media for all its faults

has taken power away from that world completely and you now have a situation where as we sit here

now where these people are being named by ordinary people and social media but not by the powerful

not by the sun so is that democratization or is it just well or is it the law of the jungle

where anyone on twitter goes on and says I think it's X it makes that person's name starts to trend

and you know before you know there's a sort of kangaroo call I mean it's sat in judgment

it makes life very difficult for people who are very well known and you two will know this you

know I mean if you follow a very big star into a restaurant in central London Tom Cruise say

something like that people I will fold him into the Wolsey recently in the central London and

people go up from almost nearly every table and took his picture yeah he has no privacy whatsoever

Fleet Street photographer could not come into the restaurant take his picture because it's against

the code it's illegal so we now have more power than the Fleet Street photographer being famous

and very well known is never been more difficult but it's nothing to do with the press and this is

why the Harry and Meghan thing is it really goes into all kinds of other situations but social

media is impossible to manage so yes we live in a world where somebody can be named on social

media and pretty much everybody will know who the person is either in this respect or another respect

but the law will still apply if I was advising the presenter in this case that we're talking about

now privately I would say to them are you guilty or are you innocent if you are innocent actually

it may be better to say nothing because the BBC will have to reinstall you because you're innocent

and this will pass I know this sounds extraordinary but if guilty well what do

you mean by guilty if you're guilty of a crime then clearly all bets are off but I suspect the

reality of the situation may be that the person is may have been guilty of some very unwise behavior

but not of a crime and then you're in a gray area and I don't know you I need to know specific detail

before telling them what I think they should do in this still the splash still the splash tomorrow

in the day after oh for the sun this is as I say at the moment the sun has the BBC exactly where

they want them they have them in the dock they have them everybody in every coffee bar and every

pub is talking about this and the BBC are portrayed as bad people that cover up child abuse

effectively and which of course is not true but if you had been one of the other presenters who've

kind of you know out of themselves as innocent would you have done that I mean because the pool

obviously is well it's fair I mean if both of you'd still been at the BBC certainly because you

might have had to make the same state the same decision I mean I think it's very very unfortunate

but it's actually nobody's fault you know I mean I listened to Nikki Campbell this morning and I

really like Nikki and I feel for him but he's done the right thing but it's not anybody's fault

right it's not even the presenter's fault it's just the way it is on social media we may be living

through a phase in the development of social media where we look back and say Christ that was

like the Wild West people could do whatever they liked and there was no retribution you know we

there may be new rules new laws soon which stop people doing this

David great to have you with us thank you very much indeed

Yeah really fascinating thank you

This is the news agents

Welcome back and this is going to be a first on the news agents because we are going to talk

about Dutch politics not only are we talking about European politics we're also talking

about European politics without Lewis Goodall here but actually we're talking about British

politics as well because in the Netherlands over the weekend the four-party coalition

fell apart and Mark Rutte the prime minister has resigned as the leader and what is the cause of

this immigration not people in small boats because you don't need to get to the Netherlands on a

small boat unless you're coming from Britain but it's the crisis that has been brought about

by the huge migration flows of people wanting to seek a better life in Europe

It was a really extraordinary moment actually on Saturday when you suddenly saw the Dutch

government collapse and just to put this in context Mark Rutte is not somebody who's just

sort of come and gone he has been in power since 2010 he's the second longest serving prime minister

in European politics right I think all band has has got the march on him but apart from that

he has been this sort of stable head of government and why did he resign because he ended up realising

that they could not come to an agreement on the right approach to immigration and curiously enough

even though he is a kind of liberal conservative he was going on the side of tougher rules

stricter immigration into Holland and he was met with a chorus of dissent from people in his

coalition who said we've got to be more progressive we've got to be kind of we've got to reunite

families and why we thought it was interesting to talk about this is because sometimes we look at

our own Rwanda policy in a slight vacuum we think we're the only ones that are facing this question

and if you listened to Tom Hunt last week you would have heard him trying to explain that people

should always stop in the first country they come to which obviously was never going to be the UK

because we're an island now Holland has been tackling as so many other European countries

have been tackling exactly the same issue and this time it actually led to the very dramatic

collapse not just of a government but of the political career of a man who's led the Netherlands

for 13 years now obviously mateless and I are experts on Dutch politics and follow it intricately

and could talk about this for hours but we also thought it would be a good idea to speak to someone

who may even know a little bit more than us so we've got Barbara Moens on the line and she is

Politico's senior trade correspondent who's based in Brussels but follows Dutch politics intricately

Barbara what should we make of it all the fall of his government on Friday was a relative surprise

even for those who are following Dutch politics and then the announcement today that he will no

longer be running in the next elections was also pretty unexpected and obviously also raises the

question what he will do next I mean he was always known as Teflon Mark because nothing seemed

to stick to him but the problems of dealing with immigration which is something huge in Britain

as well seems to have been where he's come unstuck yes exactly so he basically survived crisis

after crisis even when a lot of analysts thought you know this is the issue that will ruin his

coalition or ruin his stint as prime minister it's not a coincidence that in the end migration

was kind of the sticking point you see all over Europe that the numbers are rising and especially

the countries that are the destination countries so Belgium, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands

are facing more and more political pressure to stop this wave of migrants coming in it's less

visible than it was with the migration crisis in 2015 but the numbers are starting to become the same

and that leads to a lot of political instability and uncertainty and you see that now with the

fall of this Dutch government as well. If our audience know Mark Rutte in any capacity it will

be very much as a centrist I think he was very good friends with Nick Clegg almost like a sort of a

Lib Dem politician sort of in our world and somebody as you say who's survived for 13 years in power

and yet the thing that brought him down Barbara if I've understood this right is that he wanted a

more hard line approach to stopping immigration to stopping asylum seekers coming into the country

the many of his coalition colleagues. So the main issue that was at stake last week was the issue of

family reunification so bringing the family from migrants over and so Rutte and his party wanted

a more stricter approach whereas especially the Christian Democrats thought this was also a key

issue for them say they obviously wanted to reunite the families because they were a family values

party and so none of these coalition parties wanted to give in on on this issue and and that's

what kind of led to the fall of the government you do see kind of the bigger issue of migration

kind of leading up in the last couple of months and even years in Dutch politics we also have

European elections in June next year so that means elections for European Parliament so there is also

a little bit of nervousness among among that as well with all the political parties. I think the

interesting thing is that if you're a British politician you obviously look to what's happening

in France and Germany and the Netherlands and wherever else about you know who is trending

up who is trending down but often when coalitions fall or governments fall it's for very unique

country reasons what seems to me striking about this is that immigration I mean you know in Britain

a lot of the most heated political debate now is over how to stop the small boats coming across

the channel from France it's the same story it is the same issue and we've just changed our laws on

family reunification yeah exactly yeah exactly and that is also what Drutte and a lot of other European

leaders have been saying that you know this issue is not just a country per country issue like you

said every country is facing with the same problem the same issue and it's an issue that with all

these different citizens across the continent and across Britain it's equally sensitive to them

right you know for the European Union that has meant that Drutte and other EU leaders have tried

to put this on the European agenda to kind of really close the borders at the Mediterranean

and as you said you also see the same discussion sensitive discussions right between France,

Belgium with the UK when it comes to the channel crossing so it isn't it is an issue everywhere

it doesn't always lead to the to the fall of governments.

And Barbara I just we've talked about what the politics are where is public opinion

on this in the Netherlands because I think that the British generally have a a view of

the Netherlands as being this incredibly liberal tolerant laid-back stable country and of course

we've had politicians like Gert Wilders and you know maybe one of the first countries to have

that sense of you know right-wing populism in the country anti-immigration rhetoric so I just wonder

where the Dutch people are over this. To be honest very divided and I think that you see that you

know also across the continent Dutch politics is very fragmented so it's not that you know

you have one big bloc at this point that that's very powerful in the Dutch parliament but there's

a lot of of this unity on this issue it is politically very sensitive and you also have a

lot of you know you also have a very strong progressive side who says you know the Netherlands

has always been this human rights country that's you know we shouldn't be the ones to do this

but at the same time that was the same in Denmark and you know they have gone pretty far when it

comes to migration policy. What one of your populist groups now really curiously is the

Dutch farmers party right yeah they sort of are anti-environmental legislation or climate

change legislation presumably Rutter was thinking about the populists in his move if you like to

the right was he yeah so that party as actually you mentioned earlier that you know a lot of times

governments fall over over local issues and the farmers protest was very much you know a national

local issues to the Netherlands but it has led to the rise of this very strong populist party as

you mentioned and it is true that when this party would come to power it would lead to tougher

migration policy at the same time that is not the core issue of this party the core issue of this

party is more you know kind of the you know the anti-politics um leaning into the identity questions

that a lot of people have the uncertainty globalization those kinds of Brexit questions kind

of thing yeah I wouldn't I wasn't going to mention it myself but yes you can we mentioned Brexit and

we think we got away with it yeah Barbara thank you so much that was fantastic thank you so much

bye

this is the news agents

welcome back there was a wedding this weekend in case you had missed it where the former chancellor

George Osborne married Thea Rogers and as they came out of the church there was an incident where

a woman came up apparently a just-stop oil supporter and threw orange confetti over them

which has led to some pretty strong reactions well this is David Lambie the shadow foreign

secretary talking on LBC yesterday I disagreed fundamentally with George Osborne when he was

chancellor of the Exchequer I disagreed with his austerity I disagreed with his cuts to use services

in constituencies like mine but on his wedding day to his bride Thea Rogers

my god really aren't we better than that a private event what's next a funeral

it's boneheaded is what it is it's low it's rude it's unacceptable David Lambie clearly feels

quite strongly about what happened and this is the point where to be honest we have to show our

workings because he's describing the crowd being horrified and actually we were part of that crowd

we were invited to the wedding and we didn't see a thing it's not a great look for a journalist to

have missed the entire story of the wedding but whatever whenever however it was done

most of the guests didn't know about it until we sort of read it the next morning you know on our

phones in the papers but I do think it's one of the most extraordinary stunts because I don't think

that George Osborne or even Thea political advisor will have been particularly unhappy

with that it wasn't orange paint it didn't ruin a wedding dress it didn't even get on his jacket

it was confetti everyone was throwing confetti and the just-op oil or whoever it was protest

will have felt that they got the headlines they made waves they went right up to the groom at the

center of this whole event and have done something for their cause and in a curious way you couldn't

have wanted weirdly a better outcome for both sides exactly he feels like the victim they feel like

the victors everyone's happy the idea in politics it's very rare that people can accept the idea

that there is a win-win where both sides have come out on top and given the awful circumstances

in the lead-up to the wedding and some pretty vile stuff that was said beforehand the wedding

itself was a very joyous event and here you have George Osborne on the radio getting sympathy from

the shadow cabinet over someone with orange confetti and people thinking how bloody outrageous

don't go and mess someone's wedding up with orange confetti at the same time as just-op oil

initially didn't make any comment about it refused to answer journalists questions so there was a

whole load of speculation it's just-op oil and then 24 hours they said it wasn't us and so they

get another whole 24 hours of everyone's other publicist who they wanted so just-op oil I've

just had everything what I would say though is that the biggest story is actually not the confetti

or what happened at the wedding it is the way that the shadow cabinet are finding their words

with environmental language at the weekend you had Keir Starmer reportedly saying he hates tree

huggers right Keir I hate tree huggers Starmer because he's worked out in what feels to me like

a slight sort of reflection of the Linton Crosby years about barnacles on the boat he does not

want to be swayed from talking about jobs economy cost of living and this is where he

wants the debate to be and as soon as you're talking about 28 billion a year as soon as you're

talking about just-op oil as soon as you're talking about environmental staff then he

worries that he's going to be pigeonholed as somebody who is sort of intellectually green

as opposed to absolutely down with where the country needs to be yeah and I think it's interesting

I think I mentioned it on the podcast last week that we went to a thing at the US Embassy

and I spoke to a member of the shadow cabinet about being accused of flip flops and he said

the more they're accusing us of flip flops the better because it means that we're getting rid

of the policies that might be unsellable and might be problematic for us now and so if narratives

like that are coming out happy days because they are then tamed and neutered by the time you get

to the general election but I think that's what you heard from David Lammy I think he was aligning

himself with where he knows his leader wants the shadow cabinet to be right now it's where they

think the British public is now don't ruin weddings and funerals with your nonsense we can get all

this done in parliament we'll be back tomorrow we look forward to seeing you then bye bye bye for now

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

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.