The News Agents: Why are Tories bottling the 'Partygate' vote?

So, here's a very simple question. Will Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, vote to endorse

a report by the Privilege's Committee, the findings into Boris Johnson and whether he

misled Parliament? It's a pretty simple question, as I say, except maybe not for Rishi Sunak.

Well, this committee was established under the former Prime Minister.

It commanded the confidence of the House at the time, and I'm sure that they've done their work

thoroughly, and I respect them for that. Obviously, this is a matter for the House,

not for the government, and that's why each and individual colleagues will make up their own

mind when the time comes. So, are you not going to be there? I said, each and individual colleague

will make up their own mind when the time comes. This is a matter for the House rather than for

the government. It's an important distinction, and that's why I wouldn't want to influence anyone

in advance of that vote. But you promised professionalism, accountability, integrity at

every level, Boris Johnson has undermined all of those. Do you not need to set an example

and vote for him to be punished for that? As I said, this is a matter for the House,

it's not a government matter. That was Rishi Sunak on Good Morning Britain. I wouldn't want to

influence anyone, says the leader of a political party. It's like being a footballer and saying,

I don't like footballs. I'm just the Prime Minister. I've got nothing to do with Parliament.

I just happen to be the Prime Minister. Look, if you think the report into Boris Johnson stinks,

vote against it. If you think the report into Boris Johnson is broadly correct, vote for it.

But don't run for the hills. Welcome to the News Agents.

The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And we are at News Agents HQ.

This is our revenge. And Lewis Goodall is clacking in East Timor.

Pearl fishing off the coast of Western Australia.

He's actually just trapped at home. We've locked him in his house for a whole week,

so he leaves us in peace. So we can taunt him from afar.

We miss you. But in the absence of Lewis, we are going to get on with the podcast. And I should

say later we have got the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in the studio, Sir Mark Rowley,

and obviously we'll be asking about that extraordinary video unearthed by the Sunday

Mirror showing a party and dancing taking place at Conservative Central Office at the height of

lockdown. But back to the privileges committee vote in the House of Commons today, which promises to

be a huge moment. It may be overdoing it to say this is Britain's Watergate, but it's not far

short. A Prime Minister has been forced out of office on the back of the untruth that he told.

A committee report has investigated it and found that he lied repeatedly and was in contempt of

Parliament on a number of occasions. If this has not happened to another Prime Minister

in the 300 years of history of modern British politics.

And I can see why some MPs have got reservations about the length of time that the privileges

committee has found against Boris Johnson. They've given him what would have been in this

hypothetical situation where he hadn't resigned a 90-day suspension. Now, a lot of people will

argue that maybe that overdid it, maybe you get where you want to with 20 days or with 30 days,

with the month he is broken all records here. But I do think genuinely it is a point of principle

that Rishi Sunak has set himself up as being the Prime Minister who is not Boris Johnson.

The Prime Minister who believes in integrity and transparency. And what we've heard from him today

is that he's hosting a series of meetings and he might get along in time at the end.

But as far as we're concerned, to not actually endorse the privileges committee

into calling out Boris Johnson for misleading Parliament looks like cowardice.

Well, the danger of what Rishi Sunak is doing is that you get into the weird position that this

committee report is all about Boris Johnson. And if Rishi Sunak had said he was voting one way or

the other, it would still be all about Boris Johnson. And actually by saying in that clip that

we just played of, oh, it's up for MPs to decide, I really don't know what to say. It makes it about

Rishi Sunak and it makes it about Rishi Sunak's leadership. And his fear. I mean, who is he scared

of now? Because if he thinks that Boris Johnson is finished, then the only people that will be voting

with Boris Johnson, you know, maybe the bill caches. I mean, even Michael Gove, we know,

is abstaining. Presumably, Nadine Doris, who is still an MP, we should just put for the record.

Is she still? She is still. Monday, we should say, 1323, she is still an MP. But I think she'll

probably support Boris Johnson. But who genuinely is Rishi Sunak scared of? And why isn't it actually

the voters or his constituents? Because I think we should play you this clip from our colleague,

Sangeeta Meisker, over the weekend. She was interviewing Tobias Elwood on LBC.

And he's the chair of the Defence Select Committee. So a big wig in Parliament.

He put himself in the same position as Rishi Sunak initially, said, oh, well, I think I'll

abstain and I'm not really sure. And I've got other things and, you know, Russia, Ukraine,

and I've got bigger fish to fry. And then she just read him out some of the tweets and comments

and emails from his own constituents. And he changed his mind on air.

So I'm going to put to you something that is an example of the text that I'm getting. I get a

live stream of texts while I'm on air and I'm having a look at them. And this is absolutely typical

of people that are texting in as you speak to me now. This text from Simon,

I cannot believe what I'm hearing from Tobias Elwood. Jules Sangeeta, please let Tobias know

that he's lost my vote. If he does not turn up to vote tomorrow. This text from Lucy,

Mr Elwood is wrong. It's 90 days now because Boris Johnson betrayed the confidentiality of the

report before it was published. The Tories have an opportunity to support the upholding of standards

in public life. Mr Elwood is being cowardly and self-interested, like the Tories in the main,

including Rishi Sunak. I'm moved by what I hear. I will now change my plans tomorrow. I will come

back early and I will vote to support the privileges committee. Amazing. Amazing. Because this is not

just any other vote. This is not the second reading of the Fisheries Bill bracket Scotland.

This is something that the House has never had before it. And if you're a criminologist,

you would talk about retributive justice and exemplary justice. Do you want justice just to

be retribution for the fight an eye for an eye? Or do you want it to be exemplary to set an example

that in future behavior like this will never be tolerated? And the committee has gone for

exemplary justice in going for 90 days because of the way they felt they were treated by Boris

Johnson and the contempt in which he held them kind of figuratively and literally by releasing

parts of the report. And therefore you have to take it unbelievably seriously. And so for the

Prime Minister to say, yeah, it's just a matter for the House. No, I think this is a matter for

our democracy. And I think it's a matter for our parliament. And I think it really does matter.

And that's why I think abstaining is not an option. I also think that Sunak has possibly

made it more difficult for himself because over the weekend, last week, there was clear blue water

between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Finally, Sunak was able to say, okay, the gloves are off.

You can see that we're not on the same page. We weren't on the same page over the Honours List.

We weren't on the same page in that meeting that they presumably had where Boris Johnson asked

Sunak to overturn his choices. We definitely weren't on the same page in terms of Party

Gate and how we viewed it. And there is a risk at this point that by abstaining,

Sunak allows members of the public to say, oh, they are all the same. They're all the same.

I mean, they're not. Politicians genuinely vary extraordinarily as we know. But this kind of move

allows us, the general public, to be lazy in our assumptions and go, you see, they are all the same.

And we've been talking about this story over the weekend. And then on Saturday night,

the Sunday Mirror publishes something again, which just sort of takes your breath away.

I think for an awful lot of people, the sight of people dancing at Central Office at the height

of COVID. In front of a sign saying keep your distance. And I just think that, I mean, Boris

seems to think it's all bollocks. It's not. Party Gate offended a huge number of people.

And you'd have thought that for Rishi Sunak to use your metaphor about them all being the same,

he would want to show that he is different. That is the whole mantra of his leadership

between now and the next general election. Look at the timing. We've just launched the COVID

inquiry. We had the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, having to argue that it wasn't

his austerity policies that led up to the lack of support and infrastructure around dealing

with a pandemic. Last week, it was the launch. So you are constantly reminding people every

single day. I mean, as if we needed reminding quite frankly, I think we're still to varying

degrees in a sort of post COVID PTSD state for many people in this country. But every day,

we're going to be hearing about the COVID inquiry. Every day, we're going to be hearing from

key figures. And when this video emerges, and yes, okay, we knew about the party and we knew

about Sean Bailey, who was one time mayoral candidate who was hosting it. And yes, we knew

the still photos. Somehow the video is more shocking, not least, because you can hear

the sort of subtext, which is people saying, Oh, I hope we don't get caught on camera. Oh,

you know, they know that they're that they're breaching the rules. And as soon as you hear

people admitting that they know that, somehow it just becomes hard to swallow.

I understand how in number 10, they've sort of reached the conclusion that they have. If you vote

for Boris's punishment, you're going to upset Boris's core supporters and a lot of conservative

voters in the country who still love Boris. If you vote against, then you're going to seem to

be condoning what Boris did. I know what about abstaining, but abstention just looks like you

are opening yourself up to the charge of weakness at a time when a huge number of people in Britain,

as that video showed, still feel a visceral anger at what happened over party gate and not to be

taking a view just looks like an abdication of responsibility. And you are the prime minister.

But I think it's also about the privileges committee itself. I mean, do we want these

parliamentary committees to have teeth? Or don't we? And if I had just spent the last year going

through every bit of detail, trying to work out the dates and the timings and what he knew and what

he said and what he told the House and what we knew sort of behind the scenes of people telling

him, if you've done all that work for an inquiry that the prime minister couldn't even be bothered to

turn up to when the vote came, yes, I suppose on the one hand you can say, okay, well, their work

is done and it's worldwide now. It's known and it's public. But on the other hand, you'd think,

why did we bother? And next time there's a report, next time there's a question of ethical

standards that need to be upheld. Why would I put myself through that? I don't want to be called part

of a kangaroo court. I don't want to be ignored. You know, you have these two extremes, right?

You're either ignored or you're called a kangaroo court. Either we believe in these systems and

we believe in upholding them, or else we might as well just all go home.

And then there is the grotesque aspect of this that members of the committee,

since its publication, have required security because of threats that have been made

against MPs for upholding the rights of parliament. Just let me say that again,

MPs have been threatened for upholding the rights of parliament, the sovereignty of which

was fought over during the Brexit referendum. And now MPs for having done their job and said

some things that are disablaging to Boris Johnson find themselves threatened. This is serious.

This is about our democracy. This is about our future.

Now, obviously, at the time of recording, we should say we don't yet know what the numbers

will look like. Nadine Doris, who knows, might no longer be a sitting MP. So this could change,

but this is what it looks like early afternoon on Monday, which is there isn't a lot of appetite

to stick your name on this. And it's slightly reminding me of the Republican party,

the leadership party around Trump and all those people that are refusing to call out his actions

because they sort of want to pick up his votes when he goes.

Even though behind cupped hands, they'll tell you, oh, no, Donald's in terrible trouble. He's

done terrible things. And when some microphone appears, they just want to be supportive of him.

Yeah.

Terrible. We'll be back after the break with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.

Welcome back. And I'm delighted to say that we are joined in the studio by the Commissioner of

the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley. Welcome to the News Agency.

Hi there.

Nice to hear that you are a listener as well.

A superfan. Can we call you a superfan?

Well, that might be over cooking it. Can we start? Because over the course of the weekend,

we saw an astonishing video published by the Sunday Mirror of people partying at Central

Office, dancing tables full of wine. Have you reopened the investigation?

That it's illustrative, isn't it, of how the police operate where society fractures, where

things are contentious, where there's challenge. So we're not routinely opening every minor

historic allegation. So if you phoned up about your neighbor from five to three years ago,

we're not going to reopen that. But clearly cases that are particularly serious, particularly

concerning, we will do. As people know, that case has been previously looked at based on a photo.

It's very obvious a video tells a much richer, clearer story than a photo. And so the team are,

that's going to come out over the weekend, are looking at that with a view to whether that

provides a basis for a further investigation. What's your sense that you will be?

I think we can all see the colorful nature of the video and how much it tells a story,

way beyond the original photo. I need to let the team work through that. But I think we can all

guess which way it'll go. Right. So there will be action. And if penalties are issued, it will be

the same fixed penalty notices that we saw earlier on. The same procedures as before and the same

principles as before, where we're looking at sort of how proportionate is this,

how much are there sufficiently aggravating factors in this case that merit looking so far

back when we're not on most of the cases. And so one of the things we've taken account in the past,

of course, has been those involved in sort of setting the law and setting the policy being

an aggravating feature, for example. So we take account of all of that as we work through just

the evidence say that X was compromised and breaking the rules. And then does it justify

that intervention. So that same process you've seen before. And I think so far we've given

in these in Hillman, which was the main investigation into the Downey Street passes,

etc. It's over 100 fixed penalties for slightly under 100 individuals because some people had more

than one. You're not going to reopen every case, even every case from lockdown. But will you

be taking that into account that this is something that the UK public feels strongly about? Or does

that not come into your choices at all? I think sort of using it, expressing it as simply as that,

no, because we have to operate without fear or favour if we sort of, if we allow ourselves to

be blown around by public feeling that he's a dangerous precedent. But the aggravating features

of those involved in setting regulations, setting the law, being involved has been a factor in the

past. And that's so the factors we take into account are some of the factors that are stirring

up public opinion. So there is a relationship between them. But simply saying, lots of the

public don't like this, therefore, we're going to intervene. You can understand why that wouldn't

be the right way to approach it. But it is a factor. Just a question on the speed with which this

happens. Because is this like a speeding offence where it's clear you were going 38 miles an hour

and a 30 mile an hour zone, you're going to get a ticket? Or do you need to interview the people

concerned in this? Or is it self evident that what has gone on and therefore you just need to issue

the fixed penalty notices? So no, there's an investigation you'll know in past cases,

we've done that by questionnaire, because they're not the most serious offences rather than

invite people for an interview that's been done by questionnaire, which is,

that seems to me a sort of, it wasn't there for the time, but a very sensible way of doing things.

I'm not going to give the detail of it, but the previous photo relation to this incident

did prompt an investigation where some inquiry steps were made and I've been briefed on those,

but it'd be wrong to talk about them now. And so they're going to look back at those,

of course, it does what's in the video correlate with what people might have told us previously.

And so we've got to work our way through. So that adds an extra, the fact there's been a

initial investigation of previously, if we're going to reopen it, one would want to look at

that material. So it's a bit different, but it's not going to be, don't expect news that

in a couple of days time, we've sent out X number of fixed penalty tickets. So it's going to take

a bit longer than that. What about the diaries that were sent on to you by Boris Johnson's

government lawyers? Is that something that you will open investigation on as well?

I can't remember all the cases, sort of explicitly, but we've got two other

relevant cases that we're looking at at the moment and the team are working the way through.

So again, on the same basis, because we've had one referred by the cabinet officer,

one referred by someone else that we're considering. And there's public statements

on those matters that you can pick up. Right. So those are still under consideration about

whether further action will be taken. And will interviews take place on that as well?

The same principle applies, and it is possible, will issue questionnaires again,

if we think the initial facts justify that degree of investigation.

But no decision taken on that yet?

No. And so the point on this is that there's a lot of swirling public opinion and outrage.

There's political outrage. It's not uncommon for political parties to sort of push these

things against their opposition, so to speak. This is where the police, without fear or favour,

and actually being steady and diligent, and to some degree a bit boring about how we do this,

is really important. Trying to rush to an answer when it's so contentious,

which would be fair and systematic and get to the right answer. And if everyone's happy with

it great, if everyone's upset with it, that's a shame, but that's equally fine because we're

following the law and we're operating with that fear or favour.

How difficult is it to weigh between those things? Where you find yourself in the middle

of a party political dogfight where one party wants one outcome and another party has a vested

interest in another? So that's why when Parliament created the sort of structures and accountability

for policing, that's why we're half a pace away from politicians. So an unusual position in terms

of the commissioner's position in different ways, the Mayor and the Home Secretary both hold me to

account. But it's holding me to account from half a pace away. I have to take account of what they

say. I don't have to slavishly follow it. And that's for exactly this point about

surely in a democracy you want policing that is sufficiently independent of politicians,

that it can take determined professional independent decisions.

Whilst on the other hand, if politicians are angry on behalf of the public, the quality of

policing isn't good enough. And of course you can take account of that, but it's trying to create

a bit of clear blue water. So I've got the operational freedom to do what's right.

So is Suella Brougham and our Home Secretary half a pace away when she says she's giving you her

full support to ramp up the powers of stop and search? Is that helpful? In fact, let's hear from

Suella on the subject of stop and search in Parliament this afternoon. I've written to all

Chief Constables asking them to provide strategic leadership and direction in the use of stop and

search powers. Ensure that every officer is confident in the effective and appropriate use

of all stop and search powers, including the use of suspicionless powers. To investigate instances

where someone is obstructing or interfering with the use of these powers and if necessary, make

arrests. So she's got a view about policing tactics. The Mayor's got views about policing

tactics. They both express them. I listen to them sometimes in my whole career. I mean, I've been

a sort of senior officer for 20 years. I was promoted Chief Constable 15 years ago.

Sorry Suella, what do you do with that though? When somebody says I'm giving you my full support

to ramp up stop and search, what do you hear? Do you hear you should be doing more of it?

Is that an order? It's not an order. I don't think she would see it as an order,

but I definitely don't take it as one. Do you just filter it out then basically? Whatever

the Home Secretary is sort of directing at you, do you have to say that's noise? No thanks.

We are going to use the right tactics to tackle violence on the streets of London.

Stop and search is a key tactic in that. So it is part of our armoury, but the amount of...

You've also warned that it burns through trust. If it's done badly. If it's done badly, it burns

through trust. So whether a politician is philosophically enthusiastic or not about it

is sort of interesting to the side. Surely the community... Is it interesting or is it frustrating?

That's just the nature of the world, isn't it? The politicians are bound to express a view on

this sort of thing, but surely the communities of London should expect us to be doing

the right amount of stop and search in the right places that has the best effect on crime and

keeping them safe and building their trust. That must be the most important driving factor,

that professional evidence. Clearly if all the politicians and society against the tactic in

its lawful, that makes it harder. So it's useful in that, but the operational decision in the same

way as the tactic, this decision on a sensitive investigation is the same point. We will make

the call about where and when we do it. If it's contentious to politicians, we'll brief them

about why we're doing it and try and persuade them why it makes sense to try and get their support,

but if they're not supportive and we're absolutely sure it's the right thing, we'll still do it.

Is it the same when she says the Metropolitan Police mustn't be so woke or whatever it is,

or don't sit around having tea with the protesters, whatever event it is?

So part of the sort of challenge of my role is I'm a senior police officer, I'm not a politician.

I have to work with politicians, but I don't step into their lane. So if they want to kick

around ideas from a political perspective, it's not for me to say that-

Do you think she's in your lane?

She's only in my lane if she tells me to do something and she hasn't and if she did, I'd say-

So ramping up is not telling you to do something?

I don't take it that way.

Would it be easier if there was less political comment on what you should do?

Policing is contentious, it's always been that way. I think in the current world where

public debate is more polarized, it gets even trickier. And if you think about my job,

the sort of 45,000 men and women who I work with at the Met, we operate where society fractures,

where things go wrong, where disasters happen, where sort of sad or bad people do awful things to

others. Operating at that fracture point immediately generates debate from polarized

society. So as society gets more heated and more polarized, that actually makes our job

all the harder, but we have to go on with that for your favour.

I just want to play a clip of you at a select committee with the deputy chairman of the

Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, who was having a bit of a poke at you.

It would appear that you're in denial.

I've been more forthright about the needs of reform and the meeting-conference standards

in policing than any commissioner for decades.

I would imagine that anybody else in any other industry has witnessed this type of behaviour

and would admit to it and say, yes, it does exist, it has happened, I have witnessed it.

I think you're probably the only person I've ever met that would say they can't remember.

You see, it took five years out of the force. There's probably people listening to this today

wish it was a lot longer, and I'm one of them. Do you think you've got the confidence of the

public? I'm not going to sit here. If people want to be personally offensive, then write it in

newspapers, but I'm not going to answer those questions.

Well, that told him. Yeah, absolutely. I don't mind being professionally accountable.

I'm not going to take part in insulting nonsense, and that was my position, then that's it now.

I'm perfectly able to handle a robust conversation, and it's fine to be challenged, but if people

can't behave civilly then in Parliament, then I'm not going to take part in that.

Part of that discussion you had with Lee Anderson was over stopping protests, and he was getting

very hot under the collar, and you were saying, look, you just don't understand the law. The law

is unclear. Has Suella Braverman cleared up the law now? Does that make it easier given,

look what happened at the coronation, where peaceful protesters were picked up off the streets?

Mostly, I'm not accepting that latter premise. I've been saying to those in government for

over a decade that the law on protest is unclear, because we all, I think, like the idea of protest

and democracy, and we all understand this thing to be protest, is inherently disruptive.

We all have a sense that at some point, that disruption becomes unreasonable on people trying

to go about their normal everyday life. Where's that tipping point? The law until last week

was entirely unclear on that. A combination of two or three bits of legislation over the last 40

years, which your listeners probably won't be interested in the detail of, creates a very vague

grey space, which the courts have interpreted variably over many decades and has made it

difficult for us. And I've repeatedly said to politicians, I think Parliament's let policing

un-public down by not drawing a clear line. So what happened on the day of the coronation then?

Let's just get that out the way. Was that a mistake by the mayor? Alice Chambers was one of

those who was literally minding your own business as a royal watcher who got caught up and shoved

in custody and missed the whole thing. Not to mention those from the public who just

had thought that they'd agreed what they were doing with the police way ahead of time. Who screwed

up there? So we're still working through all the cases. If we need to apologise to any individual,

individually we will do. But you haven't apologised to Alice Chambers yet.

So we're still working through the cases. Well, we arrested, I think, over 50 people.

There's a lot of investigation and information behind the scenes that isn't public.

Why wouldn't the police take the few ones? There are some people who have given public accounts

that we know aren't true and I'm not necessarily talking about her, but just because of what's

been at public record doesn't mean it's necessarily completely accurate. I've been

involved in lots of operations in my policing career. I spent four years running the National

Cancer Terrors and Capability. On the Friday night before the Saturday, I was more concerned

about this operation. I've been about anyone in the past. We had very, very worrying

accurate intelligence about the intent of people to cause real problems and real risks of public

safety. It was clearly accurate intelligence, but it wasn't completely comprehensive. So we

knew enough to be worried, but not enough to know everyone involved. We had 12 hours to fix it

ahead of an event that there is no plan B for that event. It's going to take place on the

world stage in front of billions of people and it's actually quite easy to disrupt and cause

real danger in that. So the teams work through the night flat out and of course the point of

intervention is different when you're working at that speed and that point of reasonable suspicion

and the officers acted exactly as I expected them to. Now, of course, as we unpicked that,

it's not impossible that there might be people who've got, who we thought were part of a bigger

group in a protest that turned out not to be personally involved with that. And if that's

the case, we'll apologize for it. But I'm not going to apologize for making sure that paint wasn't

thrown over processions, for making sure that stampedes of processional horses wasn't created.

But nobody's asking to apologize for that. Well, you are because you're saying, well,

I don't want the effect, but I don't want the intervention. So that's the challenge for us.

We have 12 hours to fix something that is massively difficult. And there wasn't an easy

answer to that. We didn't have a perfect list of all the people involved. We had sufficient

intelligence picture to know that we were at risk of the coronation going awfully astray and we had

to act and the officers did it with the best of intentions, best of their ability. And as we work

through the data, they say, we need to apologize, we will do, but I'm not going to leap into that

just on a presentational basis.

Well, I thought that was pretty fascinating. He's obviously a very self-confident

man who knows what his mission is. I thought it's very interesting talking about Soella

Braverman and, you know, ramp up the use of stop and search. And he says, I'll do what I think is

right. And it's not an order. And I don't take orders like that. I swim in my lane and she should

swim in hers. And obviously, the big news item coming out of that is the fact that they have

reopened the investigation into what happened at conservative central office and that people

should not be surprised who were there to be receiving fixed penalty notices. They may not

come tomorrow or the day after, but he said it's pretty clear which way this is going to fall.

It was very cautious, wasn't it? He said, we have reopened considerations into the investigation.

I think you heard a very sort of cautious embarking on the next steps because he doesn't want to rush

anything. But he said you won't be surprised. And that was the giveaway. And it was clear which

way this is going to fall. Absolutely. And so, and also I thought interesting that he was saying

this is not about public opinion. This is about more than that. This is about what is right and

whether there are aggravating factors. I like that phrase as well, that because these were people

who are kind of in government and meant to be setting the example and they weren't.

Why all this is so important, of course, is because the Met's own reputation is on the line

right now. And we are discussing that with Sir Mark Rowley in tomorrow's episode. We talk about

reputation, how many police officers are currently on trial within the force itself,

and we'll be talking about his reluctance to use the word institutional when it comes to racism

or sexism or homophobia and why he decided to go back into this role, one of the

hardest jobs in Britain right now. We'll be back in a moment.

This is The News Agents.

We're going to finish by talking about green issues. We've spent quite a lot of time talking

about Keir Starmer and his energy bill, and he is giving a speech in Scotland today, but

we're talking about a different sort of green issues. Yeah, green, slightly browning issues

as well after a period of time because someone is not amused. Someone is very definitely not

amused. The someone in question is Liz Truss, and she's been at a conference in Dublin where she

was asked about her longevity and a certain lettuce. She is absolutely right. It was pure.

That is the point. It's very funny, very pure. And clever, actually, because it sort of said

this Prime Minister cannot last, and the Daily Star just thought, right, I wonder

who's going to last longer, the lettuce or the Prime Minister. And a lot of school children

won't genuinely have known how long a lettuce does last before it was or a Prime Minister.

So I think it was incredibly educational on many levels. It was great for us as well,

and I'm sorry, Liz, you weren't amused. We were. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye.

This has been a Global Player original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.