The News Agents: Will Rishi Sunak now tell Lee Anderson to "f*** off"?

Before we start, just a quick warning that there will be very strong, perhaps, salty

language from the very start of this podcast, and of course, you can blame John.

This is a global player original podcast.

This is out of control.

We're in power at the moment.

I'm, as you say, the Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party.

We're in government, and we have failed on this.

There's no doubt about it.

That wasn't the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, as you could probably tell.

That wasn't another critical Labour MP or opposition voice.

That was the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, the mouth with a license to kill, Lee

Anderson.

Yeah, he's already mouthed off quite a bit this week, because he said to asylum seekers,

if you don't like it here, you can fuck off back to France.

That's one thing, salty language, a popular message, but can you go on the television

and say, our government policy has been a total failure before Rishi Sunak says to him,

you can fuck off yourself.

Welcome to the News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's Lewis.

It's John.

And later in the podcast, we're going to be following up the story we devoted yesterday's

episode to, and that is the false imprisonment of Andy Malkinson after 17 years he won his

freedom.

And we're going to talk about the wider legal issues, about what needs to change in the

criminal justice system, and we'll be discussing that with Emily Bolton, who founded the Charity

Appeal, which led the investigation into his sentencing and the overturning of it.

Yeah, but first, we are going to talk about Lee Anderson.

I'm not sure where to go from that introduction, but let's try our best.

Look, I promise not to swear again, OK?

No, no, don't make promises you can't keep, John.

Don't do it. You've let me down before.

Anyway, look, Lee Anderson, let's just rewind a moment.

And of course, we started the show this week on Monday by talking about the fact that it

is in the government grid, the government media grid in this very arid news desert that

is August.

Small Boats Week, and it is their opportunity, they think, to try and send out a series of

messages, including pre-recorded Twitter videos from Rishi Sunak, even though, of course,

easy on holiday in California, saying the government's got a grip on small boats.

And although it's a problem, they're dealing with it.

And it's nothing like Labour, by the way, Labour, who have got no plan whatsoever to

deal with anything so you can trust us from the conservatives.

And as part of that, we've had the baby stock home.

And earlier in a week, as John has already said, Lee Anderson, who, and if you haven't

come across Lee Anderson, he's a conservative MP since 2019, he's got a kind of roving

brief within the Tory party to kind of say the things that media people within the party

kind of would quite like it to be said, because they know that it will appeal to a certain

type of voter.

But they know that no front bench, you know, ministers, something that the Prime Minister

could ever say.

And so it was all going quite well, because Lee Anderson had said, as John said, that

if people don't like going to a boat, illegal immigrants and migrants, as he calls them,

if they can, let's be a little bit tamer, f off back to France.

And that was fine.

But what happened next was not fine.

No, because he went way too far.

And just to give you optics about what the point of Lee Anderson is, we've talked a bit

on this podcast about the way Rishi Sunak dresses, the Gucci kind of loafers, the Prada

suits, the trousers that may be too tight.

When Lee Anderson gave that interview on GB News last night, he is sitting there in

a white t-shirt, it's working class man.

It is appealing to the red wall.

It is appealing to working class conservatives who voted conservative in 2019.

And in the history of politics, we've seen all sorts of people play that role.

Tony Blair didn't reach out to the core working class in the way that maybe John Prescott

did.

In the Thatcher era, the rough, tough guy was Norman Tebbitt, who'd come in and be,

as Michael Foote called him once, a semi-house-trained pole cat.

And so you've got other people who've done this in the past.

And that is clearly Lee Anderson's job today.

But what he did last night was to say, not just say something unthinkable and unspeakable,

he just accused the government of total failure.

British political parties, the two main parties are coalitions, they're big coalitions, they're

parties within parties.

And so you always see particular figures who act in a way, talk in a way, do things

that the party principle, the prime minister will leave the party, can't or won't do.

So that's not unusual.

But as you say, John, the danger is, and this is the flip side, we saw earlier in the week,

Minister after minister, including the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, quite happily defending

Lee Anderson saying, you know, they can air off back to France, which, you know, it's

vulgar, it is course, and it is to simplify a really complicated situation.

That said, of course, we should say, we can see why the government is happy about that,

in a sense that Anderson does in saying that, whether people listening to this like this

or not, he will be talking for millions of people.

Lots of people agree with him.

I know this, having interviewed lots and lots of people about this and talked to them,

voxed them and all this sort of thing.

People just don't understand why it is that people who are saying that they're fleeing

from persecution or from horror or from war would get to a safe country like France and

then risk their life further by coming to Britain.

It feeds into that narrative we were talking about earlier in the week, which is this idea

that Britain has a soft touch.

Now, where Anderson is wrong is the reality is, of course, it's much more complicated

than that.

And any minister, Anderson probably knows that, but certainly the ministers know it's far

more complicated than that.

People do that because of family connections with Britain, because they speak English,

because France itself is not particularly hospitable.

But they are happy to hear Anderson say those things, because it resonates with people in

the way that it does.

Look, if you're Lee Anderson, you are there and you've been given by Rishi Sunak a tin

of paint that is black and a tin of paint that is white.

For God's sake, don't do shades of grey.

Don't do nuance.

You're not here to do nuance.

You're here to give simple messages.

We're dealing with this.

We're getting rid of them.

They can f off if they don't like it.

I didn't use the full word there, so I haven't broken my word on that.

Well played, John Soaple.

And that is what his role is, and it is to be the Ruffian.

You know, if a minister goes before the House of Commons and has a statement that has been

prepared by the civil servants in the department, you do have to do nuance.

You have to be accountable for the numbers that you give and whether they are factual

or non-factual.

As deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, and it would be the same if it was the deputy

chair of the Labour Party, you've got much more licence.

You are there as a propagandist, and he is there to give simple propaganda messages that

will resonate with people who just think, oh, God, we're all going to hell in a hand

card.

Yeah, although Sunak has to take account of himself and his government or his party anyway

with him, because of course, Sunak said that he wanted to restore integrity and honesty

and probity and so on.

And the fact of the matter is, is that Anderson, forget the swearing, I mean, to be honest,

the swearing, as much as anything, is cover.

It's cover for the fact that Anderson is right.

Actually, they failed.

And the reason the government is happy about it, and they're happy that he says stuff

like that, is because we all end up talking about the swearing rather than the fact that

they failed.

But of course, it's slightly gone wrong, the plan, because Anderson has now let the cat

out of the bag and said explicitly that they failed.

And that is what you get when you play with fire with someone like Anderson, is that they

can be straight talking, and that's great, but they can be straight talking and that

can be bad.

And what Anderson has done is effectively print the Labour parties next election leaflet for

them.

And that can be on every single election party leaflet in red wall seats up and down the

North and Midlands.

Mr. Straight talking himself, Lee Anderson has said it, the government has failed on

immigration.

And the problem is, is that it punctures, and it completely is at odds with everything

that ministers from the Prime Minister down have said.

So just listen to this, remember, of course, bear in mind that to take control of the small

boats crisis, as the government puts it, is one of the governments, and the Prime

Minister's five pledges that he's promised to deliver on by the end of the year.

Just listen to what Rishi Sunat was saying about this back in June.

He's not saying the government's failed.

I think the most important people to take away from today is that our plan is working.

Now, I've always said this isn't an easy problem to fix.

We won't fix it overnight, and there's no one simple solution to it.

But we're doing a range of things, and that's the plan I announced five months ago.

So the message from today is that plan is working.

Why do I have confidence in that?

It's because for the first time since the small boats phenomenon arose a few years ago,

for the first time, numbers are down.

So our plan is working, says Rishi Sunat, compare and contrast with what Lee Anderson

said, which is that it was a total failure.

Prime Minister, did you agree with your own deputy chairman who says that your government

has lost control and failed?

Prime Secretary, would you agree with the deputy chairman that your asylum policy has

completely failed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

So you appoint a Rottweiler to sink his teeth into the Labour Party, the lefty lawyers,

the charities, the campaigners, the human rights activists and all the rest of it.

But then you find that the Rottweiler is still so untrained that he sinks his teeth into

his paymaster, the Prime Minister.

What do you do about it?

Do you keep him on in the post because you think net probably a positive or do you think

he's dangerous and out of control?

Well, even just this morning, government ministers, including Home Office Minister Robert

Jenrick were defending, and this is what is the sort of the sequencing of this is just

so ridiculous.

He was defending on Sky News Lee Anderson's comments, not on this, but on his use of language

just this morning.

Do you agree with what Lee Anderson says?

Should illegal migrants f off back to France?

Well, look, we all choose our own language, but what Lee was expressing was the deep frustration

of the British public, not just at the numbers of people crossing the channel, but the apparent

refusal of some people to accept perfectly decent accommodation on this barge.

The thing is, John, like I was saying, they're living by the sword and they've got to die

by the sword.

Ultimately, as I said, Sunak said that he would restore integrity and poverty to government.

And the fact is, is that Anderson, although like I say, a lot of people agree with him

in terms of his more coarse language, he also spreads untruths and misinformation.

I mean, in that same interview on GB News last night, he dismissed the idea that any of these

people at all were asylum seekers.

He said he got irritated with the term asylum seeker.

He said they're all illegal economic migrants.

That's just not true.

You can have an argument about where the balance is, but we know from the fact that most of

these people, particularly from certain countries, receive asylum.

So for countries like Yemen, for example, the success rate for asylum, although it takes

a long time, is over 90%.

We know that there are, quote, unquote, genuine refugees.

The idea that none of these people have a genuine asylum case and would receive it is

just obviously nonsense.

And it's not just around the migrants issue.

Look, he has made some pretty choice comments about all sorts of things, all sorts of social

matters, which has been tolerated by the Conservative Party.

There was a clip from, I think, about six months ago or so.

I think he was talking to talk TV, where he made comments about Eddie Izzard, who was

trying to become a Labour MP, that many people did describe or would describe as transphobic

and homophobic.

It's worth just listening to that clip in full.

Looking class Labour voters will take a look at Eddie Izzard and think, you know, really?

Is that what's coming to Parliament?

I think he just opens a whole new debate, mate.

And I want to be honest now, controversial, as always.

If he does get elected and I'm still here, I shouldn't be following him into the toilets.

Well, exactly right.

I won't follow him into the toilets.

I mean, it's kind of back to when I was 14 at school and, you know, it's incredible,

isn't it?

I'm where he constitutes is.

You a moment ago were talking about Rishi Sunak and the words he said when he became

Prime Minister about how he wanted to reassert property and honesty and integrity into government

and truthfulness.

Yeah, that was fine.

That was when he was succeeding Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and there was good mileage to

be made.

Ever since the Uxbridge by-election, which they won, they're thinking, well, we could

maybe just win the next election, but we might have to win dirty and we might have to stoke

the culture wars and we might have to raise the temperatures on those hot button issues.

And Lee Anderson is there to stoke that fire.

He is there to paint the picture of a culture war where it's us and them and to be divisive.

And we've seen it work in US politics.

We've seen it work to some extent in British politics.

But if Lee Anderson stays, that is the job of work that he has to do.

And it will be ugly.

I mean, the way he is right on the government's own terms, if your objective, which has been

Boris Johnson's objective, it was pretty Patel's objective.

It was Rishi Sunak's objective, Soella Braverman's objective is to stop the boats.

And it is what goes back to what we were saying on Monday.

If you just keep saying we're going to stop the boats, we're going to stop the boats.

We're going to stop the boats, rinse and repeat, then of course they failed because

they haven't stopped.

So it is simply a matter of fact.

It all goes back to what we were saying a couple of days ago, which is that the fact

of the matter is the task that they're setting themselves repeatedly is almost impossible

to achieve unless you want to offer people safe and legal routes, you could stop the

boats.

They're not willing to do that.

So in a sense, what they've got is an inevitability as long as political instability around the

world exists.

We saw today more people have died in the Mediterranean, trying to cross the Mediterranean.

This is happening everywhere.

It goes back to that thing about having an honest conversation with the British public

about what is and isn't possible.

And the truth is, Anderson has actually been honest in this regard and everybody else is

not.

And he has been too honest.

And I should say that if you think we're being critical or unfair to Lee Anderson, we have

invited him on the podcast, we invited him on Monday.

I texted him the other night, didn't hear back from him.

So Lee Anderson, if you're listening to this seat right here, there is a seat right here,

straight talking throne.

There'll be a cup of coffee waiting for you.

We'll get you a sandwich and I promise we won't tell you to.

I'm not going to say it.

We won't tell you to fuck off.

You said it.

I know you.

It's you having such a bad influence on me.

I just want to say one other thing about the language about using f off.

Although I, as I said earlier, I think that there is a sentiment which a lot of people

will agree with.

I do actually think the kind of like assumption that lots of working class people will instantly

associate themselves with someone telling someone to fuck off is actually just wrong

and patronizing.

Like, you know what?

It's like, actually, I think a lot of working class people will actually think, you know

what?

I'd like a minister.

Well, he's not a minister, but you know, I think our politicians should be speaking

in a slightly better way than that and not being so coarse and vulgar.

So I think the kind of assumption always that, like, all three people.

He's connecting with...

Yeah.

Like, actually, I think a lot of people will go, excuse me, what are you an MP?

Like, for goodness sake, like, use appropriate language.

We tell kids to use appropriate language in the workplace.

You know, you're someone that people should look up to.

I think a lot of people will react like that, at least as many people will react as that

as compared to the idea that people will instantly resonate and think, yeah, he's speaking for

me.

Yeah.

Well, we've spoken to the Home Office about what Lee Anderson has had to say, not the

F-off bit, but about the policy being a total failure.

And a spokesperson said to us, we are not going to discuss anything to do with Lee Anderson.

I kind of think that says something.

We'll be back in a moment where we're going to be speaking to Emily Bolton from Appeal

about the case of Andy Malkinson.

This is The Newsagents.

Welcome back.

Well, as you'll remember, we had Andrew Malkinson on the show yesterday talking about that appalling

miscarriage of justice, which led him to serve 17 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

And we joined in the Newsagents HQ today by Emily Bolton, who is the founder of Appeal,

the organisation which took up his case, and he's basically responsible for the fact that

he is now a free man.

Emily, do you think what happened to Andrew is something that is rare, or does it tell

us something wider about the British justice system?

I think you have to acknowledge that the British justice system is going to make mistakes,

like any system with human parts, because human beings are fallible.

There are conservative estimates across adversarial systems, Britain, Canada, Australia, that

suggests that up to 10% or even more people are wrongfully convicted.

10%?

Yes.

So looking at our system.

That's high.

Yeah.

That's 8,000 people who shouldn't be there.

Yeah.

And our job at Appeal as a charity is to sift through the applications we receive, choose

the ones where we think we can prove innocence and bring those cases back to the courts.

You do not have an army of lawyers, thousands of people sitting there, because you're a

charity funded by private donations?

By donations and by grants.

We get a tiny fraction, I think about 3% of our funding came from Legal Aid last year,

and we have 10 staff, and those staff are dedicated to investigating cases, to looking

after the people we represent and supporting their families, because once we take on a

case, we back that person and their family, we believe that they're innocent and we support

them as if they are.

And the reason we've had to take that extra step in our representation is because we cannot

guarantee those people that the system will ultimately recognise their innocence.

So we're going to recognise it and we're going to put in the support.

I want to come on to the wider legal implications of the case about the police, the Criminal

Cases Review Commission.

There's a specific question I want to ask you, which is rape in the UK, the prosecution

rate is so low, I'm sure a lot of women listening to this will be thinking, oh my God, this

is going to make it even harder to get a conviction for rape at the end of this appeal process.

Is it possible that anybody wants anyone to be in prison for something they didn't commit,

but won't it lead to a greater anxiety among women that it's just impossible to get any

kind of conviction?

As the woman representing Andrew Malkinson, what worries me is that the real perpetrator

of this crime was left free, and that is a public safety issue, and one that Greater Manchester

Police needs to answer for.

Is there a danger, though, that the wider effect of this within the criminal justice

system is that the police are even, and the Crown Prosecution Service are even more reluctant

to bring forward rape cases to court?

This case is not a nuanced case, this is not a case where there was a touch and go decision

to be made.

It was obvious that Andrew Malkinson did not match the description given by the victim

in this case.

The police did not listen to the victim in this case, that was the problem.

She gave an account of what happened to her, she gave an account of scratching her attacker,

and she gave a description.

She did her best and she was failed.

Why do you think, and I know that there are specifics that we can't talk about and there

are things you can't speculate about, but in the broadest possible terms, why is it

then you think that this case ended up the way that it did?

The police, why were they so committed to seeing this case through in the way they did?

I think this was a high profile case and they needed to get it resolved, but we don't know

the ins and outs of what happened.

We'd like to know, and we hope that whistleblowers will come forward and let us know what happened

at Greater Manchester Police back in 2003 when this case was being investigated.

That's what you would like to happen.

You would like people to come forward, come to you.

Absolutely, people know.

And the reason you are saying this and couching this quite carefully is there is the possibility

of further legal action or avenues being explored, is that correct?

Of course, Andy is taking advice from civil lawyers about whether he has an action against

the police because of what happened.

He's also looking into the compensation scheme that exists for people whose convictions have

been found unsafe.

So let's go to the wider picture now.

What about the way the police conduct investigations?

What about the way the Criminal Cases Review Commission operates?

Start with the police.

So the problem with policing and wrongful convictions is that the police not only investigate a

case and they're investigating in the context of an adversarial system in order to secure

successful prosecution as they should.

But somehow in the system here in England and Wales, we then entrust the police to also

investigate as it were anything that would help the defendant, anything that would help

the accused person.

You can't have a fox guarding the hen house.

If it's an adversarial system, there should be separate defense investigation that should

not be left with the police.

The police are also custodians of the evidence.

So they decide what evidence, the defense, the accused person's representatives get

to see.

And that's just preposterous.

Anybody can see that that's not going to work.

I used to practice in the United States where I founded an innocence project and worked

there.

It's easier to overturn a wrongful conviction in Louisiana where I used to work than it

is here in London.

Is that right?

That is absolutely right.

Because in Louisiana, you have a trial transcript so you can immediately see what happened at

trial.

You've had a right to a trial transcript in Louisiana since 1956.

You do not get that here.

And secondly, in post-conviction proceedings, once a conviction is final, as a lawyer, I

have a right of access to the complete police file and prosecution file.

So I can base my investigation just as a journalist could base their investigative reporting of

a case like that on the facts as they were construed at the time of the crime and then

work on that, build on that, find out what really happened.

In this country, we do not have that access and that's why wrongful convictions are not

getting exposed.

Do you think the police are open to these ideas or policymakers are open to these ideas

that you're saying?

Well, I think what we absolutely need is that the defense in post-conviction, so people

in Andy's situation, need to be able to access the police files from the original investigation.

Currently, we cannot.

The only people who can access them are the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Andy's case demonstrates that they are not making use of that power and so we cannot

rely solely on the police as custodians of the evidence or the Criminal Cases Review

Commission as investigators to get to the bottom of these cases.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission can continue to do what it does, but we need an additional

access which is that lawyers in post-conviction can access the evidence.

So is the CCRC, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, fit for purpose and is its head

able to stay on in the role?

The Criminal Cases Review Commission is not fit for purpose and the head of that body,

her position is not tenable.

She should not still remain in that post after what's happened in Andy's case.

Andy's launched a petition asking for an apology for the Criminal Cases Review Commission

and he's asking for a review of what went wrong.

So far, none has been forthcoming.

The Greater Manchester Police have apologised to Andy, but the very body that was set up

to help people like Andy is in denial about its own mistakes in this case.

Rather than resolving miscarriages of justice, they are perpetuating them, they are not fit

for purpose and Helen Pitcher should resign.

Do you trust the police?

I don't trust the police.

I've been working on wrongful conviction cases for 25 years, both in the United States

and here and I think it is absolutely inevitable that the police, given the task of securing

convictions, are going to obscure evidence that points in a different direction.

What's generally speaking, not talking about Andy's case, you've seen so many cases come

and go so you're in a great position to have perspective.

What are the main reasons that miscarriages of justice happen?

The main reason miscarriages of justice happen is that the defence are not given access to

all the evidence that the police gather and that the police instinctively are going to

not hand over the evidence that points towards innocence and I think the reason they do that

is they think they've got the right person and there's a term for this which I find quite

obscene.

It's called noble cause corruption.

I'm not sure the word noble has any place in that phrase but the idea is that the police

think they're fitting up guilty people but the trouble is they're also fitting up innocent

people and as soon as that accountability and that transparency is removed, you then can't

tell the difference between the two.

Is there also a factor of a high profile case versus a low profile case in the sense that

if there is a high profile case, I mean if you look at the history of British miscarriages

of justice, probably the greatest were the Birmingham 6 and the Guildford 4 where there

was just such a clamour that people had to be prosecuted after IRA bombs went off in

a pub in Birmingham and in Guildford and all the rest of it that there needed to be prosecutions

brought.

Absolutely.

The police are under huge pressure when a high profile crime is committed to bring the

perpetrators to justice but I think that that in itself should be a red flag that they

need to be very, very careful that they're not rushing to judgement and very, very careful

that they are not tempted to bend the evidence to secure a conviction and that's exactly

what they did in Andy Markinson's case.

They cheated to get his conviction.

I mean I know there's a lot of language in the court judgement about disclosure, failure,

etc.

What happens here is cheating.

They cheated and by cheating they wrongfully convicted Andy and people talk about fair

trial rights.

Fair trial rights are a proxy for protecting the innocent.

The reason we want people like Andy to have a fair trial is so he doesn't get convicted.

The court yesterday found that his trial was not fair and that led to the conviction of

an innocent man.

Is one of the problems or was one of the problems as well, the fact that this wasn't a unanimous

verdict?

Absolutely.

So in this country only 10 out of 12 jurors have to agree for a conviction to be entered.

In Andy's case two of the jurors did not think he was guilty.

They did not vote guilty.

They voted not guilty but those two jurors' voices were ignored and I wonder how they're

feeling today.

I hope they feel vindicated.

They were right.

He was not guilty.

And this was a relative innovation in the British justice system, right?

Yes.

So non-unanimous jury verdict.

So we chucked out two votes on the jury in 1967.

We decided that those two votes would not count anymore if there were two people who

thought someone was not guilty that their votes would not be counted.

Which begs the question, if you're supposed to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

in order to be convicted and two people on a jury who've sat through your whole trial

don't think you're guilty, particularly when you consider the weight of the state's resources

that were put into bringing the prosecution.

To me that sounds like a reasonable doubt.

The US does not have that system.

The US still has unanimity.

So the United States took a detour into non-unanimity in certain states and they abolished that

a few years ago and I had the honour of actually representing a prisoner who was instrumental

in getting that overturned in the Supreme Court.

So in the United States they scrapped it and they found out that in Louisiana it was racist

in intent and we're doing research at appeal looking at what else was going on in 1967

when they brought in the non-unanimity requirement.

So when two votes were scrapped, when jurors were no longer required to be unanimous in

this country it was 1967 and there was a lot else going on at that time in terms of immigration

to this country.

Emily, I'm sure an awful lot of people listening to this, maybe police officers, ex-police

officers, people even in the law would say that if you had unanimity for every conviction

then there would be an awful lot of guilty people walking free now as well.

It worked up to 1967.

What changed?

So what now?

I mean your organisation is going to continue to work on these cases?

Absolutely.

We're representing other people who are in Andy's situation, people who've been to the

Criminal Cases Review Commission and been turned down, people who've been to the Court

of Appeal who've been turned down and we want to make sure that those cases get a fair hearing.

They're not at the moment.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission which was created to be a conduit, a gateway to the

Court of Appeal is acting as a barrier, as a roadblock and there are other people just

like Andy whose cases have been refused up till now and we hope that Andy's case will

cause people to sit up and listen, not just people in the Courts of Law but also people

in the Courts of Public Opinion.

Andy when we spoke to him said that he'd had thousands of people, messages of goodwill,

I wonder whether you are getting lots of maybe donations coming in as a result of this particular

case?

We are getting some donations and we are getting amazing messages of support and I think that

the support we're now seeing from the government to look at some of these systems again is

because this is a black and white issue for the public.

Innocent people should not be in prison.

We've demonstrated in the last two weeks that there are innocent people in prison and

they're not being identified and they're not being freed.

Appeal is the organisation that's doing something about it and we welcome all the support we

can get.

Emily, thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Welcome back.

Before we go, there's nothing that Lewis Goodall loves more than a good opinion poll.

So in the US and the quiz, so I've got a bit of a quiz for you.

In the US they've just done opinion polling, net favourability of selected public figures,

national and international.

Who according to this poll is the most popular figure around the world in the United States

and globally?

Zelensky?

Zelensky is second with a net favourability of 28%.

Who is more popular than the leading political figure in the world fighting for his country's

independence over an evil aggressor?

Tricky one.

It's Emily Maitlis.

No, it's not Emily Maitlis.

She should be.

She should be.

Absolutely should be.

Prince William.

Prince William.

If he has a net favourability of 37% according to this poll, then that suggests you doubt

the veracity of what is the clear, excellent work that he's been doing.

After Zelensky comes Chief Justice John Roberts and then it goes down.

William Zelensky, John Roberts.

King Charles III comes in fifth with a net favourability of 9%.

Okay, who is the most unpopular person with the most net unfavourability ratings?

Well, you're going to tell me Putin second from bottom.

No, I'm going to tell you Putin is bottom by a long way.

He's got net unfavourability ratings of minus 85%.

Okay.

But who is second?

Still.

Who is the second most unpopular?

The second most unpopular.

It's not Harry, is it?

Well, that will really upset him.

No, it is Mike Pence.

The former vice president.

So he gets this Putin and Pence.

Putin and Pence.

It's not a great position to be running for president from, just slightly less unpopular

than Vladimir Putin.

After Mike Pence is Joe Biden with net unfavourability of 16%, Donald Trump is net unfavourability

of 14%.

So you kind of get the impression that among the choices that the American people have

for their next president in 24, Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump,

they are all heavily net unpopular.

William should run.

William should definitely run.

Jesse, William and Zelensky should be a ticket.

He's got a minor problem.

He's a minor problem that he's a royal.

He's got a minor problem.

He's got a British passport.

Minor problem that he wasn't born in the United States.

Yeah, but people can sort stuff out.

Just a minor constitutional amendment.

Four more years.

So forget King William.

President Windsor.

We'll be back tomorrow.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.