Yeah.

Sometimes even I listen to my podcast when I'm incline walking on my treadmill with a weighted vest on.

But you never know

... listen, we like to have a, a fully fledged podcast ecosystem where everybody's opinion counts.

What are your initial thoughts?

Well, I think that he's promised change, but not really delivered it.

I mean, this is just the Labour old guard repackaged.

I appreciate that he needs to honor the manifesto in order to put off any claim that we should have a general election, or that could be sensible according to some polling that's given him a Burnham bounce to have a snap election now rather than later in the year.

But basically, he's just rearranged old Brownites, Blairites, and other allies into key positions.

I don't know why anyone thinks that this signals any kind of radical change from what's gone before.

And by the way, I think it was a misnomer to suggest that Starmer's administration was right-wing.

And the-

Healthcare just got less painful.

The right don't tend to want to cancel people because in many respects, oddly, the right are the real liberals.

They're the ones who are saying, I completely support your right to express yourself.

I just would like my right to disagree to be respected.

When it's in reverse, of course, the whole situation changes.

And if you express a view that is anti the view of some of the liberal bullies, the solution as far as they're concerned is to silence, is to shame, is to cancel.

And then you have situations where Kathleen Stock and others are marched out of university buildings by people clad in balaclavas.

But we don't have that kind of, you know, they're in there going like, get out, you know.

La resistance or something.

And then, well, why don't you just say it? Just say it.

I mean, this is the other thing.

And maybe we are in the privileged position, you doing well with this podcast on YouTube and everything.

I'm at The Telegraph and at GB News, got a big platform.

I hope I do use that platform responsibly.

I mean, I'm not somebody that goes off the reservation.

a thicker skin, don't you?

[laughs]

We publish the story.

All hell breaks loose.

Um, and so that continues.

And then the other kind of pseudo-controversial story that I published was this Telegraph report that all was not right with the royal sisterhood, that the brothers weren't getting on, that the sisters-in-law weren't getting on, and there was a line buried in a pretty, uh, well-argued and nuanced feature about the fact that there had been this row at a bridesmaid dress fitting, and that Kate had ended up in tears.

At no point did I say who made her cry.

I didn't attribute blame to it.

Mm

Well, no,

I just find it ironic, really.

You know, he and his followers don't like the fact that I've written columns and said things that are critical of him.

Hmm.

Yeah, at the same time I think, God, don't waste your time thinking I'm the enemy.

I've written extensively about Islamic extremism before.

Before it was popular, you know, had been threatened with legal action and all sorts.

Well,

There's something wrong inside of you.

Some people might just feel that they are a different gender and want to dress as a different gender, stroke sex.

I don't have any problem with that.

I've never had any problem with transgender people.

I don't really care what anyone wants to wear on any given day, to be perfectly honest.

I wrote a thing recently about the niqab and sort of said, well, If women are choosing to wear it, they should wear it.

I'm just suspicious that they are choosing to wear it and therefore it becomes problematic.

bulimia, anorexia, all these kinds of

No,

I don't know.

I mean, I suppose if you're left-leaning and you know the right people and you subscribe to the sort of, progressive, lefty, metropolitan, slightly iffy about Brexit, slightly iffy about nationalism, slightly iffy about small-c conservatism school of thought, then you probably fit in there a lot better than somebody like me.

I mean, this is the other sort of conceit.

I think back in the day, you would really aspire to be a BBC journalist.

Sure, go anywhere near it.

I mean, I said something in my column.

So what's happening with you needs to happen more often, but I just don't think they cross paths with enough people who are outside of their political bubble.

There was that report, and I think it was done by the BBC, that suggested as a school kid, and people change, of course, I'm not suggesting that, but that he was extremely anti-Semitic, extremely, you know, joined Nazi groups, things like

that.

It wasn't actually the BBC, it was Channel 4, because Michael Crick, who used to be the political editor of Channel 4, is somebody I'm hugely admiring of because he's a bloody great journalist.

did fantastic books about Alex Ferguson and all sorts.

I mean, he is forensic in his approach and a real character.

He had initially done a Channel 4 expose of just how racist is Nigel Farage really.

And then he followed it up with a book where he went back to somebody who had alleged that Farage had taken part in some kind of Nazi chanting sort of marching down the street.

I mean, what are your thoughts on

Was it this morning you were on the other day with Ryland?

Yeah, so Ryland was on.

I mean, we just let Ryland.

Ryland can speak.

So you do that news review.

You get told in advance by the producers that we would like to look at these stories today.

And then you can have input as to what you're going to say, what's your position.

But Ryland as like a celeb celeb, I can't think of almost anybody else who's on the daily TV shows who's said anything like that.

I actually gave up watching Have I Got News For You many, many years ago.

So did I. I just saw the clip on X and she said... she said pretty much what you just said as a summary of how they think.

She said she was on that sort of the woke side, I suppose, or the BBC side.

And she said, you know, so they edited the thing to show the thing that is the true thing in the first place, something like that.

And, you know, because Trump did incite violence, to which Ian Hislop said, I think that's very sensible.

And then there was a huge round of applause.

I mean, it would be so easy for Ian Hislop to keep his kind of lefty brand and everyone, but to come down really hard on this.

You know, I don't see any Right-wing commentators who don't think women can have penises dressing in masks and balaclavas, pointing at the left and saying, you know, out, out, out, scum, scum, scum.

Well, the trouble is, I suppose, and I've written a column about this and many, many different stories over the course of the years that I have been a journalist and indeed engaged with BBC coverage, because it's a tricky one.

I remember Nick Robinson, former political editor of the BBC, now a presenter on Today, who is among those sort of accusing the Telegraphs of orchestrating a coup here.

You know, this is a telegraph right wing plot to destabilize the BBC.

I mean, the trouble with that argument is, in my mind, a coup usually happens if the people who are raising concerns about the leadership then want to replace the leadership.

The trouble is, at the heart of this story is the sense that the BBC would never have anyone remotely telegraphian replacing the leadership because we're all too right winged.

Well, I don't

think so.

I mean, I think it's a little bit depressing that journalists accuse journalists who have been pointing out the bad journalism of some of their colleagues of being bad actors.

What's your RAV4?

Well, he's got into scuffles.

He's got a criminal past.

He was a co-founder of the EDR, which is an organization that was associated with a degree of white supremacy and racism.

That was decades ago.

Yeah, but he distanced himself from it.

But he can't rewrite history.

Remember, I think he started because his cousin was

going to be first with that? I think

we're doing him on Wednesday, so a race to publish.

Gosh.

He ignored countless messages about Bashir.

But the Bashir thing, I mean, with my royal hat on, because I've covered royals in the past and now I cover politics and now I do a bit of both, depending on if there's some kind of birth, death, marriage or Duke of York extinction event.

I can then comment on it because historically I've covered it all for a long, long time.

In the case of Bashir, what's extraordinary about that is it is on a par with phone hacking.

The tactics that Bashir employed were that nefarious.

think that was deliberate or was it just like, oh, just for brevity's sake?

This is the kind of crux of the issue.

Is it deliberate or is it just innate? Because the people who are putting together the documentaries or any of the programming, be it on Trump, be it on transgender issues, be it on Gaza… have a worldview that they think is right.

It's the sort of broadcasting politics of, if you don't agree with me, then you're not just wrong, but bad and evil.

Therefore, in order to protect you and the public from your bad and evil thoughts, we must present something as a fait accompli because this is what we believe.

Clearly, I mean, it's difficult to be inside the heads of the people who put together the Panorama documentary on Trump.

And let's be honest, that was a great many different people involved.

Even then it would have been mad, just to say, to displace it in that

Who's Tim Davey?

So Tim Davey is the Director General of the BBC.

Well, he was until late last night, early this morning.

He has resigned after five years in the post, along with Deborah Ternus, who is the CEO, the Chief Executive of BBC News.

And that's a fancy way basically of saying that she is at the helm of all editorial content at the BBC.

She's also stood down.

I had a bit of a crossover with Deborah Ternus because I did both of the royal weddings for NBC.

How did it get leaked then? Well, I don't know how the leaks

(laughs)

... that anyone other than Margaret Thatcher is the greatest Conservative in history? It's the reason why the great Iron Lady dominates this conference 100 years on from her birth.

I appreciate that we are marking that particular anniversary, which may mean that we do have to see displays of her dresses and all the rest of it.

But I think when we look back on Conservative history, nobody ever asks people who may be future leaders whether or not they're the next Cameron, whether or not they're the next whoever.

They always say, "Is it the next Thatcher?" And what you have to consider in the kind of annals of history of Conservative achievement is three general elections, but a legacy that has long, long, long outlived her.

So we've subsequently seen efforts to replicate some of her magic when it comes to her international stateswomanship, when it comes to her stewardship of key crises and events like the Falklands War.

But also, I think there has been this lifelong search by other Conservatives for her moral rigor, her intellectualism, and ability to consult with others who disagreed with her crucially in order to formulate her own opinions.

Uh, Camilla.