Views is what I meant

... um, views, yeah.

Uh, one, one vignette about, about Tucker Carlson because he, uh, many people would say, and in my view justifiably, that he is an anti-Semite.

I mean, he continuously repeats the great replacement theory, which is a standard of anti-Semitic discourse even before he left Fox News.

He repeats it ad nauseam.

This is a theory that's inspired killings all over the world.

Um, and, uh, Tucker Carlson was interviewed on Sky News quite recently, and that seemed to me to be a case of almost a full circle because he was ejected from the mainstream media, built this huge following by shock and awe, as it were, and then the mainstream media, having been bereft of its ratings, ushered him back.

You don't want to put people off integrating or make it clear to them that whatever they do to integrate, you know, they can become like head of Camden Council, and they're still not British enough for Zir Yusuf.

Mm-hmm

...um, to resist that con-- the obvious conclusion that he had to go, um, for quite a long time.

But, uh, the thing that I'm concerned about with the Arday is that, um, you can look at all the ways in which he, he, he appears to have told untruths to the panel and how they were taken in by it, but actually my point is that happens a lot, um, in lots of spheres, and we're all vulnerable to it, particularly when we want something to be true.

What concerned me the most was the actual quality of the academic work, even if it had all been completely authentic and his life story, uh, correct.

Um, his life story must have been a remarkable memoir if it was true, um, but, and I understand why Simon and Schuster were, were, were tempted by it.

But what it wasn't was a piece of academic scholarship, and I think the question that Cambridge University has to ask itself is, how did this allow somebody to become a full professor while presenting work that when you read it as an outsider is quite obviously very thin? I read a lot of these research papers for my, you know, different kinds of research papers for my column.

I know you do 'cause, you know, you, you, you, you, you want to present listeners and I want to present my readers with, with learnings.

Why do you imagine, Danny, Cambridge appear to have been so blinkered?

Your thoughts?

Well, of course, it's true that, uh, the more prominent you are, the more likely you are, uh, to come under attack from people, as well as the more likely you are to attract praise from people.

It's part of, you know, they're both sides of... different sides of the same coin.

I'm really, really worried about, um, the violence towards members of Parliament and to prominent politicians, and I think lots of the things that Reform have said about it have been correct, particularly Richard Tice concentrating on what's happening outside Parliament.

But what absolutely isn't true, I mean, it's plainly factually incorrect, is the idea that, you know, this is mainly left-wing on right-wing violence rather than right-wing on left-wing violence, and this is to, you know, more about Reform than other parties, given that one of the people that was killed was a Conservative MP, another was a Labor MP, and now we've had, um, presuming that this does turn out to be, as it looks like it possibly is, uh, political violence against Anne Whittle.

So, um, any one political party trying to say it's just about them, I think just underestimates the issue.

The issue is that people...

Yeah.

... as well and said that this actually isn't necessarily a new phenomenon.

No, it's not the only time that it's happened.

So it's happened in the 19th century a couple of times.

It happened again in the, 100 years ago around the creation of the Labour Party.

It could just be random clusters, but actually there is, I think, a pattern, which is that from time to time, we get these big changes in media, in class alignment, in political coalitions, in economic realities, and they put immense pressure on the inhabitants of Downing Street to come up with a new way of establishing their political coalition, having enough breadth in order to be able to govern.

And that means you need people of exceptional political talent, and that doesn't happen easily.

Should we be concerned about that, Danny?

Well, I think we should learn some lessons.

Morning.

Good morning, good morning.

Well, I thought there were two problems that Keir Starmer came into on day one.

The first is that he had not won the victory that everyone thought he'd won.

He'd only got 33% of the vote, despite the fact that he had a landslide.

And the second is that he didn't have a plan to deal with the problems that he was then going to face.

He didn't really know how he was going to deal, for example, with the fiscal dilemma, with the financial dilemma, what he was going to do about tax and spending.

you put it so eloquently danny i said yesterday after the resignation unfortunately we had a process driven lawyer and we needed a tum-thumping politician and he ain't that Yes, I mean, it's interesting

So the answer to the question, is it coming home? Well-

When I started doing statistics, I noticed people would frequently say to me, "Give me ridiculous probabilities of England winning tournaments, 60%, 40%." And you think that's obviously absurd.

What about all the other teams?

Is that you say to me, "What's the chances of England winning the World Cup?" I would, I would think I was being sensible in saying, oh, 30%, but that's obviously far too high, right?

Yeah, it's very high.

Well, it's very, very high.

That feels to me like surely that's Albania.

No, because it depends who you're playing.

Obviously, in order to be able to be in a penalty shootout, you have to get all the way to the end of the game and still be drawing, which might be a good or a bad outcome.

But the-

Oh, that's unbelievable, really.

Psychology is unquestionably important.

The idea that we aren't good at penalties is probably a feedback loop.

in this question.

First of all, I should say Mike put that in a very emotionally intelligent way, and I think he deserved the applause that he got for the answer that he gave.

And secondly, it's very important to start any answer by acknowledging that one of the reasons the government got elected was because the Conservative Party had done precisely this.

If I, if I'm, if I'm trying to take the question literally, why did this happen? I think Labour ran in the election on Britain's completely broken, let's do nothing about it.

Okay? And those, both those parts were popular.

People did feel, they still do feel, that Britain was broken, and the Labour Party probably correctly intuited that if they came forward with any radical plan for doing that, people would be against it.

Uh, [clears throat] and so therefore they played it extremely cautious and, um, they therefore ended up, uh, winning the election with a low proportion of the vote but a, but a landslide majority.

What's not to like about the state of the world? Danny Finkelstein.

Here he is.

[gentle music] About a year before my mother died, she came to my son's school to give a talk about her life.

She was already pretty frail by then and needed me to take her there in a wheelchair.

The pupils were totally gripped, but her powers, that lovely, open, captivating way she had of telling a story, were clearly on the wane.

[gentle music] And as I listened, I realized I was seeing the last of all the many talks she had given.

I understood a little of what that might mean for me.

I knew my duty: I'd have to tell her story for her, and I set to work on a book about her experiences and those of my father.

Me mum..." And it's like, shut up! [somber music]

I mean, what goes through the mind when you're making that jump? And could you maybe speak to the different political culture in both parties? Because it seems that everyone's got a quite distinct sort of feel to them in different parties, and I just wondered if you could speak to that, maybe.

First of all, it wasn't quite traditionally, in my case, a defection because the SDP had collapsed, so it didn't feel quite the same.

And I know that for people who joined, who'd been Labour cabinet ministers, you joined the SDP, you know, it could often produce sort, uh, uh, a kind of almost like a mental breakdown.

It was so difficult to, to change the story you told yourself your whole life.

And one of the reasons it becomes difficult to do those defections is that you often defect for ideological reasons, but you get elected in your seat for demographic ones, and so you can end up with, as it were, the right ideology, but in the wrong demographic.

And a lot of the, the SDP ended up fighting a lot of seats as a sort of Liberal Party, but in a lot of seats with a very Labour base, and it couldn't win them.

Uh, and, and so that's why the defections work in the way that y- has just been discussed.

And so this feels that this, at this stage at least, the, the defections seem more driven, in my view, by personal ambition than by really any core policy differences with the policies that Kemi Badenoch holds.

... and- and how this has affected you.

First of all, for those people who don't know who Nick Fuentes is, he's a young, 27-year-old American who has become almost the de facto leader of a sort of Young America First movement.

He's followed by a sort of cult called the Gropers.

Uh, it's very online.

It's, um, proceeds by kind of, uh, mocking and flooding people with their political commentary.

He has on occasion, for example, said that he thought Hitler was cool, that Stalin's birthday ought to be celebrated, and he was interviewed famously by Tucker Carlson.

And when Tucker Carlson interviewed him, he failed to ask him a single really quite challenging question.

You know, the, the, the pond is wider almost.

Mm.

So, it was all like a bit of a cult, and I noticed that, and that is, that's not nice to receive, but I think it's worth it in order to try to expose the sort of person he is and to try to isolate him from the rest of the American right, which I'm very concerned about.

Now, that's, that's one of the reasons why I wanted, uh, you to go ahead and confront him in the way-

Yeah.

Um, so, yes, it's absolutely true.

I've lived quite a bit longer than him, in order that I've actually read more books, understood more, and know more of what I'm talking about.

So, he wa- he was sensitive about his own ignorance, and it came out in a kind of bragging way, and then, of course, a load of other people pile on to support that as if they're unbothered by it.

But he's made an, a mistake which he'll live to regret, even though he's 27 now and hasn't lived very long to regret anything.