That's a

question for later on.

Look, I think what he's saying is the current settlement isn't working.

Our focus is going to be the upcoming summit.

But beyond that, he wants to, and this is the work we'll do together, he wants to lay out some options to the country.

And then we can have a national debate about it.

But let me just say, come back on Europe, but let me just say more broadly to your listeners and to you, I think it was a great speech, and you'd expect me to say that, but I think it was a great speech for a particular reason, which is he's levelling with the country about the scale of change that is needed.

If there is a national conversation about our future relationship with the EU, would that involve a referendum?

So I sort of wonder whether there hasn't, whether there hasn't been a sort of weird ambiguity at the heart of our relationship with this for decades now.

Well, maybe that is true, but I, I suppose what's really, what really struck me in preparing to make this statement is some people didn't like what we said, but I think what was so clear was the status quo is not working.

You know, the status quo and, and E1, which your listeners may be familiar with, which is this settlement expansion tender was announced in August, had long been seen as a red line for the international community on these questions because it, it basically would split off, uh, East Jerusalem from the West Bank and, you know, really makes a Palestinian state un-unviable.

I, I agree with you that, you know, in some of the conversations I had in the run-up to, to this statement, some people would say to me, "Well, you know, some settlements we don't like, but some settlements may be part of a, may well be part of a future Israel on the basis of a negotiation." But to say something might be part of a future Two-state solution through a negotiated settlement is very different than something that is occupied.

And, and just this point on the illegality of the occupation, I mean, it's ca- it's a big step that we've taken.

The ICJ took a view on this in twenty twenty-four, but it's the length of the occupation, the sense of permanence of the occupation, the driving out of the displacement of, of many Palestinians as part of this.

So it's a combination of those things that led us to that view.

Mm-hmm

You're hired.

I agree with a lot of what you said.

Let me deal with this with the seriousness it deserves.

I come to this very much with my family background prominent in my mind.

My parents came to this country as Jewish refugees.

They saw a country that wasn't just a sanctuary for them, but stood up for a set of values, the rule of law, fight against fascism, and so on.

Those values are more under threat and under question than they've been, I think, any time in the last eight decades.

um and i know you're going to say we're just doing the right thing but you could have you could have you know the previous labor government the starmer government could have done the right thing because the facts haven't changed that much in recent weeks and months since you since you came on since you came into the job and the final thing i want to ask you is just whether uh I get why you don't want to say genocide and understand that, but do you think Netanyahu is a war criminal? And do you think that if he did come to the UK, we should feel his collar?

Isn't there a real danger now that actually the political reaction could be going more hard line, thus the desire for a two-state solution, which any sane person would want to at least view or consider, has gone away?

Well, again, we did think about this, uh, Nick, and obviously it will be for the Israeli people to decide who they elect as their government.

First of all, I think that fear when people have said that is overstated.

But secondly, I don't think we as a British government can outsource our moral and political responsibilities.

We can't say, "Well, you know, it's not, it's not for us to decide now.

We'll leave it to, to, to see what happens in the election." We kn- we know this urgency.

We know what has been happening.

But you have-- they're hardly gonna be friendly towards us, Foreign Secretary.

How do we actually argue in a convincing way that the here and now lived experience of every citizen is benefited? It's

100% about better lives today.

I've been saying for 20 years, it's It's not just about preventing disaster tomorrow.

It's about better lives today.

I'll convince you.

So first of all, why are electricity prices, energy bills so high in the UK? Because we are so exposed to fossil fuels.

The wholesale price of gas in the UK is still 75% higher than when Russia invaded Ukraine.

No, that's for you.

But did you struggle mentally, psychologically?

Yeah, definitely.

What's interesting is what happens in these moments of adversity tells you a lot about yourself.

So I remember I did one last duty as leader of the opposition on the Friday.

It was a wartime anniversary, got home, special protection disappears.

back on my own.

I remember at that moment onwards, I was like, there's no way I'm giving up being an MP.

And I just wonder what your reflections were on that, whether you've got the right strategy for dealing with that, or whether actually there is a sense that you're kind of on the back foot the whole time.

I

mean, look, I think my dad's death was an unbelievably traumatic experience for me.

Um, I don't think I realized it at the time that 24 was young for him to die, but it felt like he'd had this heart attack in the early 1970s, which obviously when I was really, really young, I wasn't really aware of.

know i always had a sense i suppose in the back of my mind of his mortality i think he did too and then he had this heart bypass in 1991 which he was he nearly died a number of times afterwards and it was all and and but you know it was a sort of i mean it's like the worst thing that's happened to me in my life and it's like 30 years ago so it feels like such a long time ago but it He was such a kind of lodestar, such a sort of presence.

It's just unbelievably hard.

Look, my mum is still alive.

She's 90.

What drew you to him? What did you see in this great kind of bear of a man? Look, I think