Laura Kuenssberg

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Are you Laura Kuenssberg?

Are you Paddy O'Connell?

It's been s- it's weeks since I've been allowed to be in your same room.

And what will you do?

Stare at a wall.

Hello, it's Laura in the studio.

Hello, it's Paddy in the studio.

Yeah, yeah.

I, I, um, I heard him on, uh, both Rob Peston and Laura Kuenssberg say, you know, this summer, in all his decades in politics, this is the first time that his family are saying, "Actually, you know, we think you need to stop now." They don't, you know, he doesn't have their support.

Um, and actually he told Peston, uh, I think Peston asked him about Zia Yusuf and, you know, what ambitions he might have on, on the leadership at some point.

And Farage said, you know, "If the Reform members, um, would prefer Yusuf to me or any other, you know, then, then I'd, I'd-" I would recognize that.

I just asked, "Is it all above board?" I was just there to go, come and say hello.

That was Nigel Farage telling Laura Kuenssberg that he wasn't listening during a conversation with his former chief of staff and an undercover reporter discussing what appears to have been a scheme to funnel money into Reform UK.

That's his line, and he's sticking to it.

And he's certainly not the first person in the public eye to use a similar defense, whether that's, "I didn't see it"

He said in your presence, I run an American family...

Laura,

I am not a compliance officer.

I was in the middle of canvassing in the Clapton by-election.

Well, no, I was gonna say, who was the first ...

Obviously, this was the first Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg of Andy Burnham's government.

You know, of course, who the first government guest of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg of the Keir Starmer government was.

It was Johnny Reynolds.

It was the business secretary-

Stare at a wall.

Hello, it's Laura in Birmingham.

It's Joe Pike in Birmingham.

And Chris Mason in Birmingham, and like Joe and Laura, on some stools.

And, uh-

Some very comfortable stools, actually.

They called it their business day on Thursday, but it was pretty low-key in terms of numbers.

Plenty of business, business folk here, but the activists were only turning up on Thursday night ahead of the big day, which was Friday, at just the point that that Channel 4 News film is broadcast, half an hour, uh, in duration.

And that's when I think simultaneously, uh, Michael and his team and Dominic started briefing the papers that he would be coming out for Leave the next day.

So that evening I got a call from your podcast mate, um, Laura Kuenssberg, who said, "We're hearing that Michael Gove is going for Leave." Um, and we were literally dotting the I's and crossing the T's on the deal, and I had to go to David Cameron and say, "Look, this is being put to us." Um, and then I had a very awkward conversation with Michael and said, "Is this true, um, that you are leaving? Because you've always said that you would say to David Cameron before you told anybody else, and in fact it's leaked out and it's, it's being run as a story." And I think that that was clear.

I think that there's a lot of people who, again, the positioning thing was very, very clear, and why are you doing this, and had the conversations been had.

So again, jumping out the timeline but rewinding back, in the Christmas of 2015 going into that year, it seemed to me that David Cameron had never been able to have quite a direct conversation with Michael Gove, and the conversation went through Sarah Vine, who's Michael Gove's wife.