Did you say that to

him? Well, firstly, as I said before, I'm not going to say what I said in the meeting because it was a personal and private meeting.

Yeah, but this is a matter of public interest.

This is a matter of the country, isn't it? What I don't accept is the fact that the Prime Minister still has no authority and is not able to execute the job as a Prime Minister.

At that G7 meeting, he had several meetings or at least two that I know of with Prime Minister Modi.

And thanks to those meetings, we got the implementation of the India trade deal across the line, which believe me, was a really tricky moment because there were some outstanding issues that he had to negotiate.

in order to get that across the line.

Isn't the issue actually, as you say, you want to put country before party, but at the moment, country and party are in

your Defence

Secretary? Nick, hang on a sec.

And we are escalating.

Now, the second bit, just to put in here, because I know you like these sorts of things, these sorts of things are important for you.

And my listeners.

The growth figures have come out today and showed that growth is up again.

We got to 0.7%.

defence

It's not real.

These are all very, very real benefits.

And if we take, for example, Wave.

Wave was created by Alex Kendall, who was a research student at Oxford.

He got an Innovate UK grant from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, where I used to be Secretary of State, to get his product off the ground and start turning his research into something that's workable and to commercialise.

And now the most latest thing from government is we've taken an equity stake.

So we've been with him at every step of the way.

So Peter, what would you say to employers like Brian who say that this legislation is only going to do one thing, it's going to push their costs up and also potentially tilt the balance too far in favour of the employee?

Okay.

I'm, I'm, I'm actually just s- you know, want to preface, uh, the start by acknowledging that.

Uh, we were voted on, on a landsl- on a landslide, uh, just a couple of years ago because we had had a period of decline in our country as a result of the financial crash, as a result of Brexit, as a result of COVID, a result of Liz Truss's mini budget and the Tories and the way they ran the country, and people wanted us to halt the decline.

Now, I accept that we have not managed to halt the decline in a way that people feel in their po- pockets, that they see in their communities and, yes, in the opportunities that they have and they feel are before them.

That is what we have to change.

Uh, I also accept the point that when we came in, we did a lot of tough stuff, and we...

The things that we've been investing in for the long term, the investment in our infrastructure from Northern Powerhouse Rail to new runways to new reservoirs to a million and a half homes, we will get there-

But then why aren't they voting for you?

He has changed the relationship between Britain and the United States.

Yeah, sorry.

I-- maybe I just need to be clearer about this.

Uh, the, the, the rhetoric that comes out from Donal-Donald Trump is multitudinous.

There is, there is volumes of it.

And every time I do an interview, I am asked what he says overnight, when in actual fact, what, what his, what he does and he acts has enabled us to engage to either mitigate the challenge that comes.

And let me just be really clear about this.

What, for people fleeing the US?

But has, I note your optimism, but if we juxtapose that with the negative tone that we had from the US Treasury Secretary and the threat of tariffs now withdrawn over Greenland, has trust in the UK-US deal been damaged by this?

Well, it's quite good that this talk has emerged over the Davos period.

I've been here at Davos for a couple of days.

I've met with many, many people from the U.S. administration.

Some of them plan, some of them you bump into and you go to one side and have really free, frank conversations.

The key thing that's underpinning the special relationship between the UK and the US right now is we do have very strong personal relationships, which are forged through listening, learning from each other about the priorities our two nations and we have as two administrations.

But even though the difference is us being a centre-left party in the UK and the administration in the US being a Republican, conservative administration, If it were a Venn diagram, the bit that's in the middle there is really quite considerable.

What are the key priorities for the UK? And are you signalling with engaging with this conversation about the customs union that you're open to big changes to that relationship?

About TikTok

...I've already-- I'm already on, on the record as saying that the ownership model of TikTok is something that, that does concern me because anything that is domiciled in the, in China has a relationship with the governing party, and the governing party we know, uh, uses as much data as it possibly can get its hands on.

But we as a country, we take these issues very seriously.

We are doing everything we can.

I've just introduced a cybersecurity, or I'm introducing a cybersecurity bill into Parliament, because when I came into power or came into office, uh, in July, uh, I had several briefings, and I was shocked by the state of our cybersecurity networks a bit, that I had inherited, and in the first week, requested an, an additional legislative slot so I can legislate to increase the ability to keep our country safe from cyberattacks and so, so forth.

So we have resilience.

The resilience in our cybersecurity is increasing.

He's a political player.