Is that becoming

harder? When you're a journalist, you're a scumbag.

You're a lickspittle.

You're a water carrier.

And I have to say that when an editor tells me to do something, I just do it.

Jonathan Mead said this to me, actually.

He said, if you open a copy of The Observer in 1980, he name-checked Amos, and he name-checked Burgess, and there were others.

I was wondering actually about some of the other sort of Amos friendships and it seems to be one of those things which is mentioned in other people's books and which has very rarely been brought together because it was things like I was recently reading Clive James again and Amos is mentioned in one of his unreliable memoirs he's in one of his Clive James satire of the London world of the 70s and Clive James even writes him a verse letter And it seems like this whole, is it hard now for us to imagine a world where you sort of have to have the knowledge of these other writers around to make sense of the culture in which they're existing in? Can we access that anymore?

I mean, this tweaking of taxes completely misses the point.

Yeah, but I think we're sort of starting to see an emerging...

They've been talking about Manchesterism, haven't they? I think this is pure blokeism.

I think you tax a few logistics warehouses and everybody gets a pint.

I can kind of see things coalescing around Burnham.

I can see a slight vibe change.

I can see ways in which they're going for something a lot more casual, a lot more easygoing, and I suspect... that this is not going to be like Keir Starmer.

Do you think when Kemi sat down with Boris, his first piece of advice was, make me your leader?

[laughs]

Sorry, everybody.

But, but yes, he-- his leadership style is different.

One of the things that always came out of speaking to Cabinet ministers in the last two years was, yes, Keir doesn't make a decision, but also Keir doesn't listen.

He doesn't, he, he doesn't have that sort of touchy-feely Clintonian thing that a lot of good politicians have.

And yes, that means Burnham wants to be liked, and yes, that means he may ma-make some mistakes.

Sure, I, I totally see that.

Rod Liddle talks about, has been talking about peak Reform for months.

Yes.

Uh, it's, it's catastrophic for the Labor Party.

Um, you know, this talk of heartlands, these places in the northwest, um, probably the northeast as well soon, uh, central England, are they heartlands? You know, are these, are these Labor heartlands? Or are they actually sort of Brexit heartlands? And are they Brexit heartlands since 2016 that voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 and have now swung towards Reform? Is that what we're actually seeing? Um, I don't know where Labor's heartlands actually are.

Are they in London? It seems, looking at these results, that the only places where the Conservative Party and the Labor Party actually have any kind of foothold is London, and it, it's really telling.

I think there's a bit of denial, um, among, among us sort of chattering class, fizzy people that the country isn't as angry as it is, isn't as divided as it is, and isn't sort of desperate for the kind of changes it wants to see in other par- parties which aren't the traditional parties.

I think that's what these results are showing.

Mm

... and go back to the response to the Southport riots, which has sort of, um, those two things, if you look at Starmer's polling, have, have obliterated him, really.

Yeah.

I think, um, Miliband himself, um, spoke to me about the leadership and talked about, you know, mistakes and regrets, and he's spoken about these before.

So I thought, no, what is M- what is Ed-- what does it feel like to be Ed Miliband right now? And what is right now? Well, right now is you are coming back into a department that you were a minister in between 2008 and 2010.

Um, and it, we are really in this kind of hinge moment where Britain, um, has arguably led the world in its approach to sort of climate, uh, climate, energy, economic policy, and Miliband is very much the architect of that policy.

He was in 2008, uh, between 2008 and 2010, and there was a political consensus around this policy.

So the Tories believed in that policy.

Um, they basically followed Ed Miliband's pol- You know, I say that, you know, most of the Tory governments of, uh, 2010 to 2024 are Milibandite governments.

Do it.

Tell me more about that.

The, the, um, the main, the main weapon that Russia has used to strike at Ukraine since, um, the autumn of twenty twenty-two, the sort of the thing they bomb cities with, is the Shahed one three six, um, drone.

Now, this is something that, uh, Ukrainians can shoot down with their own drones, and they've shot it down with guns mounted on trucks.

You know, it's not-- You don't need a jet to, to shoot this thing down.

But these, these drones are very cheap.

Uh, there was a report on, on the website Phenomenal World last week, which said that these drones cost three thousand dollars, four thousand dollars to manufacture in Iran.

And Iran's been supplying Russia with these.

Talk to me about that.

Mm.

And it was particularly apparent...

It's particularly apparent, actually, when you speak to people who have served in our armed forces.

I remember when the Queen died, uh, going to Windsor, and, uh, the, the, the Queen's death was not quite what it appeared to be on television or in newspaper reports.

There was...

The crowds were a bit frit, and people didn't really know how to behave.

But there was an element in those crowds of, um, [lip smack] retired service people who talked about seeing the Queen or speaking to the Queen with a kind of awe in their voices, a sense of majesty, um, that i- is quite close to religious belief.

We will be back after this.

Charles Rex.

I think this will probably be described in the media as a great kind of personal tragedy, this reign.

I mean, I think people are already starting to refer to it as a tragedy.

You know, you've waited, what, like 70 years to become a postage stamp, you know, to be a banknote.

I mean, people don't really use banknotes anymore, so that's another tragedy.

But you've waited all this time.

And that's all your job is.

And to the greater or lesser extent that you think the politics connects to it at all.