The Jeffrey Archer Tribute Show

Ian Hislop (0:00)

Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast.

Andrew Hunter Murray (0:03)

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94 My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the iStudio with Adam McQueen, Helen Lewis and Ian Hislop. Later on, we're going to be having our own special Page 94 tribute to Jeffrey Archer.

But before then, we thought it'd be worth taking a look back. Conference season has just finished and we're looking forward, looking forward in a strictly time sense only. I'm sure we're all looking forward with grim anticipation to autumn in British politics. And what's going to happen next? There's going to be a budget. At some point, there's going to be a spending review. How will all the parties fixed as we head into this period?

Helen Lewis (0:37)

Do you want a big thumb up, thumb down ometer? Oh, yes. I'll give you the quick rundown. The quick version of it is, Labour came out of conference season quite happy because they were like, oh, we've got a leader who can say things out loud in a coherent way and people listen to them. So they were pretty happy with that Andy Burnham speech. And also happy with the fact that he managed to announce the scrapping of the Triple Lock, which had been considered this kind of sacrosanct relic.

And actually, basically, no one cried and screamed. People opposed it, but that happened and that was fine. It didn't destroy his premiership instantly in the way that someone like Winterfuel did, maybe for Keir Starmer. So they came out quite happy. As you say, the storm cloud on the horizon is the budget where actual numbers will be involved, which will be bad. And the other thing is to put a marker down is a slight sense of worry that Andy Burnham will just say things. Obviously great for journalists, I'm pro-politician saying things that are interesting, but that he does create an awful lot of news and therefore they may end up slightly out of control of the agenda. Lib Dem's big thumb down, everyone goes, we've got 71 MPs, why does no one know that we exist? So they were pretty unhappy.

Ian Hislop (1:37)

Can I just say there was a scoop in the last issue? In the joke pages, we thought, there's nothing happening at the Lib Dem conference, so we said, there was a coup at Lib Dem conference, a number of men with beards in the back row had coughed and said, do you think we should have another leader? No, no, as it turned out, it was Mystic Eye yet again.

Andrew Hunter Murray (1:56)

Well, I did see the headline, Charlie Maynard has quit, which is obviously big news, I'm not going to explain to everyone who Charlie Maynard is, but he has been described as a senior Lib Dem MP.

Adam McQueen (2:05)

Oh, I love senior MPs, they're my favorite sort of MPs. Is he over 60?

Andrew Hunter Murray (2:10)

I don't believe so.

Ian Hislop (2:12)

But it's an adjective you apply to people you want to write a story about when you slightly suspect the story isn't very strong.

Adam McQueen (2:19)

Yes. And it translates as backbencher you haven't heard of.

Andrew Hunter Murray (2:22)

The response from Tim Farron, former leader of the Lib Dems, of course, to think we're helped by this kind of rubbish, you'd need to be smoking the kind of stuff even we aren't in favor of legalizing.

Adam McQueen (2:33)

He's still got his talent for a sound bite, hasn't he Tim?

Helen Lewis (2:35)

He's having fun, isn't he? He's like Latter-day Ken Clark in his yolo years where he's just like, what are you going to do? So, yeah, so sorry, thumbs up for Labour, thumbs down for Lib Dems. Reform thumbs down because as covered previously on this podcast, their entire conference was dominated by the story about the donations. So I don't think they really got off the ground. Another restive senior reform in former Zaya Youssef who I think is kind of plotting as well. So that was not a particularly happy conference.

Andrew Hunter Murray (3:03)

Well, we should just say on reform, they've had a bit of brilliant news recently, which is that Dan Dukes and James All, their two senior officers slash contractors we've never heard of and who haven't been sitting next to Nigel for years, depending on who you're reading, they've been cleared of any all wrongdoing by reforms, internal investigations. So sounds like nothing more to see here.

Ian Hislop (3:24)

I understand that the Internal Investigations Department on Reform are nearly as good as their polling department, independent, unbiased and trustworthy.