Trump turbulence — How should Labour play it?

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Trump turbulence — How should Labour play it?’

Lucy Fisher
How will Trump 2.0 differ from Trump 1.0? Ed.

Edward Luce
Much more dramatic.

Lucy Fisher
Anna.

Anna Gross
I’m gonna regret saying this, but I think a bit more stable to start with because of how many loyal people he surrounds himself with.

Lucy Fisher
Jim.

Jim Pickard
Even more of a personality cult.

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Lucy Fisher
Hello and welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Coming up, he’s back. But how will the UK and Labour handle Trump the second time round? Plus, why the Southport stabbings have undermined trust in the UK government. To discuss it all, I’m joined in the studio by my FT colleagues Jim Pickard. Hi, Jim.

Jim Pickard
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Anna Gross. Hi, Anna.

Anna Gross
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And joining us down the line from Washington is the FT’s US national editor and columnist, Edward Luce. Hi, Ed.

Edward Luce
Hi, Lucy.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
So obviously the biggest story in town this weekend, and let’s be honest, probably for some weeks to come, is Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office. Ed, I think we wanna focus quite firmly on how his earliest flurry of executive orders, pronouncements in his inauguration speech and other policy proposals that have been floated by him affect the UK. But just first off, give us your take on how this first week of King Trump, as some are calling him, has turned out.

Edward Luce
As expected. I mean, it has been dramatic, as I indicated earlier, but it hasn’t been that surprising. I mean, these executive orders cover everything, you know, every piece of the waterfront — from getting rid of DEI in federal government to sending troops to the border, questioning birthright citizenship, the 14th amendment, and on and on and on.

None of that is a surprise, nor is the fact that there’s already been a couple of fallings out. So his former Iran envoy, Brian Hook, was fired on Truth Social. You’re fired, Brian Hook, he said midnight on the first day, which beats the Anthony Scaramucci record of lasting only 11 days in Trump’s first term. Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk’s co-head of Doge, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was out on day one, namely Tuesday.

So none of that’s really a surprise. Trump is always drama, and his management philosophy is always to have chaos beneath him, and he believes very much internationally and domestically that power flows from being unpredictable, from being Dr Strangelove. So it’s dramatic but unsurprising. And, you know, we’re only 72 hours into it.

Lucy Fisher
Jim, he talked in his inauguration address about foreign wars, criticising the Biden administration for stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad and having given unlimited funding to defence of foreign borders. He’s also talked about Putin ending the ridiculous war in Ukraine or facing new sanctions. What’s your take there on his early pronouncements on Ukraine and the way that the west and the UK is looking at that?

Jim Pickard
So I think the most unsurprising discovery of the week has been that he was unable to settle the Ukraine-Russia dispute in 24 hours despite having promised to do so. But in Trump’s favour is the fact that it does appear that the hostage exchange in the Middle East may be at least partly down to his belligerence. And we cannot rule out the possibility that his unpredictability and his potential for wild intervention in Russia-Ukraine could somehow bring those two sides to the table at some point in the coming weeks. And he did say at the start of the week that he’s making plans to meet with or talk with Putin.

But this is obviously sending shudders through Europe. It’s not the only thing to be alarming other western capitals — France, Germany, Britain, Spain, you know, Nato allies worried about what he will do in terms of support for Nato, worried about the fact that he’s pulling out of the World Health Organization, worried that he’s withdrawing from the Paris climate accords. There’s quite a lot to be worried about.

And I just think in terms of people who believe very strongly in democracy and were horrified by the insurrection of January the 6th last time around, I think the sight of him pardoning 1,500 of those individuals is something quite unnerving if you believe in democratic norms. And of course, a lot of politicians in Britain look at that and they feel a little bit gagged in terms of what they can say publicly. But privately, they are really quite nervous.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, the other big area that has Whitehall officials bracing is on tariffs and tax, isn’t it? And Trump didn’t give much detail in his inauguration address, but did talk about setting up this external revenue service to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues due on foreign countries and said it was time to tax foreign countries to enrich US citizens rather than the other way around, as he framed it. And also, this extraordinary proposal of threatening to double tax rates for foreign nationals and companies in the US.

Anna Gross
Yeah. So the only countries so far that Trump’s actually indicated he is planning to apply tariffs to are Canada, Mexico and China. So far there’s a sort of stay of execution for the UK. And I think there’s some tentative hope in Westminster that there aren’t gonna be drastic tariffs imposed for the time being on Britain. I mean, Trump, like Starmer, is very concerned about inflation. He’s not desperately keen to get into a trade war with a wide range of countries and therefore increase prices for people at home. Maybe Ed will correct me, but I think there’s hope that Trump’s thinking quite carefully about the kind of trade agreements he wants to make. And he’s not gonna rush into something like that immediately.

Lucy Fisher
Ed, do you agree with that? How worried should Britons be?

Edward Luce
Well, Britain, I mean, he has singled out China repeatedly over the last year. For the rest of the world, it’s just the rest of the world, 20 per cent tariffs on the whole world, on all imports, and then specific threats of up to 60 per cent on China. So Britain isn’t sort of particularly in his thoughts in that respect. I think it would just, along with its European partners and the rest of the world, have a 20 per cent tariff if Trump reaches that point. But at the moment he’s focused on his three biggest trading partners by far, which is Canada, Mexico and China.

What I would say though, is that Keir Starmer’s hopes, sort of pretty broadly advertised hopes, of reviving a UK-US trade deal should be treated with some scepticism. The last time around, the fear was felt for stillborn attempts under Liz Truss, I think, when she was trade secretary; stillborn attempts at a US-UK trade deal in Trump’s first term. The fears were about, in Britain, were about the NHS and chlorinated chickens, etc. I think this time, the American focus will be on AI and having untrammelled AI in the British market, and also dividing Britain from the EU. And that those are not necessarily tasks that Keir Starmer is going to find easy to grapple with, to put it mildly.

Lucy Fisher
And Ed, much has been made on this side of the Atlantic of the Winston Churchill bust making it back into the Oval Office. It’s always treated as this litmus test of how the president of the day views the United Kingdom. What’s your wider take on how Trump views Britain?

Edward Luce
I think he’s got a soft spot for every place he’s got golf courses in, you know, and his mother was Scottish-born. So, I mean, I think he’s just got a sort of natural gravitation towards the anglophone world as well. But he hasn’t contradicted Elon Musk’s really quite sort of pointed and nasty attacks on Keir Starmer’s government and he’s not been particularly welcoming to Peter Mandelson as Britain’s new ambassador. Mandelson has like, along with many people, said some pretty scathing things about Trump in the past. Those were dug up, put under Trump’s nose. And, you know, there are rumours that Mandelson will be arriving to a not particularly warm reception. And I should add to that that Karen Pierce, the outgoing ambassador, is really, really well liked in Mar-a-Lago and now, I guess the White House. So there could be complications there as well.

Lucy Fisher
And Jim, on that, I mean, there has been some suggestion that the Trump administration could block Lord Peter Mandelson from becoming the UK’s choice of ambassador in the US. How much credence are you giving that? Would be a big move, wouldn’t it?

Jim Pickard
Yeah. I mean, it’s been in the newspapers as a possibility. Unnamed people close to either Reform UK or close to Mar-a-Lago suggesting that Mandelson could be blocked by President Trump even though the American government has, you know, ratified his appointment or whatever it is they do. And of course, you know, Trump is someone who has unpredictable whims so it’s not impossible.

I mean, I was thinking of the level of kind of pedantic or sort of petty interference you would have to do to block such a relatively minor appointment in the scheme of world affairs. To me, that would make it less likely. And yet when you look at what he did to John Bolton, who’s his former national security adviser, the fact that he stripped Bolton of his security detail and Bolton has literally had death threats from Iran, you know, there seems to be no limit to Trump’s potential for vindictiveness.

And I think the issue with Peter Mandelson, who is, of course, one of the founders of New Labour, you know, a very experienced trade negotiator and cabinet minister and all the rest of it, is that he has had business interests that have touched upon China. And so to an American administration, which has made being anti-China, or at least being anti-China in trade terms at the very least, and sceptical of China in geopolitical terms. You know, that, I think, is a mark against him in their eyes. But I will still probably, on balance, bet that he will become the ambassador.

Lucy Fisher
And Anna, what about Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader? I mean, he’s been in his element these past weeks, swanning around Washington, DC, at a glittering party in the Hay Adams Hotel looking down on the White House on the eve of the inauguration. And I must say, I, for one, had déjà vu because I was there at the same party hosted by Farage back in 2017 ahead of Trump’s initial inauguration. He was there with Reform’s new treasurer Nick Candy. They clearly do have links into the Trump administration at a senior level. How much of a problem are they gonna be for Starmer and the UK government?

Anna Gross
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think the biggest concern that kind of relationship poses to Starmer is one of ideas. We’ve been seeing this a bit over the past few months, but I think going forward, the big threat that Trump will pose is one of kind of making the ideas that Reform have been putting forward seem both feasible but also really attractive.

So, I mean, looking at some of the policies and some of the executive orders he’s already signed, things like aggressively closing the border and saying that he’s going to deport illegal migrants, change the rules so that people who are born in America don’t have American citizenship. These are the kinds of things that would seem kind of anathema normally to the British public. But going forward, you know, Reform and others will be able to point to the US and say, look, it’s that easy. He’s able to do it. Why can’t we do that here? And I think we’re gonna see that more and more.

And also with net zero, which is a huge policy area for Reform that they really want to take forward through the local elections coming up and then into the general election in 2029. Starmer is trying to present some quite nuanced arguments on, you know, we need to invest now in renewables and we can’t be continuing to explore natural reserves of fossil fuels, all of these things.

Same with migration. You know, we need to come up with sensible ways of treating asylum seekers and processing their claims, all of this kind of thing to try and win the public over. In the meantime, Trump’s doing something completely different that Reform can point to and say, we should be doing that.

Lucy Fisher
Ed, back to Trump. I mean, how should the UK government respond? And I guess the big question that everyone asked the first time around was whether he should be taken literally or seriously or both. I’ve just been very struck that we’ve heard from the likes of David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, when he’s been asked. Right. So Trump suggested he wants to take Greenland by force. What do you say to that? Lammy’s responded, saying, oh he’s not actually gonna do that, you know, sort of force another Nato ally to give up territory. I mean, is that sort of wishful thinking on the part of UK cabinet ministers or are they right to question some of the more outlandish proposals that Trump has put forward?

Edward Luce
Look, I think that Lammy in particular, but clearly the Labour government in general, have been studying Trump and looking at what government sort of more akin to the Saudi Arabian, the House of Saud or the Japanese were good at in Trump’s first term, which is not viewing him as a conventional president, not necessarily sort of attributing deep schools of philosophy to Trump as there might be in the Maga movement, but to Trump personally. It’s probably more profitable to just study his psychology, and his psychology responds to flattery.

It also responds to firmness. I mean, I think that the general prejudice of people around Trump — and we’ve seen this from Musk and we’ve had this from Steve Bannon — towards liberal democracies in the west is not that much different to Vladimir Putin’s general prejudice that these are feckless, spineless, weak. Push them.

So, you know, paradoxically, I’d say therefore it would help the Starmer government if they stood shoulder to shoulder with Denmark, for example. And we saw more of that solidarity coming from other Nato neighbours of Denmark. That’s something Trump would listen to.

I think in terms of the broader Trump approach to trade, how Starmer could get in front of him is talking about things like AI again. You know, Musk is no friend of Britain right now, or at least no friend of non-rightwing Britain right now. Musk will be very, very influential in any US-UK trade talks and he will want all kinds of carte blanche for AI and for his companies in particular. So they need to study Musk too. And, you know, that might not be quite so easy. He’s quite hard to pin down.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, yeah. How well-equipped do you think the UK is to deal with Trump? What should they be doing?

Anna Gross
Yeah, just on that AI point, I think it’s an interesting one because I’ve had some officials say to me that they actually think there’s a real opening there for diplomatic relations to be built. And that’s because the UK has this fledgling and actually quite successful so far AI Safety Institute that tests the algorithms that a lot of AI companies are creating. But one of the aspects of it that actually hasn’t trumped up so much today is the fact that the AI Safety Institute does a lot of kind of security work. Unfortunately, a lot of the kind of communications around the AI Safety Institute are focused on kind of safety and . . . 

Lucy Fisher
And I can imagine Trump would maybe find that as the kind of red tape he wants to sort of ride roughshod over.

Anna Gross
Precisely. Exactly. So, you know, making sure that the algorithms don’t have bias, that kind of thing. And that’s the sort of thing that the US administration is not particularly interested in. But the AI Safety Institute also does a huge amount of work on security threats and it has a direct line into GCHQ. And so, you know, officials have said to me that there’s a real opening there. This is an area where the US would like to build more ties with the UK. AI is an area that as Ed says it would like its products to be sold into the UK market. You can see a sort of agreement being formed on those grounds.

Lucy Fisher
Ed, do you agree?

Edward Luce
Yes. I mean, I think that’s certainly where the level of sort of energy and the sort of kinetic feel to this Trump-Musk administration, as some people call it, is. And so you should go to what Trump’s interested in. And he’s sort of . . . I doubt he’s got much knowledge of AI. I mean, he knows it’s important and it’s where the money is and where the deals are. I think you probably saw this week that there was a thing he unveiled with the CEOs of SoftBank and Oracle called Stargate, an alleged $500bn investment in AI infrastructure.

AI, of course, is also about energy. And so any conversation about AI immediately becomes a conversation also about energy. And I think there are a lot of conversations going on, particularly in light of what Trump said yesterday to that positive shock, that pleasant surprise in his laying down the law to Putin, that there are a lot of energy conversations about LNG to be had too. And America has got a lot of LNG. There’s a drill, baby, drill regime in place now.

Lucy Fisher
Jim, I thought there was a great column this week by Janan Ganesh, our colleague, on how different the reaction of the liberal wider west has been to Trump the second time around. There’s sense of real trauma the first time. And perhaps people thought they worried too much and now they’re overcorrecting, sort of shrinking into themselves and sort of stepping away from kind of engaging with Trump. How have you been struck by how different the reaction has been?

Jim Pickard
So I completely disagree with Janan Ganesh because he was giving the impression that there’s a sort of ennui or a sort of acceptance of Trump Mark II is, you know, we enjoyed it once, but we came out the other side and things were kind of . . . That seems to be how he was depicting how democratic people in Europe feel.

I think it’s the opposite. I think people are actually genuinely, really worried about what could happen. And what we saw last time around is we saw British politicians being quite relaxed about insulting Donald Trump. So you remember there was a big debate in the House of Commons where all sorts of frontbenchers lined up to call him a wazzock and a pillock and all these very sort of domestically flavoured insults.

Lucy Fisher
What are the terms they used?

Jim Pickard
They used the term wazzock. (Lucy laughs) I might have added pillock myself. But people were openly ridiculing him. They felt there was something quite so foolish and a bit kind of comedy-eccentric about Donald Trump. And I think politicians in Britain now, having seen Donald Trump basically support an armed insurrection which left police dead on Capitol Hill and basically tried to subvert democracy and are now unlocked these 1,500 people. Leave aside all the other things he’s doing that make people feel uncomfortable and looking at this and the reason they’re not speaking out is because I think they kind of fear upsetting a Trump administration.

And of course, you’ve got Keir Starmer, the prime minister, who’s made pragmatism part of his political vibe in basically every sphere, not just in terms of international relations. But there are orders from the top to keep it a little quieter than last time around. There’s also a sort of self-preservation feeling a little bit as well, I would say.

Lucy Fisher
That’s interesting. I think you make a compelling case. But I actually also thought I agreed with Janan that essentially there isn’t the same kind of dread and fear this time around as there was the first time. And it does speak . . . 

Jim Pickard
There’s less energy in the process, right? There’s no protest.

Lucy Fisher
Exactly. And I think that he has become normalised. He is, whether you like him or not, more part of the furniture now than he was the first time around.

Anna Gross
I partly interpret the sort of silence as being people not really understanding how to react. I think there’s a — especially Labour MPs that I speak to, Labour politicians — I think there’s a feeling at the moment that the cards are stacked against them politically around the world and there are a lot of forces that are much more powerful than them. And Trump acts in, as we’ve been discussing, such an erratic way and follows rules that are so foreign and so alien to our political system. The impression I get is of concern, is a fear, but of a sort of like kind of cluelessness about how to actually engage.

Lucy Fisher
Ed, what’s your take? I mean, we’ve obviously seen all the pictures of the tech billionaires kind of crowding into sort of the Capitol rotunda this week to support, you know, Trump as he was sworn in again. It feels like people are trying to get on his good side stateside.

Edward Luce
They are. But I think that’s more an expression of fear than anything else. I would agree with Jim’s take on Janan’s column. I mean, I don’t see nonchalance here. I see resignation, I see fatalism, but also deep fear. I mean, the number of journalists, of news organisations that are being threatened license could be removed. Trump has that power. He has the power to conduct IRS tax rates. He has the power to, once Kash Patel is confirmed, to use the FBI to go after his enemies.

Jim mentioned the January 6th protesters, the felons who have been released this week, the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, both of whom were serving more than 20 years for seditious conspiracy, have said they want their prosecutors to be prosecuted. And this has been echoed around the Trump world. So I don’t think there’s a sort of it’s all fine this time around. It’s very, very different. There’s a real fear, a deep fear of what could be about to come, and I think in many respects is about to come.

Jim Pickard
I wanna butt in just to say, in the interest of balance, that I made it sound like the entire British political establishment is worried or nervous about the Trump presidency.

There is, of course, a wing on the rightwing in British politics, exemplified by Reform UK, but also elements of the Conservative party, who are kind of excited and enthused about the shedding of red tape and regulations and the release of animal spirits in the business world and all the rest of it. Liz Truss, I think, was out there at the start of the week, possibly in a Maga hat. Have I made that up?

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, she was indeed. Other assorted hangers-on included Laurence Fox.

Anna Gross
Priti Patel.

Jim Pickard
Exactly. But the really, really interesting thing we are seeing in Britain is we are in that moment that America was in maybe, I don’t know, five or six years ago where American rightwingism had two paths and it could go down the more kind of frenzied Trumpist Maga route or it could go down the more conventional centre-right route. And there was, I guess, a split and Trump won and we don’t know yet which of those two wings of conservatism with a small C is gonna win out at the end of this parliament. But it’s a very interesting movement at the tectonic plates.

Lucy Fisher
Ed, final word to you. I know it’s always a horrible ask to demand you gaze into a crystal ball, but what is your sense of what the next four years are gonna hold? Or is it just impossible to tell?

Edward Luce
I think it’s quite hard to be specifically predictive. I mean, you know, what the tariff rates will end up being and on whom they’ll be targeted, stuff like that; whether he’ll meet Putin with Zelenskyy or not with Zelenskyy; whether, you know, he’ll get his big tax cuts passed with all the funding for the war and all the funding for the deportations.

There are certain sort of things that are very hard to pin down and predict, but I think we can be sure of one thing: that he believes he has a sweeping mandate. He’s got the power to act on that belief. He has the green light from the Supreme Court. And therefore, we are going to see an unprecedented period in American politics — and predictably unprecedented. Some of this will not be surprising, but when it actually happens, it will still shock.

Lucy Fisher
Well, Ed, we’ll have to have you back on as events unfold. But for now, thanks for joining.

Edward Luce
Many thanks, indeed.

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Lucy Fisher
The other subject that has been dominating Westminster this week is around the Southport killer who has been convicted and sentenced. Axel Rudakubana, the 18-year old, has been given a minimum 52 years in prison for murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Anna, look, obviously it’s a total atrocity. But I wanna focus on the politics here and in particular Starmer’s handling of it. There has been this sense, hasn’t there, that there’s a crisis of trust in the UK government, at least in some parts of society. And one of the themes that’s really kicked off this week is on whether there was a cover-up of the Southport killer’s terror links in the initial phase after that shocking spate of murders last year.

Anna Gross
Yeah, exactly. So it all kind of dates back to the days that followed the murders. We now know that Starmer was privy to a certain amount of information as prime minister about the offender and about the crimes, and that at the time he did not disclose basically any information whatsoever on the grounds that it would have jeopardised the trial and it could have potentially even got the case thrown out.

And he said this week, look, if I’d given that information away, that the killer may have been able to run free. The crucial bit of information that was missing when he was asked at the time, was this a terrorist offence? And the information that was given was no, it wasn’t.

But we now know through the trial that this teenager, Axel Rudakubana, he had been referred three times to the anti-radicalisation programme Prevent, that he had been known to be producing or trying to produce ricin, and he’d also downloaded an al-Qaeda text book.

So all of these things were certainly red flags for potential terrorist affiliation. And I think there are some segments of the population that feel very strongly that they should have been made aware of some of that information. And they’re sceptical that giving that away would have prejudiced the trial.

And it’s also thrown up some questions around whether the laws around prejudicing trials are fit for purpose in this day and age, where while, you know, the authorities aren’t providing any information on things, misinformation is spreading like wildfire across the internet. So then there’s the question of is there actually a responsibility for people of authority to provide some information that would actually prevent that misinformation from taking hold?

Lucy Fisher
Well, that’s right, isn’t it? And the way that people, critics of Starmer, have joined the dots is to say that there was this clear evidence that he had this al-Qaeda manual, he was in possession of the deadly toxin ricin.

And they think that the incentive potentially for the government for not giving that away was because, in one sense, he had been on their radar. As you say, he had been referred to the counter-radicalisation programme Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021, and yet, somehow three years later in 2024, he was able to go on and murder those three girls, attempt to murder 10 others.

Jim, it is striking, isn’t it, that even the likes of Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has said that the riots last summer that kicked off after the Southport stabbings do show the scope for saying little or nothing is just squeezed out by social media.

Jim Pickard
I thought the intervention by Hall was the most interesting one because of course what the Prime Minister Keir Starmer keeps saying is that had himself or other people revealed these crucial details about the case while the police were investigating, then the person who committed the crimes would have walked away a free man. And he was taking questions about this on Tuesday morning at the press conference in Number 10 and he was saying it, you journalists understand this, why you can’t report everything on the case.

But when Hall, this independent reviewer, said, you know, actually it wouldn’t have necessarily been prejudice to the case had some of that information been shared, which was something I understand that the police force did want to do. I think it does raise questions about how these things are handled in the future.

And, Anna, you mentioned misinformation flying around. I was reading up earlier today, and there was an absolutely viral rumour sweeping through social media that suggested that Starmer 20 years ago acted legally for the father of Rudakubana. And yet it turned out that he’d represented half a dozen individuals and one of them was Rwandan, but it was a middle-aged Rwandan woman. It was a totally different thing, but it shows the ease with which misinformation can travel around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. Well, Jim, you point out that Starmer tried to get ahead of this by having a press conference on Tuesday. He announced a public inquiry into what went wrong the way that the state failed the families of the victims. Also, a review of terror laws to look at whether the definition of terror needs to expand.

Anna, to me, I was interested in him talking about the wider issues in society that give rise to atrocities like this. One thing he talked about was the tidal wave of violence online. Do you think that the Online Safety Act that’s coming into force in coming months is gonna be able to kind of deal with that or is that still out of grip of ministers?

Lucy Fisher
I think it’s certainly the ambition of the act that it would be able to compel platforms to remove content that is violent, that could potentially lead people to commit violence. But one of the things that’s really interesting, just even this week, is that Yvette Cooper, who’s the home secretary, came out and said one of the videos that Axel Rudakubana watched just before he went out and committed those atrocities. And that video is still online, even though authorities in the Home Office have asked X to remove it. It is certainly against X’s terms of use to have harmful content on there like that. And yet, you know, they’re not acting. And ultimately, the Online Safety Act, for all the good will in the world, all it will do is compel companies to do what they say they will do on their terms of use. And so if they choose not to do that, it doesn’t have a huge amount of muscle behind it.

I mean, the thing is that Ofcom, the regulator that’s gonna be kind of enforcing the act, says we will impose fines, we will take action. But you know, we’re dealing with people like Musk and as we’ve talked about earlier, he’s actually very critical of a lot of the actions that been taken by the UK government against social media and against information that’s spread on social media. So I think there are some people in government and at Ofcom who are concerned about how this will play out.

Jim Pickard
I think it’s a really vicious irony that you have Elon Musk, who whipped up the far right riots that came off the back of this horrendous attack. And yet what if it was his approach to free speech and allowing anything goes on social media, on his platform, X, which might have tipped this young man. We don’t know precisely, but it might have tipped him over the edge in that precise moment. And it’s . . . But people don’t seem to be thinking enough about, you know, where does all this free speech eventually lead potentially.

Lucy Fisher
And Jim, another element of social fraying decay that Starmer brought up, what he described as the rights and responsibilities that keep a nation together beginning to kind of fall apart, you know, centre around children not going to school. We know that truancy rates are through the roof and young people increasingly falling out of work and education or training and sort of that sense of drift of young people that has taken grip since the pandemic. Again, these are things that are incredibly difficult to solve and sure as hell expensive.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, exactly. I don’t know where you even start to deal with that in terms of a case like this where you clearly have a youngster with psychopathic tendencies or whatever it is. I’m not sure how societal . . . I don’t even know how to answer that. Sorry, Lucy. I just don’t know how that is gonna solve a psychopath from trying to murder children.

Anna Gross
One of the things I’d say is that I think a lot of people were really shocked to learn about how many times Axel Rudakubana had actually had contacts with authorities, with public services. I mean, we’ve talked about the three times he was referred to Prevent. He’d been visited five times by police for violent action, including an attack on a school, again, as a child.

And I think what’s interesting there is that — and I’m sure this will come up in the inquiry — is that there seemed to be such little interaction between the different bodies that the information wasn’t flowing between them. And one of the things that I was reading about just this week was that historically in cases like that, someone who’s clearly, their mental health was deteriorating very badly and they were showing these signs of severe aggression.

You would hope that they would be contacted by youth services — the kinds of people who come to your home, check up on you, see what you’re doing at home, in your bedroom, what you’re looking at, what you’re downloading, what you’re being radicalised by. And those youth services, they’ve been cut drastically over the past 10 years, I think, by about 45 per cent. And so the apparatus that’s there to protect people and to identify when these things are…

Jim Pickard
Would social workers see what kids are looking at on their screens?

Anna Gross
They might check in more with parents and things like that.

Lucy Fisher
I guess I’m just interested that Starmer, you know, pointed out that as well as the traditional threats of terrorism from your traditional Islamists, whether it’s al-Qaeda or Isis, or on the other hand, rightwing extremists, you’ve now got this new breed of lonely young men in their bedrooms, as Starmer called them, who maybe don’t even have a particularly comprehensive grasp of the ideologies they’re sort of interested in or attempting to espouse.

And it’s been striking, hasn’t it, to see some of the big names of the anti-terror community come out and say, well, hang on, we’re gonna need a lot more resources if we’re gonna expand the definition of terror to include all these types of people too.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, I mean, I agree with the thrust of what Starmer is saying. He’s saying this is a new issue, but we know it’s not new in the sense of Jo Cox was murdered in 2016 by a lone individual. We’ve had all sorts of terror incidents with individuals or murders by radicalised individuals in recent years. But so what Starmer is saying is that he wants to change the law to ensure that lone killers with what he calls extreme individualised violence are charged with terrorism.

I think the problem you just identified, at least in terms of the security services dealing with this kind of thing, is where’s the tipping point? Because an awful lot of people are looking at unpleasant things online. We know for a fact that a lot of them are looking at horrendous things online. You’re looking at jihadi beheadings or whatever it is, but where is the tipping point where they’re looking at so much of this stuff that you can presume that it’s going to inspire them to do a real life terrorist event?

An awful lot of the people looking at this stuff won’t go on to do anything in real life. And that is why it soaks up so much resources, whether it’s MI5 or the police or social services or whatever level of this looking at it. It does require an awful lot of money if you’re gonna start studying individuals and not just try and join the dots in terms of networks.

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Lucy Fisher
We’ve just got time now for Political Fix stock picks. Jim, who are you buying or selling this week?

Jim Pickard
So I’m gonna sell Ed Miliband, politician of the centre-left of great integrity who threatened to resign from Gordon Brown’s cabinet over the expansion of Heathrow and the idea of building a third runway. We don’t think his views have changed on his opposition to a third runway, but we know the chancellor of the exchequer is very keen to get Heathrow to put forward a development consent order later this year, which could lead to a third runway; may be approved should it meet four tests set by the government and should it pass the possible vote in the Commons, could go ahead, at which point Ed Miliband’s future would be severely under threat.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, how about you?

Anna Gross
I’m gonna buy Rachel Reeves. For me, the price is right. I think her price is the lowest it will be for a while. Just last week, Starmer was pushed into sort of saying that she would be around right till the end of this parliament. So that’s pretty positive for her.

And then also, she’s been swanning around Davos. A couple of the decisions that Starmer’s government have made this week have been pretty positively received by business people. So yeah, I’m buying Rachel. Well, how about you, Lucy?

Lucy Fisher
I’m selling the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. She’s come under a lot of pressure in recent weeks. And this week in particular, the government’s had to amend its own schools legislation after coming under fire for potentially capping the salaries of teachers at academies.

We’ve seen the government slightly flip-flop over whether it’s pro or anti academies, whether it’s of attacking them as a Govite legacy or remembering that actually David Blunkett, as you’ve written about Anna, was one of the key architects of the programme in the first place.

And I think it’s made her look a little bit fragile, her position, or at least the attacks of Tory critics of hers who say she’s either ideological in the way that the public don’t want, or she’s completely under thumb of the education unions and is carrying out their wishlist. I think she looks quite vulnerable to that charge.

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Well, that’s all we’ve got time for this week. Jim Pickard, Anna Gross, thanks for joining.

Anna Gross
Thanks, Lucy.

Jim Pickard
Thanks, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners.

There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, please do leave a review or a star rating if you have time. It really helps spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher and produced by Lulu Smyth. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. The broadcast engineers are Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio.

We’ll meet again here next week.

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