Hugo Rifkind

about their deliberate choice of words and their readiness to charge their opponents with politicising an issue. I've been interviewing a cow today. You've been interviewing a cow? Yes. This is up in the highlands of Scotland. There is a cow called, I think, Moomintrey. Moomintrey. And she is believed to be able to predict...

The results of the World Cup. Right. What she has done, in the company of other cows, is she has been... Oh, they have a syndicate, do they? Well, no, she is apparently the psychic cows. The other cows are just cashing in. The other cows are just stupid. She's presented with a variety of buckets with food and flags on them. She keeps going to the Scottish one and eating the food there.

Okay. Clearly, this means this cow is psychic. This is how religions start. This cow is psychic, and it's predicting glory for Scotland. Or she's saying, this is swill. Yes, sure. Also, she is in Scotland anyway, isn't she? Yes. I mean, she might just be going, I prefer locally sourced food. I'm not sure really how much cows can perceive flags in the first place. I'm not sure about the decision-making process that has led to her being deemed the psychic cow, with the other cows just being cows that like food.

But then she might not have been, and we'd have lost the story. Okay, I see. Not if you're getting her journalism work. You realise you've said that into a microphone. Obviously we couldn't interview the cow herself, because she doesn't do talking. No. She wouldn't even moo on demand, actually, so we had to interview the cow's...

Handler? Owner? Farmer is the word I'm looking for. Who was, I would say, defensive about the whole process. You know what, I don't want to shoot it down. I'm not sure this cow can actually predict sporting fixtures. I mean, it's a thorny issue, isn't it? I mean, there will be opinions on both sides about this one. I think it might be fake moose. Oh.

I thought you were going to say you'd found a room to sleep in, but it'd been on the wrong side of the maze. I'm still there. I'm broadcasting from there. But it does make me think about politicians who say that they don't need much sleep, because I am always very suspicious of them. The efficiency of a nap is fascinating, because I'm a big fan of the 10-minute power nap as well. And yet, I'm well aware that if I get that 10 minutes between

No. No, no, no. Yeah.

No harm done. But maybe he's just being very efficient. He goes, if I get an extra ten minutes, or let's be honest, four hours at night, that's not going to do me any good. Whereas if I get ten minutes in an actual literal meeting with Vladimir Zelensky, that's charging me up no end. But in those clips of him asleep in the middle of Oval Office meeting, no one dare say he's power napping. Yeah, you always wonder with those clips. I mean, I think he is asleep, but he might just be...

Sort of rolling his eyes. What did I just say? They say he's thinking. He's weighing it all up while making a noise of someone snoring. It's remarkable how little he sleeps. He's about to turn 80. He turns 80 this week. And he sleeps so very little. Apparently the time when this is a real problem is on official trips. Because no one wants to get on Air Force One with him.

Because you go to sleep, if you're Marco Rubio, and you want to get your normal six or seven hour sleep, probably being Marco Rubio hanging upside down from some sort of cave, but nonetheless, six or seven hour sleep. You can't, because Trump gets 45 minutes and just comes and wakes you up and wants to talk at you, and you're sitting there nodding. I mean, is there not a dark gun or something to produce? Nothing more sinister than putting him to sleep, that's all I'm saying. Nothing more sinister than that.

And then when does something being politicized actually tip over into being weaponized? So I think when something is politicized, well everything, if it's politics, it's politicized. Politics, you can't say anything but it's politicizing it. I think when it's being weaponized is when you are using it to make a political point that is not the real political point it's about. You're using it, you're twisting it. I think if you're accusing somebody of something and they have done that thing, then you're not weaponizing the thing, you're just saying it.

Joten siinä on semmoinen, että jos minä sanon tämän sanan, niin tiettyjä ihmisiä, jotka ovat minun tuottajat, tietävät, mitä minä tarkoitan. Ei vain se. Katsokaa tätä huonoa asiaa viime viikossa. Henryn Novakin asia. Huono asia hänen murhauksestaan ja poliisien huonoa tehtävää, kun he tuli alas.

It seems that although the police behaved badly, poorly, did a poor job when they got there, you can't draw a direct link between how they behaved and the guidance that is given to police over race. That link just doesn't seem to be there, doesn't seem to connect with how they behaved there. That's what experts in policing have been saying all week.

No, those facts are available to anybody. If you choose to ignore those facts and say this is a case about how the police respond to people of different races, then you're weaponizing, I think. Right, yes. So that takes us into, I mean, a lot of discussion over the language used by Nigel Farage in his emergency address to the nation last week, which already ramps up the sense of drama. It's the four emergency services, isn't it? It's fire, it's police, it's ambulances, and it's Nigel Farage. Farage, yes. Oh, there's a fifth one, podcasts, I was forgetting.

It's a fair question and it's a worrying question. Yes, of course, but you're doing that whatever you do. You're doing that unless you refuse to talk about it. But then if you refuse to talk about it, you're a news show that's not discussing the news. And that's a questionable position, I would say. My answer would be providing you outline what it is you're seeking to do by discussing it. And then allowing people to assess whether you've achieved that.

Kyllä, mutta ajattelen, että jos teet jotain, mikä tekee argumentin isompi, niin te olette vahvistuneita. Mutta joskus sinun täytyy tehdä argumentin isompi, koska jos kertoisit ihmisille, että he ovat väärässä, niin te olette tekemässä argumentin isompi. Ja joskus kertoa totuutta tarkoittaa kertoa toisia ihmisiä, joita he ovat väärässä. Mutta ajattelen, että se on ongelma, että he ovat vahvistuneita ensimmäisenä. Kyllä.

Rage is generally bad in public debates, I would say. I can understand he's saying people are angry, he wants to challenge that. Cold. Cold. Now, if he said respond with hot rage, that's definitely a call for riots. If he says respond with cold rage...

What I'm taking from it. And you're right about all the words, because the word that I picked up on was pure. Well, pure is interesting, because of course the BBC got into trouble, because Newsnight said, Newsnight described it as... Matt Chorley. Matt Chorley said he'd said white cold rage, and had to apologise, and Farage and Reform were very cross. Although...

Well, he was saying pure cold rage and not white cold rage. And he's saying, if I'd been saying white cold rage, that would have been racializing it, although obviously it wouldn't have been meant in those ways. I don't know whether Matt Trolley was thinking of white heat or something like that. But the reform objection, saying that would have been racializing it, when I called for pure cold rage, not white cold rage, it's like, well, yeah, but...

He was calling for pure cold rage from white people, and I'm sure he would deny that, but he did say he was talking about a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities. So I don't think it's the ethnic minorities he thinks is going to be cross about this. So the thing he was accusing, he was basically cross that Newsnight had described him as saying...