Maitlis

To have a kind of a leadership challenge, which then kind of sends guilt costs going through the roof and the cost of government borrowing through the roof, that would be a pretty weird thing to do because it would ruin the UK economy and people might pull back because of that.

And the other thing that struck me about the conversation you had in that interview, which is...

the Royal Protection Officer, Scott, saying, well, you know, did we know that he was a convicted paedophile?

Probably totally unaware of it.

And you realise, I mean, you know, the first part of the podcast today is about the Mandelson and all the rest of it.

Unless you volunteer information...

We don't live in a police state.

The police don't have that much information.

You know, when you're doing vetting, you have to submit your bank accounts to see if you're financially sound or not.

They don't have access to them.

And so you do get this impression.

You think that the police are all knowing about everyone who the principal is going to meet.

They've got no bloody idea.

I think we have in our heads a picture of PC Plod walking down the street.

What's going on here then?

And I think that my experience of...

royal protection officers and the protection officers who look after senior ministers is that they're much more sophisticated they're very smart and i suppose what they have to learn to exercise which is kind of probably infuriating for journalists is discretion yeah and that they and that line between is it immoral is it illegal is critical and they're not going to dob someone in because they've seen them behaving in a shabby sort of way yeah

They're going to only talk about it if they've seen illegality.

And, you know, maybe they don't.

Maybe they don't see the illegality of what was happening at Epstein's Island.