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On his first day in office, Andy Burnham promised to do this. I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction to end rough sleeping in our country. Today, on his 99th day in office, Andy Bernham has pledged a lot more money to try and reach that target. But where will that money go? And how realistic is this government pledge? Also, Brazil has seen a dramatic election result. A studentled protest has unseated the leader in Serbia and voters in Israel will be going to the polls on Tuesday. What do these elections tell us about democracy around the globe right now? All will be revealed on this episode of Newscast.
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio and it is Chris at Westminster and joining us for this bit of newscast is Tara Welsh who's the BBC's housing correspondent. Hello Tara. Hello. So Tara, you got the call from number 10 to be summoned to a summit. Summoned to a summit, but I was instead at a shelter very early this morning with the prime minister. Right. And just set out the context then why that was happening. So ahead of the budget, um Andy Bernham was announcing that he's doubling the amount of money he's putting into uh accommodation and practical support services for rough sleepers. Um, and
interesting that it was today, two days ahead of the budget, because obviously it was his first big announcement, you know, outside number 10 when he first came in. Um, and what he said was, um, that every single person who wants a bed will have one by Christmas. So, massively ambitious. Well, a bed or support andor support basically. And in terms of this money, how much more is being spent than previously was going to be? So he announced back in the summer that it was going to be 442 million. Today an extra 432 million has been announced. Now we did ask where the money's come from and I think his exact words that we found it.
Um John Healey was also there this morning but I didn't interview him. Um, so I think we'll find out where that money's come from on Wednesday actually. Yeah. So basically a doubling of the support for rough sleeping and Chris I suppose that's an example of Andy Bernham putting his money where his mouth has been. Absolutely. So you'll recall from his very first day as prime minister which newscasters will know it was 99 days ago. And my knees know.
Well indeed um that there he was people always say on the steps of Downing Street. It's actually beyond there's only one step actually there's a few steps I suppose but he wasn't on the pavement he was on the road anyway because I was crouched down in front of him listening um he made a thing didn't he on in that opening kind of statement as prime minister in the street uh just minutes after he became prime minister uh about his commitment uh around rough sleeping in England and acknowledging that he'd had a crack at trying to sort the issue when he was the mayor of Greater Manchester and wanted to bring that same zeal if you like to national office and I guess here he is via the first big moment when it comes to you know taxing and spending and
financial priorities uh leaning into it in advance and when we're in this stage of a budget process i.e the handful of days beforehand, you know, the measures that a government is fearful might not get noticed if they're not announced in advance because they trail a few things in advance which can command an element of attention and news and invitations for Tara or others to be uh you know called out at the crack of dawn to go and see the prime minister. Um because in the grand sweep of what we get on Wednesday perhaps otherwise things like this would be uh wouldn't get as much attention as those in government would like to see them get. And Tara um when you were saying that the this money is
comes as an offer so an offer of accommodation or support is that because the government knows they actually can't end rough sleeping if rough sleepers themselves don't want to go into accommodation what's that about yeah and I think um so like this morning where we were at the shelter we spoke to lots of different people um and many of you know many people had stayed there the night for um and I think that what they're saying is that they know that these things are complex and it's actually really different to the everyone in during COVID when hotels were used to house people because this is more about kind of the package of support whether it be mental health whether it be alcohol addiction services
around the bed. So it's not just about the bed. What the ambition is, they keep calling it like a route to ending rough sleeping, right? So it's not just about having a bed for however many days or weeks. It's about the kind of like route back into, you know, a happy, healthy life, I guess, would be the long-term ambition. And can you give us a sense of the scale of the problem in England at the moment? I mean, it's huge. I don't know where you live, but I know that where I live in, you know, the leafy suburbs, it you can see it, right? Like there's an old car park that where people have put tents on now and they're living and it,
like I say, it wasn't an area where you would see this um in our local parks, you know, where I take my kids at the weekend. So, that's just anecdotally and the figures say it as well. So, um like the figures for last year, you know, 4,793 people sleeping rough. you know, I get emails from old men sleeping in their cars. Like, it's it's a huge problem. Um, and you know, obviously hugely ambitious and complex to kind of give yourself a Christmas deadline. Um, and you know, I think the passion seems to be there. It's just how in practice, you know, this actually happens, particularly outside of those big cities and in the rural areas. Um so I went to a church near me last night and they
have like um like an open evening for homeless people. You can have a shower, get food, and they're like, "Yeah, we run on donations. Like we can only do this for 2 hours." And I went to just have a chat with the reverend about like, you know, what he thinks of this. And he was like, "Well, we haven't heard of it." Well, and also the money is not going to voluntary groups from civil society. The money is going to local authorities and public institutions, I imagine. Yeah. And so it's how you reach small groups like that aren't kind of like in the city centers. How you get to those 4,793 people. Um so I think it's the practicalities um to get this done by Christmas will be a challenge. And Chris, this is one
of the aspects of Andy Bernham's record as mayor of Greater Manchester that political journalists and journalists from all sorts of different specialisms have been combing over because his record when you made this pledge in his previous job is a little bit checkered. And this is where it's interesting hearing how he makes the argument around it now. Howen Tara would be fascinated about your take on this because he was challenged about this in particular when he was on Good Morning Britain on ITV this morning uh with the suggestion that he had a uh ambitious plan in Greater Manchester but did he actually manage to crack it? And his argument was that because of the promise that he as the
mayor made, the region became, if you like, a magnet for those who would seek help housing wise and no longer having to sleep rough. And therefore, if you like, the magnitude of the challenge grew. and he concluded, so he argued on the telly uh this morning that the only way you could make a uh policy like the one he attempted in Greater Manchester work properly is if it was a pan England solution. In other words, where you wouldn't have in theory the incentive to upsticks and move somewhere where the provision might be uh more generous if you like because it would be available everywhere and therefore you wouldn't get those flows of people. So that at least is his argument to try and take on
critics who say, "Well, you had a crack at this in Manchester, but did it actually work?" And actually, if you look at those figures, they did come down those first couple of years, the figures did come down quite drastically. And I guess he would argue that it was kind of outside circumstances like people moving in um and it's complex. You know, housing in general is really complex, but particularly trying to pinpoint the reasons for figures coming down. And Tara, before you go, we should say that this is rough sleeping, which is different from the phenomenon of homelessness because you could be homeless and no one know it.
Yeah, I said this to him. I kind of said, look, there's 177,000 kids in temporary accommodation. Kids die in temporary accommodation. Some of it's absolute squalor. Like, how come you're choosing rough sleeping um to kind of to fight as a focus? Yeah. As a focus. Yeah. And he said because it's such a public health issue, it's not just about people being without a home. It's a public health issue. How what does he mean by that? Well, for example, the guy who I interviewed this morning who was sleeping rough um said like how ill he became because he would get wet, he would get a cough, he couldn't get dry.
Um and so I think that's what he meant the kind of like what rough sleeping then leads to whether it is illness, drugs, whatever else. It's much more than not having a bed. Yes. It's almost like a category error to say rough sleeping is because of a lack of houses is to say that rough sleeping is a product of lots of things. Some of which could be lifestyle related, employment related and then the consequences of it are a health problem for the person who's rough sleeping. So treating that like this person doesn't have a house, let's build more social
housing isn't the solution to the rough sleeping problem. And I think that's why some charities get quite frustrated with us as broadcasters because we're like, "No, we just need a 20-se secondond clip." And they're like, "Well, this is holistic. It's so much more than just a bed. This is about mental health. This is about poverty. This is about" And we're like, you know, and often we can't get to that whole story. And I heard a lot of that this morning from the kind of experts there to say, and I think he did take that away when he was talking to them. And I think that was what this summit was about today about bringing people who are the experts in this to kind of have a conversation about it. And what were the to use the overused
word in the Burnham era the vibes from the from the workers in the place that you went to and the people who were being helped towards Andy Burnham? Did they look at him as a sort of savior and a guy that's going to solve the problem or was there a bit of skepticism? How did they respond to him? I mean, Mickey, who I spoke to, he was like, "Yeah, it's not going to happen. This just can't you can't get 5,000 people in before Christmas. This isn't going to happen." A few people came up to us on the street and kind of said, you know, this is about immigrants getting priority. That were their words, not mine. um you know people I think um who are affected by
this um more skeptical than those in the sector because those in the sector that I spoke to today were like well yeah this is the biggest thing we've had since everyone in co um so they were quite welcoming but also well aware of the challenge I mean it's them on the ground they're the ones that have got to double the beds by Christmas um so kind of aware of the challenge and but also welcoming it. Tara, thank you very much. Welcome. Now, Chris, a few other things. Where have we got to on the free movement of people and the EU and the UK? And this is quite a sort of um Gordian knot to unpick it. It is. So, so let's take half a step
back and we've done this quite a bit, haven't we, on uh newscast, but if we take a couple of steps back, you had I've just gone from half to a couple. That tells you everything you need to know about this. So, you had the prime minister's conference speech and indeed the conversation he had with Laura at the Labour conference in Liverpool um uh last month, was it last month or earlier this month? I can't remember. A few weeks back um in which he basically talked about let's talk about the EU again and our relationship with the European Union and his argument that Brexit um hasn't turned out as some people might have wanted it and he felt that the deal could be uh better. but let's also look at the big picture
relationship that we might want uh in the in the next sort of you know coming years decade or so. Then a fortnight ago he decided to lean into it again when parliament came back having had its recess during most of the uh party conferences. Alongside that he's been doing a series of interviews with uh Ben Riley Smith who is the political editor of the Sunday Times in this kind of first 100 days of his time as prime minister. the latest iteration of which was published uh over the uh weekend in which he was talking about an element of where he would set the sort of tram tracks of this debate about the EU to come. So for instance he said to Ben that he couldn't see a situation where
the UK rejoin the EU and was part of the Shenhen passport free zone or would rejoin the EU and would sign up to the single currency. In other words, he was willing, albeit in this open conversation in which he's not committing to much, to set his own parameters about what might be acceptable um or not. And Ben was on chatting to Laura on the Sunday edition of Newscast. So, if you haven't heard that episode, you can hear a little bit more about the context in which those remarks were made. And I think the context is quite important because it's not like he was announcing something. There was a lot of musing out loud in multiple conversations. And when you read the actual quotes, yes, it's true, you can then write and report a story about Andy Barnham
opening up the idea of freedom of movement being reestablished between the UK and the EU, but it's a bit more subtle than that might appear. Indeed. Absolutely. And then layered on top of that in terms of subtlety and nuance and an element of ambiguity, some of this ambiguity is something that I think Downing Street are willing to uh lean into because they're saying, "Look, we're starting a conversation here. Ambiguity is good because people can thrash around what they may or may not want." On top of that was an exchange between the prime minister and Tara uh this morning uh at that um uh event
relating to rough sleeping where Tara asked the prime minister well on the question of freedom of movement. So if the UK was to sign up to the single market of the European Union again either as a member or not that would involve as a quid proquo uh freedom of movement. Would the prime minister want a referendum on the question of freedom of movement or would a referendum be something that you would only require in the prime minister's mind if you were to rejoin uh the European uh union? And he said when he was asked could he introduce free movement without a public vote he said no without a referendum. Now that implies, if you like, a slightly lower bar than some had perhaps suggested he might be entertaining. In
other words, that you could have a you would require a referendum for something short of rejoining the European Union. So there is ambiguity here. There's no attempt from number 10 to push back to push back from the answer that he uh that he gave this morning. Albeit the prime minister's official spokesman was a bit sort of looser still or more vague still in the answer that was provided at lunchtime off the back of the exchange that Tara had with number 10. I think kind of where we are and I got a sense of this talking to a um talking to some Labour MPs this morning um is a sense that you know as we've talked about before on newscast the prime minister is willing to sort of narrate out loud ideas that he is
entertaining that he hasn't yet necessarily committed to a public view on that he might take a steer on what his public view is depending on what the reaction to the kind of idea amounts to and that's kind of where we are. We're going to get more of it around the time of the summit between the UK and the EU uh in a little under a month in Brussels um at the back end towards the back end of next month. And what's really going to matter in time is what does the Labour Party elite upon as to what it says in its manifesto going into the next election because that's where it'll have to either have to start ruling things out um or maybe not.
Yeah. I think what here's just another lesson in politics, isn't it? um which constantly surprises me even after all these years in that presumably around about this UK EU summit later this month there'll be some or later next month I should say there'll be a government document that says here are the models of u a relationship with the EU and the mo the maximalist model being rejoining and I can imagine it'll have a little table of like ticks and crosses like when you're comparing your different um expense levels of travel insurance and what your policy includes and the policy for rejoining the EU you will have a big green tick next to free movement of people. Now, if that appears
in a government sponsored document which is looking at all the options, everyone will go, "Well, of course that's an option. That's going to be there." But as soon as it comes out the prime minister's mouth, it suddenly becomes much bigger than just a green tick on a table in a government document. Yeah. And as I say, I think then the other thing is because, you know, they set out a list of kind of options. Is there any waiting around the prime minister's commentary around those options that nods in the direction of what he might prefer? I think the other thing to think about is what does the European Union look like at the time of the next UK general election? So, you know, who is leading France by that point? Who is leading
Germany? Because there's a scenario. So imagine a scenario just a sort of um thought experiment here and because I've had these conversations are live by the way I was talking to some folk um who we can loosely describe as being in the sort of on in the European diplomatic community around all of this and this conversation is live and they're listening very carefully to what Andy Bernham is um saying on the one hand some people in that level at the EU who would love by the way to see the UK come back are aware that we might be heading into a world where we saw what the EU has said to Canada, this talk of associate membership, whatever that amounts to. In the medium-term and the longer term, there's a question about Ukraine, what happens
with Ukraine and how in the EU's orbit is Ukraine. And in a scenario where it was in the orbit, it would have to be much more loose, a much more loose affiliation than current member states have in all likelihood. In other words, does the European Union get to a point in the future where it is willing in a way that it perhaps wasn't a decade or so back to have a much more overt series of lanes around enthusiasm towards centralization. In other words, where a country like the UK could be definitively in the outer orbit. It kind of was in the outer orbit already, but definitively in a outer orbit, which you know may be appealing to some. Now, it was a big weekend for elections around the world because there was
surprise results in Brazil and Serbia. The French presidential election sort of heated up even though it's not till next spring. And lots of my BBC colleagues are getting ready to cover the Israeli elections which are happening on Tuesday. Conveniently, we have on speed dial a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Nfield College at the University of Oxford. It's the political scientist Ben Anel, who is the person we call up when we've got to do a quick whistle stop tour of elections around the world. And Ben is on the line.
Hello, Adam. Thank you for having me. Have you been up all night analyzing multiple elections in multiple time zones? You know what was wonderful is that the Brazilian election was called about 5 minutes before I went to bed or I went to bed about 5 minutes after it was called. Yes. And I saw the results of the Serbian election on the 10:00 news on BBC 1. So yeah, that was done and dusted, too. Um, not to say they weren't both exciting though. So, let's start with Brazil then. And so, yeah, Lula's big comeback. Lula is back. I mean, this is Lula's fourth term as Brazilian president, which is some going. The Brazilian constitution allows you to only have two consecutive terms, but of course,
uh, Lula's four terms are split uh, by others, including Dil Marissa and Ja Bolsinaro and so on. So, uh, we didn't think he was going to win, though. Uh I mean I think most people including people in Lula's party and other progressives in Latin America thought that after the first round um a couple of weeks ago where Flavio Bossaro Jer Balsinaro's son had a decent lead and all the remaining candidates in the first round looked on the right that was it for Lula. Uh but it very much wasn't it for Lula. uh although I read the analysis that the basically the Brazilian political system uh he's called president but actually he's not got huge presidential powers.
He doesn't and um you know one of the areas like for most presidents that he has a little bit more um latitude and freedom is foreign policy. That's actually not an area that center-left people around the world are going to be very excited about because Lula has not massively distanced himself from Vladimir Putin for example. So, so that's one area where we might have um we might be less excited about Lula returning to power. Uh he is certainly not going to be any friend of Donald Trump. Uh Donald Trump will of course have his own issues potentially in the next week or so after the midterms. But I think in issues like the preservation of the Amazon uh in and another important issue just being
whether Ja Bossinaro remains under house arrest in prison. he's he's essentially got an extremely long prison sentence for an attempt to overthrow the last presidential election. I think I think that's where we'll see a real difference. And then just of course that the parliamentary system there's still a lot of right-wingers and sort of Bolsinaro flavored politicians and more than there were a year ago. So uh in the senator in the Senate elections and the house elections for Brazil that happened before this presidential election uh Bolsonista's uh won a lot of seats. uh his Liberal Party uh now has more seats than it previously did. And so it's unclear that um Lula is going to be able to have
a domestic policy that's particularly expansionist. Both parties, oh, sorry, both candidates made a lot of promises uh during the election. Pretty typical in Brazilian elections. uh Lula's promises uh you know about expanding support for young entrepreneurs or expanding public spending in general are going to now run up against uh a Brazilian legislature that's basically controlled by the right. So we're going to have cohabitation in Brazil for the next few years. Right. Let's move from South America to Europe and the Serbian elections. Now these were snap elections, weren't they? That's right. uh and um they snapped quite badly for um for Vushic who um was the president of Serbia but wanted to run as prime
minister. So this is this kind of dance that you see in well Serbia's longtime ally Russia. You listeners will recall that Vladimir Putin was president and then he was prime minister with Midv as president and he went back to being president again later on. That's the kind of stunt that Vuch was going for. he' he'd essentially been in charge of Serbia in one way or another for 12 years and he was looking to come back into parliament and his party SNS uh did really badly uh and they were defeated and this just must be absolutely the worst thing for a populist right candidate in the entire world. they were defeated by students uh by the student list uh which is I suppose in a sense it's a youth-based social movement uh after there was a
horrible disaster in Novead a few years ago of a railway station or bus station uh a public transit station collapsing and killing a bunch of people and that's led to these waves and waves of student protests and those have culminated in this student list so parties running on the student list uh winning a majority in parliament And the clues in the name there, student list, it's it's a list of candidates as opposed to a political party with a classic leader. Yeah. Uh that's absolutely right. And so there are some similarities to what happened in Serbia yesterday to what happened uh to Victor Orban uh in Hungary uh earlier on in the year where his you know he'd been in charge for
even longer than Vhuch had in Serbia but similar you know pro-Putin leaning similar attempts to take a democratic system and constantly sort of be leaning on it tilting it towards your own party. that worked very well for a long time for Fidesh until it suddenly didn't work. That part of the story is very similar and Peter Maja the new Hungarian prime minister has been talking about that all morning long and saying look at the similarities. The big difference though is that Peter Maja had his own party Tisha sort of formed around him and a bunch of other leader sort of young executive types and has a strong party identity and that's simply not true in Serbia. So, it's hard to know exactly what Serbian politics will look like in
the next few years, except that if you're a Russian spy who's been based in Serbia for the last few years, you probably took the train out last night. I suppose the common thread of those three elections, two very recent ones and one less recent, is the defeat of what people might call right-wing populists. Can we read anything into that, or is that just that's just the pendulum swing of elections? It just happens the pendulum swung in the same direction in three different places. Yeah. I mean, well, I said on social media last night, everyone should be careful about reading too much into this. So, I suppose I shouldn't change.
But if you could just do that now, that would be great. Well, quite And I said, you know, look, politics doesn't move in straight lines. So, uh it could well be that the Israeli elections uh go better for Benjamin Netanyahu than people think, that he remains in power one way or another. I'd be surprised if the midterms went very well for Donald Trump. But look, we've seen a bunch of changes over the last few months that look bad for right-wing populists, not least the sort of relative decline of reform versus the Conservative party in the UK. You can look in British Columbia, the Conservatives won the seat for the first time for decades, sorry, won the province. Um, but they did so by turfing
out their kind of MAGA wing. So, so that all looks bad for right-wing populists. But if you fast forward to the French elections uh coming up next year and to the you what's going on in Italy with the rise of parties and politicians to Georgia Maloney's right, I wouldn't rule out right populism yet. But I think what we could say is this is the first period of time in which we've seen continued and regular defeats for right-wing populists who've been in power. And maybe that's new, but that's only new because those candidates and parties hadn't been successful 5 or 10 years ago. So now we're seeing what it's like when they lose. And you know the good news is at least in the case of Vuchic
and Orban and I assume for Flavio Bolsinaro they are admitting defeat and leaving rather than trying a coup. And it's the Israeli elections on Tuesday. Um we will be talking about those elections for a long time to come. Well, mainly because it takes quite a long time to work out who the Israeli government's going to be. Yeah. I was going to say we'll be talking about them for a long time to come because getting your head around the Israeli parliament and the Israeli electoral system is tough. It's it's an extraordinarily proportional system. Uh and so that means lots of small parties. That's moderated slightly by the fact that they have a threshold of three and a half% that a party has to reach to get into parliament. Uh but then that means
there's all kinds of shenanigans about seeing if you can keep some of those parties below 3 and a half%. Uh it's made even more complicated by the fact that there are some so-called Arab parties, parties that Palestinian Israelis vote for. uh but neither wing the Netanyahu liquid right-wing uh coalition who are currently in government or their more liberal opponents neither of them uh want to have a majority that involves the Arab parties. So that makes it extremely difficult to know how you can really control a majority in the Knesset the Israeli parliament in the you know given that 10% of the seats are likely to be held by people that no one wants to go into coalition with.
Yes. So we will I mean when if you're a betting man when do you think we will get an Israeli government formed? I suppose it depends what the actual result. It's a stupid question. Yeah it does. So they count fairly fast. We should know by Wednesday or Thursday roughly what the Knesset will look like. The two most likely outcomes are that the liberals, so people like Y lapid, I mean none of these guys are especially liberal from a British perspective, but Avidor Lieberman, Napali Bennett, those guys in all their parties, there is a good chance that they will get enough seats to command a majority in the Knesset. What they will do if they get that is that they will um immediately
seek to end Netanyahu's legal reforms, which were essentially weakening the control of judges. They will probably investigate Netanyahu and in particular they'll investigate whether Netanyahu prepared for October the 7th or was prepared for something like that to happen. And they will insist that ultraorththodox uh Israelis uh go through conscription, military conscription like everybody else. That's what they care about. Note what I'm not saying. There's nothing there about the war in Iran. There's nothing there about Gaza. I wouldn't expect a massive liberalization of Israeli politics. It certainly won't go anywhere, even back to where it was under Netanyahu before October the 7th, even if the Liberals
win. But they might not win. They might end up with maybe more seats than Netanyahu's crew, but not enough given these Arab parties. And in that case, you could imagine a world where Netanyahu basically turfs out Ben Gavir and Smotri and these right-wing guys he's allied with now and forms what's called a Zionist coalition where he still remains prime minister uh and attempts a kind of grand coalition that nobody likes very much. And then just one last stop on our world tour and it's not an election that's happening yet but it is going to happen next year. France. Marine Le Pan basically doing her election launch, but it's sort of looking like she was anointing herself president rather than joining a campaign to maybe win.
Yeah. Well, you know, never let it be said that um she lacks self-confidence. Um I mean, after all, a year ago, it looked like she wasn't going to be the party, the rest candidate at all, that Jordan Barda would have it. the riots. It's it's hard to tell a story where the riots in France aren't good for Marine Le Pen. Um but that comes in a variety of ways. You one Macron and people associated with Macron look very weak because of the sort of floppy response to the riots um which has satisfied no one on any side. And then on the other hand, you could argue that um Jean Lukemelon Jean, so the leader of the left um he could be hurt by the riots as well if people associate the riots with him. And that might be bad
for Marine Le Pen because she really wants to go up against a candidate of the far left. She probably doesn't want to go up against Edward Phipe or one of these centerright candidates. even though they're associated with Macron, even though their chances of winning are less good than a year ago, they'll still do better than Melon Shawn. So, I think, you know, Le Pen maybe has got a little bit ahead of herself here. Ultimately, she would love to be able to kind of choose who she goes up against. Uh, but I think if she goes up against a candidate who's sort of broadly acceptable to the to people who are skeptical of Marine Le Pen, she may
struggle more than it looks right now. And also, what did you think about the location that she did her speech in? It's Orion, which is very closely associated with Jon of Arc. Yeah. Well, there's there's a good bit of uh there's a good bit of sort of self worship going on from Le Pen. Uh she might want to remember what happened to uh Jehovah. It didn't work out that well for her. So, I would say exactly. I would you want to be a bit careful about hubristic episodes involving martyrs. They're usually mastered for a reason. Interesting. This is going to turn into an episode of In our Time.
It is. Uh Ben, I think we've exhausted my knowledge of Jon of Arc there. No. Well done. I was like, this is like being in a pub quiz with you. Um in the Jon of Arc round. Uh oh. Anyway, last question though, Ben. I noticed Luke Trill, poster from More in Common, who's been on newscast a lot in the last few months, was posting on social media at the weekend, and actually it was Fisel Islam sent me his post. We should look into this about Luke saying that when he was doing focus groups in the Makerfield bi-election, two people said they had asked AI who to vote for. What do you think of that phenomenon of voters subcontracting their vote to AI models potentially?
Well, I think that means there are at least two honest people in that makerfield focus group. I expect that the numbers are probably higher than that. Um and I think listen if you ask people um you know have you googled anything about political parties I think lots of people would say oh yeah um if you now Google you're using AI most of the time uh you know the AI search will appear at the top of the window. So I you know there probably is a qualitative difference in opening chat GPT and putting these questions in and asking directly but we've always I think looked for information looked for help and AI is so part of web search now that I suspect all of us will be doing this whether we like it or not now the question is yeah
you is that going to be good or bad it you know AI might say God you have a load of odd preferences that don't seem to line up to any particular party that's how the liberal democrats got so many votes for so years with people who had an odd sort of set of views that weren't represented by the major parties. So, it could be that AI sort of sorts us all better into who suits us more. You know, you might say that's a good thing. Interesting. I think I'm with you, which is that actually the idea that politics is some kind of everyone goes and has a long night of the soul the night before the election and rationally adds up which party to vote for has never been true. And so,
this is just another example of that never being true. Yeah, it's never been true. And um I don't think sort of seeking help in trying to figure out uh which political party is better for you is a bad thing. You know, most people are not you and I um Adam. They're not hosting a show about politics or teaching politics for a living. You know, we wouldn't probably want a society in which people think about politics all the time. That would be 1793 in France. So, I think it's probably more healthy for people to you think, "Oh, there's an election coming up. I have to think about what's going on. What are all the parties doing? And how does this suit me?" The danger, of course, would be if the influence
that they get from AI is biased in some way. Uh, and I, you know, I suspect people already do think it's biased. They might think it's liberal biased or conservative bias, but then we'll get into issues about trust. Can you really trust what chat GPT or Claude or Gemini is telling you? And also then just what's your previous relationship with those tools been? In other words, how well do they already know you? Absolutely. So they're actually and then does that mean that they're biased towards telling you what you want to hear or do they get swayed by outside but yeah who knows and the algorithms and the waitings that they use in um in AI
training models are changing all the time. So you know what we learned a year ago about this might not be true next week. So, it's very much uh hit and hope at the moment. Um, and I suspect that we'll see some scandals around the election uh the next general election that we have that will be along the lines of clawed biased towards liberals or something. Uh, but until we get to that point, um, it's hard to know. Ben, thank you very much. Thank you, Adam. Lovely to chat. And that's all for this episode of Newscast. A reminder that we are available as a podcast every single day of the week and you can download us from 5:00 PM every day UK time wherever you get your
podcasts. And there will be another newscast coming your way very soon. Bye-bye.
