Is Iran winning the war?

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

Another checkered flag for the books.

Time to celebrate with Jamba.

Jump in at JambaCasino.com.

Let's Jamba.

No purchase necessary, BTW Group.

Boy, we're prohibited by mom.

CCNC, 21 Plus, sponsored by JambaCasino.

This is a global player, original podcast.

The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe,

even segments of our own press,

should be saying one thing to President Trump.

Thank you.

Thank you for the courage to stop this terror state

from holding the world hostage with missiles

while building or attempting to build a nuclear bomb.

Thank you for doing the work of the free world.

Well, on behalf of all those ungrateful allies,

I'd like to offer Pete Hegseth a thank you.

Thank you for getting us into the biggest,

bloodiest, most dangerous, almighty mess

that you no longer control.

And also, thank you for the fact that Katari gas fields

are being blown up, that the price of oil and gas

have gone through the roof.

The state of hormones is still shut.

If America is winning, what does loss look like?

Welcome to The News Agents.

It's John.

It's Emily.

It's Lewis, and it has been yet another dizzying 24 hours

in the Iran War.

Quick update is to, as of about 1 o'clock in the afternoon,

London time where we are.

Overnight, Israel, struck Iran's southpars gas field,

killed Iran's intelligence minister alongside some

of the heaviest air strikes on Beirut in decades.

Meanwhile, Iran retaliated by hitting

the energy infrastructure across the Gulf,

including crucially, Qatar's Erasmus fan,

liquefied national natural gas facility.

This is one of the most important pieces of energy

infrastructure anywhere in the world,

producing around 20% of global natural gas supply.

Trump threatened in retaliation to massively blow up

the entirety of the Iranian southpars gas field

if Iran attacks Qatar's energy infrastructure again,

while simultaneously claiming the US

knew nothing about Israel's strike.

Economic impact of all of this is absolutely massive

and could last years.

Just overnight, we've seen gas prices surging by 35%.

Oil prices up 10% now about $120, a barrel,

stock markets around the world in total volatility,

and experts, energy experts in particular warning

that this stuff cannot be corrected overnight

because once it's destroyed,

it will take years to rebuild.

So we could be baking in energy price inflation,

which could rock the world economy,

not just for weeks or months, but years to come.

Yeah, and exactly as you say,

the effects are going to be profound,

whether it be on interest rates,

whether it be on people's mortgages,

obviously, whether you were able to fill up your car,

the petrol station, that is, if there is any petrol,

and so the list of things goes on and on.

But of that list, I thought the most interesting thing

was Donald Trump's post on truth social

because alongside that threat to blow up Iran's oil feels

like nothing has ever been seen before.

He said, we knew nothing about the Israeli attack.

That's completely news to us, and we've told them,

he says this in block capital letters,

that they must stop and they will not attack again.

And you think, really, really is it possible

that Israel launched an attack like that on Iran

when there is this interoperability

between the Israeli Air Force and the US Air Force

over Iran that an attack could have taken place

without central command knowing about it.

It's just inconceivable, and there's a lot of reporting now

from the Wall Street Journal,

from some of the best kind of Middle East watchers,

saying, absolutely, Donald Trump knew what Israel

was going to do.

Absolutely, it had been signed off by the Americans.

But because there's been such a backlash

from the Gulf states who suddenly think,

geez, what are we getting out of this friendship

with Donald Trump and this alliance with America?

That they're blowing up our facilities,

that Donald Trump is saying, oh, nothing to do with me.

I didn't even know about it.

I just don't believe a word of it.

Yeah, and I think it is worth possibly listening

to a bit more of America's Defense Secretary,

Secretary for War, Pete Hegsert, who gave that press conference

just before we came on air this morning

because there is a contradiction between the rhetoric

that he's using and the reality that much of the world

can see, that you can frankly drive a truck through.

Look at his explanation, kind of an attempt at dark humor,

I'm guessing, why they think they're winning.

Ballistic missile attacks against our forces, down 90%,

since the start of the conflict,

same with one-way attack UAVs,

think kamikaze drones, down 90%.

Now, the Iranians will still shoot, we know that,

but they would shoot a lot more if they could, but they can.

The last job anyone in the world wants right now?

Senior leader for the IRGC, or Beseech,

temp jobs, all of them.

And to borrow a page from Admiral Ernest King in World War II,

we've decided to share the ocean with Iran.

We've given them the bottom half.

Fratboy humor.

Yeah, chuck another beer.

Chuck another beer, which might work better

if he wasn't explaining essentially how badly

things have gone wrong.

The Iranians have shared the ocean,

they do control the straits, that's the whole point.

You might have sunk their ships,

but they're mining our tankers.

They have complete control.

And so the idea that you try and spin this off,

you know, with your epic fury sound by,

and you're kind of chiseled your good looks of,

isn't it amazing what we've done?

We did it so fast.

That might work in an era where it was the only

tunnel of communication.

But now we see, we see what's happening, right?

You can see the reality on the ground.

And I think, you know, John, the question

you started the show with, which is, you know,

essentially who's winning on this?

And I think the very fact that we're asking that question,

but so many people are asking that question.

We know, you know, audiences are asking that question.

That tells you a lot, right?

Because in Trump's mind, I'm sure when he started this war,

there would have been no question three weeks in,

as to whether we would even be asking that question.

We wouldn't be, because it would be so obvious

that America will be completely dominant.

But the truth is, is that this is a nuanced situation, right?

And there are sort of almost multiple wars going on at once.

Like, militarily, there's no question that,

in the pure kind of brute facts of it, America's winning, right?

They've got pretty much control of the air.

Hex is right, that they've degraded

Iranian military capacity, substantially.

But they've degraded militarily, their military capacity

substantially, if like you're thinking Iran's goal

is to fight a war, a sort of conventional

war against another state.

That's not the game they're playing right now.

The game the Iranians are playing right now,

is basically two thoughtfold.

One is to survive, which right now, internally, politically,

they show every sign of so doing.

In fact, it looks so far that this war

is actually insulating them in place.

And the other is to show the world that when push comes to shove,

they are at least as powerful as the Americans.

Why?

Because they have a chokehold over the world economy.

Via the Straits of Hormuz, but also, frankly,

their willingness to destroy the world's energy infrastructure

across the Gulf, on which we in Europe in particular,

but Asia and much of the rest of the world denies.

So right now, we can't say that America's winning.

You can make a very compelling case

that the very least Iran is holding their own,

which is basically a net victory for them.

And so then you have to say,

what would American victory look like?

What to be convincing to the world?

Presumably, it would mean that the Straits of Hormuz

is open, oil is moving freely,

and there are no further attacks on Gulf installations

of Qatar, of the UAE, of Saudi Arabia,

which is not the position right now.

And it's kind of interesting that I heard something today

from Scott Besson, the US Treasury Secretary.

And this is about Iran's main port for getting rid of,

for exporting oil, which is Harg Island, in the Gulf.

And listen to what he has to say.

As I said, there was a bombing campaign last week.

The military assets on Kharagawa and were destroyed.

And the other thing I can tell you,

if you're an oil worker, you don't want to work there.

So all the oil workers there are being coerced to stay there.

And you know, we will see what happens

with whether that eventually becomes a US asset.

A US asset?

So what the stars and stripes are going to be flying

over Kharagawa and that's what he seems to be saying.

Just think about that for a second,

about what that would mean.

It would mean getting presumably Marines onto Kharagawa land.

Well, that's not going to happen

without resistance from the Iranians.

It means presumably boats, naval vessels,

going up the Strait of Hormuz to get to Kharagawa land.

Well, how are you going to do that

when you can't get any shipping through?

And US military hasn't dared to go anywhere near it.

And so things are being said.

And you think, okay, yeah,

so America's going to take over Kharagawa land.

It's just not, I can't see America putting the thousands

of troops on the ground that would be necessary

for that to happen.

And if you look at the latest opinion polling in America,

I think it's something like 68% of Americans

oppose ground troops going anywhere near any of this.

Yeah, that tells you where the public opinion is.

And I think what we're beginning to understand,

to lose this point about that this is not a conventional war

that Iran is fighting.

It is being fought with guerrilla tactics, right?

Much more low key, but much more effective.

And that is not an accidental strategy.

The reason why Iran is proving so powerful right now,

lies in what's known as the Mosaic Defense Strategy, right?

And it is a strategy that they have built up over two decades.

And it focuses essentially on distributing power

across local commanders,

ensuring that local forces can continue operating.

So when you think of the American military,

you think, totemically, of the Pentagon, right?

Sencom.

Literally, it does what it says on the tip of our heart.

It's the central command.

Mosaic Defense is not just a concept.

It is an official military doctrine that the IRGC adopted

when they saw what was happening in the Iraq war, right?

This goes back to the mid-2000s when they saw shock and awe.

And they went, hang on a sec, we know we cannot win

a conventional war, we're going to subdivide.

We're going to break the system down into smaller cells.

So every cell operates with its own nucleus independently.

When one cell is taken out, the others are fine.

There is a contingency.

There is a strategy.

And it's proving very effective right now

because there isn't one unique post in the center of Tehran

that signals the war is over.

It is over.

It is one for America.

It's all been distributed in a much clever way right now

because they saw this coming.

Well, which is why the Americans in the Israelis

can talk about sort of decapitation strategies

much as they like it, and they can talk about how

no one wants to be the head of the IRGC.

I'm sure that's true, but ultimately, you know,

it is a many headed hydra and it's a whole system.

And you can remove as many individuals as you like.

This is, I think, the sort of fundamental sort of misunderstanding

which is they thought it was going to be like Venezuela

and you can remove the top, you can remove the top

and then coerce someone more junior to do what you want.

That has proven to completely be the opposite of the case

not least because of course Iran

and they have done for 50 years

have seen themselves as part of a civilizational struggle

against the Western and against America.

So it's not that surprising.

What scares me about this whole thing really,

at the point that we're in now,

is that you can just see that both sides have every incentive

not to de-escalate, but to escalate

and intensify the war further, right?

Because at the present moment,

if you think about the sort of incentives

for both for the Iranians,

they need to know,

and all the reporting I'm seeing from tyranny saying this,

that the Iranians now consider,

not least because Trump himself made it about this,

that this is a fight for survival,

that they either survive or they don't,

and that therefore they need to send a message

to the rest of the world,

that not only that they've won,

but you must never come back again.

They must show that there is a deterrent to the West

and the United States and to Israel never to return.

Because right now they think

if they were to just down tools and say,

okay, we'll come to some sort of deal with the Americans,

that the Israelis in particular will be back in five months

or six months or 12 months.

They want this to be the last war

that the West in Israel ever wages against them.

So they have every incentive to keep the war going

and the Americans for their part as well, right now.

If Trump were to just say, okay, that's enough,

well, first of all, they can't be sure

that the Iranians would stop

and they can't be sure they'll be able to reopen the strait

so they will be humiliated.

And therefore, it seems to me that I'm not surprised

we're hearing them talk about Harg Island

because it seems to me that they now have every incentive

or Trump has every incentive to try and do

riskier and riskier things to eke out

what the whole world would consider to be a win,

which is something that Trump,

more than any other American president will care about.

But what's the best and also,

apart from the Harg Island,

wasn't it also talking about lifting sanctions

on Iranian oil at sea?

I mean, Jesus, I don't understand that.

Are you threatening, is this sticking carrot?

I mean, I don't understand that.

Well, it's very unclear what they're trying to do right now.

But Lewis, I completely agree that the remorseless logic

of where we are now is that it becomes

a full-scale invasion by US forces

if they want to prevent that from happening.

That's an audio that you describe where Iran

kind of wins, as it were,

because they control the straight-up or moves

and they've shown the world, they've shown the world

so that they can, and that they've got the missiles

to blow up the oil and gas terminals in Qatar,

in Saudi, you know, UAE, wherever.

Therefore, if you really want to stop that

and you want to take control of the straight-up or moves,

you're going to need to put ground forces there

in substantial numbers, exactly what Donald Trump

promised wouldn't happen.

He thought that he could win this war from the skies

without the need for troops on the ground.

And as soon as you put troops on the ground,

then the Iranians are aiming at you

and there'll be a lot of people,

a lot of Americans going home in body bags

as a result of that, America might well win.

And they've got the logic is that that's what they should do.

But that is where you've got to, you started something

and now the logic is, it's either a total victory

for Iran or a total victory for America

and it's hard to see where the off ramp is,

where both sides think, okay, now the fair do's

we've both got what we wanted out of this.

I can't see that.

I can't see boots on the ground

and maybe that's just because it's sort of fighting against,

you know, every kind of corpuslemnial soul

that you don't want to see that,

not least because Trump grew up in the, yeah.

I'd preferily hope that I am.

But I would say that, but to that point,

there is also a world in which America wants

to call off its dogs, but Israel thinks it's onto something

and we start to see the gap

between what Israel thinks it can do

and what Trump is willing to do.

And Israel, I mean, has got the advantage

in a way of saying, we're right in the middle of this, right?

We can see it's on our doorstep.

We've been dealing with Hezbollah,

we've been dealing with Hamas,

we've been dealing with Iran's proxies for years.

But really, the stuff that we're doing in Lebanon

is making a lot of people ask questions

about legality, about criminality

because they can go around saying,

well, we're targeting Hezbollah.

Is Hezbollah in a block of flats?

Is Hezbollah on a bridge?

Is Hezbollah in a car park?

Is Hezbollah on a road?

Well, if you're Israel, you say, well, maybe.

But meanwhile, you're targeting civilian infrastructure.

That constitutes, I think many people would say, a war crime, right?

If you are destroying ports and airports and roads

and domestic residences because Hezbollah

might have used it or they might be there,

I mean, you're on a hiding to nothing at that point, right?

And Trump doesn't look like he actually has any say

over what Israel's doing there.

And the Israelis will know that this is their big chance.

Because Trump may coming back when this is over

or presumably actually any future American president,

like, who knows what as a result of this is going to happen

between the Israeli-US relationship as a result of all this.

You're seeing it in the Republican Party.

It's been building for a while, but it's been put on steroids.

More and more senior Republicans in a way that,

would once have been pretty unthinkable for, you know,

starting to say, what's in it for us this relationship?

Israel keeps dragging us into these sort of security conflicts.

So, you know, Netanyahu himself, of course,

facing elections this year, but we'll know that this is probably

his big, big chance.

So he's risk calculus, I think, will be, you know,

very, very much a skew.

He'll know that this is his opportunity.

I mean, I think the position of Israel,

vis-a-vis public opinion in the United States,

is something that is a profound change

over the past decade.

And arguably, you'd have thought October the 7th

would be the moment when Israel would have maximum sympathy

and that there would be a unity around the terrorist threat

that they face.

But because of the way the war has been prosecuted in Gaza,

and as you say, Emily, kind of what's happening now

in parts of central Beirut,

and not just the areas that were Hezbollah's strongholds,

you now have this fracturing whereby it's not just,

you've got the liberal left of American politics,

the progressive, you know, Zora Mamdani's,

who are deeply hostile towards Netanyahu and Israel,

and don't want to have anything to do with APAC,

which is the great, powerful Israel lobbying,

kind of machine in America.

And on the right, you've got, you know, what's his name?

Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

Yeah.

Exactly.

The far right who have got a strong anti-Semitic streak

as part of the whole issue, isn't it?

And then he has a land on it.

Yeah, and they really are, kind of saying,

why are we doing this?

And why is Israel leading us by the nose

into a conflict that we don't want to be part of?

And so you've got this fracturing of support

that I think is really quite profound,

and if I was involved in Israeli politics,

I'd be deeply concerned by.

It's funny.

I mean, you know, a lot of people have been talking

this week, and it's been coming up in American politics

about whether this could be Trump's Vietnam.

The more and more, particularly over the last few days,

that I thought about it, in where I think Vietnam

is the wrong analogy.

You know, there's a strong and strong case,

particularly just thinking about it

on the basis of what we've just been discussing

in terms of there's no incentive to stop.

It looks quite a lot like Ukraine.

You know, it looks like Trump's Ukraine,

as much as Trump's Vietnam.

In the sense that, you know, you see a very similar dynamic

that's played out for four years in Ukraine,

which is the Russians can't be seen to stop

because what's victory, it cannot be seen to have lost.

And the Ukrainians, for their part,

have no incentive to come to the table

because they know that they can't trust the other side,

which is exactly what the Iranians feel about

the Israeli and the U.S.

And it has other hallmarks in Ukraine as well,

doesn't it mean there's the economic impact,

particularly on energy markets,

which has actually been enormous.

And the other one is that, you know,

you went into that conflict,

and everyone thought that there was one side

with massive security and it would be done.

And yet, here we are four years later.

I'm not saying this one, I don't think this one

will be going on in four years' time.

But, you know, there are very, you know,

the echoes are there in the sense that,

just like Putin, Trump thought that there would be

a simple set of strategic aims

and his overwhelming military superiority

would be able to affect them quickly.

And he underestimated the other side.

I say that with no relish, by the way,

no truck for Iran, but it is clearly the case.

Just one data point on that is that,

Pete Hagueceth has said to Congress,

we need $200 billion to fund the war in Iran,

which has been going on two and a half weeks, as we speak.

That is more than the total America has spent

so far in supporting Ukraine.

Now, obviously, there's a kind of, wow, hang on.

So is that, are they already spent that much

on the war in Iran?

No, but what it shows is the Pentagon calculus

is that this war is gonna go on

for some time to come.

This is not three weeks and done.

This is not quickly over, you know,

we'll all be home by Christmas.

This is going on and on and on.

Yeah, and if you go back to the original objective

of Trump, which was to de-nucleify Iran, right,

to take its teeth, I mean, what are we left with now?

There are places in this for harm

that they could choose to target, they could choose to hit.

If you get the stuff wrong, you basically

allow radioactive material into the atmosphere, right?

You puncture it with water, if it hits water,

you make a whole new problem for yourself

in terms of the kind of toxicity of the environment

and the air and all the rest of it, which can't be undone,

right, last, as we know, decades generations.

And yes, in Congress, they were asking the assessment

of the intelligence community as to whether there was

an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.

And there was a really interesting exchange

between Jon Ossoff, who's the center for Georgia,

until Sikhabar, who is famously head of the NSA,

a woman who hated Trump's forever wars

until suddenly she found herself promoted

and didn't mind them so much.

It's very important to be flexible.

It is very important to understand both sides.

And this is what he asked her, and this is her response.

It really takes you inside how they're all now deflecting

back onto the guy at the top.

Was it the assessment of the intelligence community

that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed

by the Iranian regime?

The intelligence community assessed that Iran maintained

the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow

their nuclear enrichment capability.

Was it the assessment of the intelligence community

that there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed

by the Iranian regime, yes or no?

Senator, the only person who can determine

in what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.

This is the worldwide threat hearing

where you present to Congress, national intelligence,

timely objective and independent of political considerations.

You've stated today that the intelligence community's

assessment is that Iran's nuclear enrichment program

was obliterated and that, quote,

there had been no efforts since then

to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.

Was it the intelligence community's assessment

that nevertheless, despite this obliteration,

there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed

by the Iranian regime, yes or no?

It is not the intelligence community's responsibility

to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.

That is a, here's the problem.

I mean, incredible, right?

You're the head of the NSA and yet you've determined

that there is only one person who could possibly know that.

Like the omnipotence, the messianic vision of Donald Trump

is what you have to fall back on

when you're his own security advisor.

And pay for entirely clear, is it?

You just wanted the speech bubble out of her mouth

to, in answer to the question,

do they, did they pose an immediate threat

and you wanted her to say no?

No fucking idea.

No, well, no, just no full stop.

We didn't think they posed an immediate threat.

Only Donald Trump has, you know.

Only Donald Trump.

I mean, only don't, can you imagine?

Can you imagine being part of a merit like,

they had the most extraordinary intelligence

community in the world, right before this.

And now she's at the top and she's like,

well, there's only one guy who'll know that.

Yeah.

Well, they know, look, the DNI have full of very clever people

and they will know that there was no imminent threat

to the United States or US interests in the area

until America attacked.

And that's the only time that the threat level went up

and we can see it playing out.

Now, I mean, it just shows that, you know,

this was a war of choice.

Now, I saw Tony Blair the other night

being interviewed and say, every war is a war of choice.

Now, this was a war of choice.

There was no imminent threat.

And yet you chose to launch this attack

without any reference to the United Nations,

without any reference to Congress,

without any reference to anyone.

I have to say, when you say Tony Blair's like,

every war is a war of choice,

I get the sort of vision of a thawnton's chocolate box.

You know, that might be nice.

Tell that to the polls at night.

Oh my god, I wonder that.

Yeah, exactly.

Right, when we come back, we'll be talking about how this

will affect British politics and Europe as well.

Stay with us.

WHISTLE BLOWS

From a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists.

Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari.

It's time to get to your calls.

Find out the latest news and hear every side of the story.

There is no question.

Ending the war is the quickest way to reduce the cost of living.

That is my first instinct, my first priority.

Is the best way to help us with petrol and fuel costs

for Keir Starmer to say yes to President Trump

and send a navy to protect her moves?

To a fallout of the Iran War, follow it live on LBC.

Listen on our free global player app or the LBC app.

Drew McIntyre here from WWE.

Wheeled in the Claymore can be a life of chaos.

When I'm not dominating in the ring,

Chumbacocino is how this warrior takes a rebrate.

With hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases,

there's always something fresh to try.

In those daily boosts, next level,

even my free time feels like Val Halem.

So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun.

And let's Chumbac.

No purchase necessary, VGW Group Boyd were prohibited by law,

CTs and Cs, 21 Plus, sponsored by Chumbacococino.

The news agents.

As Prime Minister, I want to speak to you simply and plainly

about the grave emergency now facing our country.

Jobs will be in danger,

and take home pay will be less.

We shall have to postpone some of the hopes and aims we have set ourselves

for expansion and for our standard of living.

We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war.

So that's a future case, Dharma.

That is Ted Heath.

Prime Minister in the early 1970s,

an extraordinary speech he was making,

a sort of national broadcast to the nation,

where he was talking about an energy price to shock,

which started in the Middle East,

after the Yom Kupur War,

which resulted, among other things, in the three-day week, in the UK,

energy conservation measures,

all seemed quite historical and unlikely until this week,

because as a result of what we are seeing,

not just with the war itself, but particularly overnight,

as we were saying at the top of the show,

these devastating attacks on energy infrastructure across the Gulf,

experts and analysts warning that,

unless this war were to stop pretty soon,

we would not only likely be looking at, you know,

really big impacts in terms of energy prices

for consumers and businesses in the UK,

but such will be the demand on LNG,

natural gas markets around the world,

that we might end up, the British government,

might end up having to look at rationing for petrol

and for energy as well for consumers and businesses,

which is not something that we have seen

since the days of Ted Heath in the 1870s.

This is extraordinary, and it seems...

If it seems far-fetched,

listen to the airlines, they're talking about, you know,

maybe flights having to be cancelled,

because there's going to be a shortage of aviation fuel.

Look what's happening in Asia right now.

In Thailand, government has called on the public

to reduce their use of air conditioning to save energy,

and if you've been to Thailand and you know how humid it can be,

that is going to be a mighty tall order.

The Philippines, many government workers,

are now operating on a four-day week.

Vietnam officials have urged employers

to allow staff to work from home.

So this is already real-world impacts now

are only two and a half weeks in.

And so, you know, imagine if they haven't found this off-ramp

in the next three weeks or six weeks or eight weeks

of the situation we're going to be,

the price of fuel, the limited of supplies,

and the impact it's going to have on all our lives.

I mean, I've got that sort of muscle memory

from COVID kind of kicking in, which is at the beginning

of the COVID lockdown shutdown,

it all seemed to be happening over there.

Do you remember? It was like,

oh, have you seen what China's having to do?

Totally.

That obviously, and what Rome's doing, have you seen?

But now we're hearing like Thailand,

well, that's far away.

Philippines, well, that's very far away.

Vietnam, well, okay, we won't go to Vietnam.

But actually, this stuff creeps closer quite quickly.

And in the last few minutes,

we're hearing that energy firms have pulled 21 fixed deals,

right? In other words,

the energy suppliers used to put on,

I think, nearly 40 available tariffs,

which are like, you're on this, you'll find you're safe.

That's dropping now.

That's cut in half.

In Germany, they're just about to announce,

I think, a windfall tax,

or they are weighing a windfall tax

as they're seeing this drive in a fuel surge.

So there's that sort of weird and wonderful way

that we assume that Europe is slightly insulated,

that we're a bit quieter, a bit further away,

we're a bit duller, we don't use air conditioning,

we don't have typhoons, we'll be okay.

We're not.

You know, this is kind of coming for us too,

as to your Heathcliff.

Your Heathcliff.

All right, Margot Robbie.

Yeah, I knew there was something about him,

but there was,

I don't mind being compared to Jake.

Jake, you're all right.

Jake, him job.

Finger on the cultural new pulses ever.

But the point is when he said that,

that has now become such a sort of a sort of iconic clip.

But when he said that,

he probably felt like Boris Johnson

on, you know, March the 23rd in COVID.

You were saying things you never thought

you would have to say to the nation.

Please.

And these things sort of cascade,

sort of out of control, you know, so rapidly.

And the truth is, unfortunately,

we, you know, in Europe,

we are especially, especially exposed to all of this,

because we are unlike the Americans,

the place that is slightly more insulated from all this,

ironically enough, is the United States

because they have such a robust domestic energy supply.

Partly as a result of sharing another,

they say, do frack and they are themselves

a big supply of, of LNG to us.

So we are especially exposed.

And there will now be this enormous bidding war,

essentially, for the remaining natural gas components

that there is.

And the thing that's also difficult in terms of energy supplies,

of course, is that the price we pay in the UK,

it's one of the sort of weird things about our energy market,

the price that we pay for all of our energy,

whether it's generated by renewables

or whatever it happens to be,

is pegged to the price of gas.

And so we're seeing this massive volatility

in the natural gas market,

which is going to have huge consequences.

We've sort of seen this game, of course,

play out before as a result of the Ukraine war.

It's not quite as bad as it was then.

But, you know, the problem is with energy price shocks

as Ted Heath showed or Ted Heath experienced.

And of course, energy is basically the base market

for absolutely everything.

If you have energy price inflation,

which is out of control,

then you basically have inflation,

which is out of control,

because it affects virtually every other market.

And if there is a shortage of energy,

again, not something we've really experienced of late,

then that has an even more profound effect on the economy.

And if it's as bad as people are saying,

I think a recession would be basically all but guaranteed,

interest rate increases,

rather than decreases, all but guaranteed,

and inflation out of control,

and employment's biking.

Should we be looking at the normal scene now?

I mean, like, that seems to be the old elephant

in the water, right?

Is why are we not taking our own,

well, we know why we're not taking our own gas,

because we're trying to, you know,

quit the habit, right?

But does this change everything now?

We're going to start saying,

we've got all this stuff like two minutes away,

why aren't we going for it?

Yes and no.

I mean, yes, I think it should change everything.

But you're not going to get it out the ground in,

you know, next week or the week after.

If you give licenses to, you know,

these kind of oil fields that are there.

We'll be 10 years too late.

I think that that's the problem that we've got,

that there's no, kind of,

there's not a silver bullet for us.

I mean, over the long term,

maybe if we were going to accept the fossil fuels

would play a larger role in our economy.

Or does it go the other way then?

Does everyone say right?

We've got to, we've got to take the net zero thing

really seriously,

because frankly, that is the cheapest way

of ever doing energy ever again.

I mean, obviously again,

the problem is, is the lag time.

And the thing is, is the way this stuff is not it.

You know, we often see this as,

as they're in competition with each other.

It shouldn't be either of them.

The fact of the matter is is that,

you know, we are going to be relying on oil and gas

for a long time.

The Climate Change Commission themselves,

even by 2050,

we're going to still be using a great deal of oil and gas.

I mean, I do think just in terms of the,

you know, the government have been relatively

kind of insulated politically on this

because of their opposition to the around war.

Interesting to see how that long that lasts.

On a few discrete reasons,

I think the question of the North Sea

will actually become a bigger political issue.

Not because it will help anything immediately,

but it does, you know,

with so much hostility in particular

in the press to Ed Miliband already,

this is his signature energy policy.

And there will be plenty of people,

I don't think, and it's not entirely unreasonable,

who say, you know, medium term.

Why are we not exploiting every last drop of oil and gas?

We can, not least because,

we can generate tax revenue from it

that we could invest in all the renewable energy.

And then just of course, as well,

if we are heading into a political world

where there is a bit like the early 1970s,

and this conflict goes on,

and we are looking at a massive energy price shock,

and we are looking at potential rationing or conservation,

that politically takes you into a whole new place.

And so far, the European powers have,

I think probably wisely up to now,

been very, very reluctant to get involved,

very, very reluctant to commit any military hardware

in an effort to keep the straits clear,

if that is possible to do.

At the moment, the public support them on that,

if we are looking at energy price shocks and constant,

and having to conserve energy shortages,

as well as the straits not being clear,

I wonder how long that will last,

and whether there will be a demand

from European populations for their governments

to try and do something about it.

I suppose if we're making the comparison

between what happened in 73 after the Yom Kippur War,

you were going into winter.

And now this is coming,

as we're kind of going into spring and summer,

where we will use less electricity,

we are not dependent on air conditioning in this country,

the lights don't need to go on until late in the evening.

It will not be doing your either stuff

in advance, of course, so we'll be trying it, yeah.

But it won't be the kind of,

doing your homework by candlelight,

which I did as a teenager.

Also, I mean, I just kind of...

But it's also to do with,

I mean, isn't it, if I've got this right,

it's to do with the hold-up of everything, right?

It's, we're talking about container ships,

like if you don't have oil,

it's not just you don't have oil to drive a car,

you don't have the means of getting drugs from one place to another,

you don't have the means of transporting things from one place to another,

you can't do your flights,

you can't get container ships from one part of the world to another.

I mean, you can't build a house,

you can't do your infrastructure,

because all the materials are stuck at sea,

or stuck in another country.

But I mean, that's why it is,

it's more like COVID from that perspective,

because you've got this chain of,

of the sort of the broken chain of procurement, right?

It puts the difference as well,

the sort of unhappiness for ourselves in,

by comparison to early 70s, of course,

is the reason why that was a problem

is because the oil producing economies of the Middle East

stopped exporting to us, right?

Because of their, of our association with Israel

and what happened in the Yom Kippur War.

Which was famously when Iran stepped in

and charged an extraordinary amount of it.

I mean, Iran went through the roof economically at exactly that time

because nobody else was exporting,

and they found a way of putting the prices of oil up.

But the point is in the end, they could lift the embargo

and then normal supplies resumed.

The difference with this is that obviously,

this is a war which is itself targeting

the energy infrastructure of the region,

which cannot easily be rebuilt.

You can't just turn the taps back on

because that infrastructure will have been destroyed.

So potentially the kind of,

the shadow of this could be far longer

than even what we saw in the early 70s.

It's interesting to posit the idea of,

kind of, Keir Stammer,

as some kind of quasi-war time-pride minister,

but you can sort of imagine that's what he morphs into now.

If we are talking about a real energy shock and shortages

and whether that affects food supply chains,

I like COVID at the start of this.

I mean, I would say compared to Boris Johnson,

he's probably better suited to that sort of serious,

mind-deed stern.

These are tough times we're all going through.

This isn't of our making.

Stammer, is it?

Stammer.

Yeah, much better suited to this than Johnson.

You know, you still got the whole question of the Gulf

in the middle of this, right?

Which is, I mean, Qatar, UAE, you know,

Dubai, Abu Dhabi, all the sort of the Gulf Emirates states.

I mean, they exist on this stuff

and they have grown rich on this stuff

and they are being targeted now, right?

I mean, that is, that potentially implodes

one of the fastest growing economic hubs

of the entire world.

Not that potentially.

I mean, it is doing now, right?

The irony is, of course,

if you look at what the Gulf states are trying to do,

you look at the great trading company

in the UAE, Mubadala.

I mean, it's about life after oil.

It's about diversifying.

Well, you know, look at Emily wrote a piece about it

about the Saudi-Gren tourism industry.

I mean, you look at yourself as stability.

But you look what it's like.

All those great things.

But also, who's going to go there now?

Right, you've got, I mean, Saudi, you know,

has based its whole economic model

on, can we get the best footballers?

Yes, can we get the best art?

Yes, can we get the best theatre?

Yes, can we get the best chefs?

Yes, why?

Because they have an enormous amount of money

from oil revenue to basically buy the best in the world

and transport it all to the desert.

How are they getting the world cup?

How are they getting the winter Olympics?

So suddenly, this sort of, you know,

that was where it was all going on.

I was there this time last year, right?

February of last year, I was in Saudi.

And I remember thinking this place has so, you know,

all the stuff that's around it over Khashoggi

and the murder and all the questions about human rights.

It was kind of like, yeah, we'll push that to one side

because look what we're doing now.

I think that's what's also scary for Britain and Europe

which is that, you know, in so many ways,

we are onlookers and we are so unable.

We're talking about Trump losing control.

We've never been in control, right?

We're being buffeted by both, you know,

Gulf states and their power and North American power.

And the scary thing in particular, of course,

is that that might be fine a bit actually again

to compare with the 70s.

You know, Ted Heath was going into that.

We were going into that, you know,

having had some decades in the 1950s and 1960s

of, you know, relative stability, you know,

actually strong years of economic growth.

The thing for the British state now

and for the British government is that we have had

now a decade or so of economic shock after economic shock

after economic shock, you know,

whether it goes back to the crash of our way,

self-imposed with Brexit, COVID,

Ukraine war, energy price shock there.

The British state, I mean, for a start,

we will be going into this crisis

which could be as bad as any of them.

So much more indebted with so much less capacity

for the British state,

potentially to be able to respond to this crisis,

having basically been battered by that decade

of sort of parmer crisis time and time and time again.

So, you know, I think, you know, going into this particular

problem or self-cries, it's not only worse

than the 70s, potentially,

but worse than at any point over the last decade.

I've just got to push notice from the financial times.

Stocks and bonds have had as investors

pricing protracted energy shock.

What a lot to look forward to.

We need a solution.

You can do that tomorrow.

Have you got a solution tomorrow?

I'll, you know what, I'm working on it.

I'll update you.

Yeah.

Someone stopped me when I was working

this morning saying, if you've got any good news for us

and I said, come back tomorrow.

That's your problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Promises we definitely can't keep.

We'll be back in a second.

And those daily bursts next level, even my free time

feels like foul howl.

So when life feels like a battle, pick up your feet,

have some fun.

Let's chumba.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group.

Boyd we're prohibited by law, CTs and Cs, 21 plus,

sponsored by Chumba Casino.

The news agents.

Before we go, the Tories launched their local election

campaign this morning.

James Clevverly, Shadow Housing Secretary on stage,

whipping up the crowd.

And he had a video that he was going to play.

Let's just have a listen.

But just in case anyone has forgotten just how good she is,

let's just remind ourselves with a quick look at her

best bits.

It's going to be long.

It's going to be long.

It's where the video comes on, please.

QVT.

Oh, yeah.

Keep chopping.

Keep chopping.

OK, OK.

I'm going to give it a, I'm going to give it one more,

one more second for the video.

OK.

Actually, you know what, ladies and gentlemen.

Forget the video.

Let's just listen.

Genuinely, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who tries to

queue up a video.

How many times have we been at a news night leaving party

where the run VT, the video did not work?

But I would say don't set it up on such a cliffhanger

that you are made to fail.

So as someone, as people who've done the live shows,

I think we've got some sympathy.

We have got something, but don't say it.

Let's have a look at all her best bits.

I mean, her best bits.

We'll never see Kenny's best bits.

We'll be back tomorrow.

We'll see you then.

Bye-bye.

Bye for now.

This has been a global player, original production.