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Speaker 1

00:02

This is a Global Player original podcast.

Speaker 2

00:05

Keir Starmer and his team have

Speaker 3

00:06

got to show some clear water, some clear red water between themselves and the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and themselves and the Conservatives. And at the

Speaker 2

00:15

minute, many people can't spot the difference. And that's a shame for somebody who's probably as talented as Keir Starmer is. He's got to show that he's on the side of working people and progressive politics and

Speaker 3

00:27

I don't think we're seeing that.

Speaker 4

00:28

That was Mick Lynch, he's the RMT leader and he was speaking on Sophie Ridge's Sunday morning show on Sky yesterday. And he's asking Keir Starmer, in words of pretty much 1 syllable, what he's about, where the difference is between what he hates now in terms of the Conservative government and what he's promising tomorrow in terms of what Labour will deliver.

Speaker 5

00:51

Mick Lynch of course and his RMT union are no longer affiliated to the Labour Party. So on 1 level Keir Starmer can just shrug his shoulders and say I'm going to ignore whatever you say. But does McLinch represent a more widespread view that Labour, we know what it doesn't stand for, but not quite sure what it does?

Speaker 5

01:13

Welcome to The News Agents.

Speaker 1

01:18

The News Agents.

Speaker 5

01:20

It's John. It's Emily. And later in the podcast, a fascinating interview about the situation in Iran today, where the morality police are restarting patrols to check that women have got their hijabs on correctly and fully covering their face and everything is being done according to the rules of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Speaker 5

01:43

Or is it the case that the morality police are just showing up how weak the Iranian state has become.

Speaker 4

01:50

But we're going to start with Labour and we're going to be looking at what Keir Starmer himself has been saying and writing over the last couple of days of this weekend because he's written for The Observer and he's spoken to the BBC and he's talked about this conservative created crisis. We all get that. He doesn't like what the 13 years of conservative rule have done to the country and that's kind of his USP to hate it.

Speaker 4

02:16

He's the leader of the opposition. And yet, in much of what he's saying, he goes on to explain that he can't actually change that yet. And so I think there is a growing unease coming through of what he can actually promise. We get that Keir Starmer wants to be grown-up, we get that he doesn't want to hate on the civil service, we get that he doesn't want to sort of run around calling our institutions kangaroo courts or throwing parties during COVID and lockdown.

Speaker 4

02:47

But is that enough? It's enough to get you listening, right? It's enough to get you saying, they will be different. But will they do different?

Speaker 4

02:57

And that's the question that, at the moment, Labour is choosing not to answer.

Speaker 5

03:03

Well, if you listened to what Keir Starmer pledged when he became the Labour Party leader, he came up with this sort of extravagant list of 10 pledges of what would mark his leadership of the Labour Party. A lot of them have been jettisoned, watered down, discarded. Now, of course, we have had a pandemic.

Speaker 5

03:22

We've had the invasion of Ukraine. We've had the surge in interest rates. We've had a return of inflation into the political system. If you compare and contrast Kirstame in 2019 to Kirstame today, you're left with the feeling of, oh, he's jettisoned quite a lot of, you know, the key pledges about income tax rising for the top 5%, the scrapping of tuition fees, Universal Credit, nationalisation of public services, freedom of movement, the 28 billion green prosperity plan.

Speaker 5

03:52

It's all been either watered down or got rid of and therefore people are saying well hang on will the real Keir Starmer please stand up.

Speaker 4

04:01

And I think the heat has grown in the last 24 hours with that confirmation that came yesterday from Keir Starmer that he would not change the policy of taking away child benefit to families with more than 2 children. This was introduced by George Osborne in the austerity years and Keir Starmer has previously called it punitive, his deputy Angela Rayner has called it inhumane, obscene. Yesterday he told our former colleague Laura Kunzberg that actually he had no plans to scrap it.

Speaker 6

04:35

If you have more than 2 children at the moment, you don't get benefits. Would that change under a Labour government?

Speaker 7

04:40

We're not changing that.

Speaker 4

04:41

That's a real kind of political trap for Labour because either they want to be the party of ending child poverty, or else they end up being the party that essentially carries on the austerity measures of a conservative government. And today Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, reinforced that by talking about the importance of fiscal responsibility and saying, actually, Liz Truss is where you end up if you go for unfunded spending. So they are so cautious about any single commitment to spending that is not absolutely signed off, that they will not even agree to scrapping a policy that they have previously called obscene.

Speaker 5

05:24

And this is a real risk for Labour and its supporters. What Blair was trying to do in 97 was to say we are not going to raise the top rate of tax. He wasn't talking about limiting welfare benefits.

Speaker 5

05:37

If you're limiting benefits like child support, then that really does affect an awful lot of people and that will disappoint a lot of people as well. And so there is, yeah, you want to be fiscally prudent, but do you want to be in a position where you're seeming to harm the most vulnerable in our society?

Speaker 4

05:55

Well, weirdly, just as actually as we've been talking, a resignation letter has been published on Twitter by Jamie Driscoll. No fan of Keir, he has been the Labour northeast mayor and he has just announced that he is resigning to stand as an independent and he points the blame firmly at Keir Starmer. Many of the things that John was just taking you through are mentioned in this resignation letter.

Speaker 4

06:24

That you turn on so many priorities, £28 billion to tackle the climate emergency, free school meals, ending university tuition fees, reversing NHS privatisation, a list of promises too long to repeat in this letter. I think Jamie Driscoll is a very different case. We know that he's on the hard left of the party. We know that there was a whole discussion about his seat and he would call it deselection, Labour calls it selection, but it still will come as a headline that Keir Starmer will find difficult to refute.

Speaker 4

06:57

This is somebody in his own party saying, I don't know what you stand for anymore.

Speaker 5

07:00

The only thing is that Keir Starmer might be able to use this just as you could use Mick Lynch is you choose your friends carefully you choose your enemies more carefully and it may be to have him against the reforms that Keir Starmer is introducing will underline to the British people, oh, Keir Starmer is not just another left-winger like Ed Miliband or like Jeremy Corbyn, and therefore you have got somebody new now in charge of the Labour Party, and that might actually help him a bit. I mean, it's interesting the statement from the Labour Party on this because it's sort of what it implies, saying the Labour Party is delighted that local party members have selected Kim McGuinness as our candidate with Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour Party is a changed party brackets you're the old party, relentlessly focused on delivering for working people. And we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standards, brackets, he had low standards.

Speaker 4

07:56

Well, he saw that line coming, didn't he? I guess maybe the clear Red water now is not between Keir Starmer and the Conservatives, but between the Mitt Lynch's, the Jamie Driscoll's and Keir Starmer, which is fine if all you're talking about is a kind of internecine warfare, i.e. Have you sorted out the left of your party, we're not that anymore, we're definitely not Jeremy Corbyn, we're not even Ed Miliband, we're going to look more like Blair, you won't even find us scaring you about rising income tax or anything like that.

Speaker 4

08:30

The question is, and I think it still remains, yes, okay, you've sorted the left of your party out, but what about the voters who are actually coming to you because they want to feel significantly better off? They want to see services improved, they want to see air quality improved, they want to see better transport services. You come to Keir Starmer because you're fed up with what has happened over the last few years and you've got somebody who says we're not going to make the mistake of spending. We can't win power by spending, was his headline in The Observer.

Speaker 4

09:04

And everyone gets the fiscal constraints and the golden rules and all the rest of it, but what are they for then?

Speaker 5

09:10

So I suspect a Labour strategist's answer to that would be, And they would look to the way Blair played this and for Mick Lynch, Reid, John Edmonds, who was the head of the GMB union, or Bill Morris, who was head of the Transport and General Workers Union back in the Blair days and was unhappy about Blair's pledges that they were not going to raise the top level of tax. They would say, yeah, look, this is creating a dialogue where people are happy who are maybe a bit more conservative to vote for us. And those people who want all those things, well, where else are they going to go?

Speaker 5

09:43

They're going to vote for Labour anyway. So we don't need to super please people who live in liberal London constituencies where Labour weigh the majority. We want to get people who didn't vote for Labour in

Speaker 1

09:58

2019

Speaker 5

09:59

and that's what we're doing.

Speaker 4

10:00

And the difference is that Blair actually sat on a really healthy economy. I don't think we realised at the time just how comfortably he was boosted actually by what had happened before 97. This time round there isn't the choice to say I'm not going to do that straightaway, but we'll be fine.

Speaker 4

10:18

People need to see action taken because look at the NHS, look at public sector workers, look at people's mortgages, look at the rate of inflation. There isn't the chance that we can just kind of carry on as we were, because as we were isn't working. It's broken.

Speaker 5

10:33

Well, we're joined in the studio now by Tom Baldwin. And he was a political correspondent back in the day when I was. He then goes on to work for Ed Miliband as his director of communications when he was Labour Party leader.

Speaker 5

10:47

And he's now writing a biography of Keir Starmer, that Keir Starmer is cooperating with. So presumably happy that you're writing it. Tom, what do you make of where we are now?

Speaker 7

10:59

I think there's a bit of a dialogue of the deaf going on at the moment with the media in that he comes on, talk about these 5 missions that he set out, 2 terms of Labour government. And journalists, not necessarily yourselves, but other journalists are saying, yeah, but what are you going to do right now? What are you going to do in the first 100 days?

Speaker 7

11:17

And what he's trying to say is that these things cannot be fixed in 100 days. We have deep-seated problems in this country, and people looking for some sort of magic pill which is going to make people happy ever after are going to be looking in vain. So you try to talk about the long term, and there's a game being played in which journalists are trying to get him to make some sort of unfunded, uncosted spending commitment. And The Tories would love him to do that.

Speaker 7

11:46

And I'm generally of the view that if your opponents really want you to do something, you probably shouldn't do it.

Speaker 4

11:53

Tom, it's a funny way to phrase that, though, that journalists are trying to get him to play a game. I mean, I think that's kind of reductive, honestly, of both our roles. Because the journalists asking the questions are trying to work out, presumably, what the vision is and what the difference is.

Speaker 4

12:09

You heard, you know, Mitt Lynch at the top there say, where's the clear red water? And I guess if Keir Starmer comes in, as he did in last weekend's Observer piece, and says, fucking hell, the Tories are catastrophic. They're just crisis after crisis. He literally said, he said, the Conservatives have created a crisis.

Speaker 4

12:29

Right. So he's on the 1 hand saying, can you believe what we've had for 13 years? And then you go, okay, so, so, so, Keir, go on, where's the offering? And he goes, well, obviously, we will carry on doing that.

Speaker 4

12:41

And we will have to carry on doing that. And we won't be able to spend on that. And you know that thing about, you know, the child benefits policy. Well, obviously, we'll have to stick to George Osborne's austerity plan on that.

Speaker 4

12:51

I don't think it's unfair for us to be saying, come on, where's the offering here, then? Where's the difference?

Speaker 7

12:58

I mean, I think there's enormous difference between what the Labour Party stands for and what the Conservative Party stands for and has done. And that's part of the problem. 2 years ago, you could perhaps have borrowed large sums of money to fund a Green New Prosperity Deal.

Speaker 7

13:16

We've had the economy absolutely trashed by Liz Truss, interest rates have gone up, it's much more difficult to do that. Now, when the circumstances change and the facts change, policies change. That's natural.

Speaker 5

13:29

Of course. But if you're going into an election, and let's leave journalists out of it, because we're kind of largely irrelevant to this process, isn't it right that the public are saying, yeah, okay, at the end of 10 years time, you hope to have done this, but I want to know what's going to happen in the next few weeks, the next few months of a Labour government. Where's the urgency there about telling us that?

Speaker 7

13:50

Because I think part of the problem is this short-termism. And you can say leave journalists out of it. I think, you know, if you think of the problems that the media have identified as the existential crises facing this country right now for the last 10, 20 years, have actually turned out not to be.

Speaker 7

14:06

Whether that's boats of desperate refugees in the Channel, Europe, benefit cheats, these have not actually been the problems. And politicians are constantly forced into this position of sort of having to pronounce on what is seen as the latest great existential challenge to our way of life. And we never actually get around to fixing the long term.

Speaker 4

14:28

That's really interesting, Tom, because what you're citing, I think here, is, if I'm not mistaken, sort of daily express front pages or daily mail front pages.

Speaker 7

14:37

It goes a bit deeper than that, but yeah.

Speaker 4

14:38

Well, Keir Starmer isn't pushing back on small boats and the market. He's not, for example, saying actually,

Speaker 5

14:47

I don't

Speaker 4

14:47

think it's not a problem. He's not saying, oh my god, forget the right wing press. They're trying to lead you down dark alleyways of fear and loathing.

Speaker 4

14:55

You don't have to go there. In a way, he's sort of leaning into some of these worries. I mean, he could just be talking about child poverty and inflation and the cost of living and mortgages and green energy. But he doesn't seem to be pulling towards that either.

Speaker 7

15:09

Well, look, he's standing for election. And it's probably not a good idea to be attacking the media. I'm not standing for anything.

Speaker 7

15:16

I can attack the media and I think the media is part of the problem in this country. And I think it's been part of the problem of the politics of this country. But I'm not standing for office." And Keir Starmer is, and he's quite rightly, politely answering people's questions. Now the trouble is I think Sometimes people see this as a sort of cynical game.

Speaker 7

15:33

Oh, what he's doing is he's pitching towards the centre or, you know, the reason why he's saying this about he's not getting rid of this disgusting policy on the two-child policy is because, yeah, he's trying to play up to the Daily Mail. I think it's actually simpler than that. He's saying that I'm not Jeremy Corbyn. I don't have a magic solution.

Speaker 7

15:51

I don't have some single big transformative thing I can do in the first 100 days. It's going to be tough. It's the worst inheritance if he does become prime minister, the worst inheritance any prime minister has had since the Second World War.

Speaker 5

16:04

Let's compare to the Blair era, where Tony Blair stood to be the leader as a representative of New Labour. They campaigned as New Labour. And I remember him when he became Prime Minister, says we're going to govern as new Labour.

Speaker 5

16:19

Keir Starmer's campaigned as somebody very different. Now, I know you're going to say, yeah, look, we've had the pandemic, we've had Ukraine, we've had the Tories running the economy, yada, yada, yada. What he campaigned on bears no resemblance to what he's saying now. And therefore, who is the real Keir Starmer?

Speaker 7

16:37

Well, I would push back against that because if you look at those 10 pledges, I mean, the first most central pledge, he said that he's never going to take his eye off the voters. We need to win back in order to get back because we can't do anything unless we're in power. He also talked about public ownership and they're talking about taking the railways back in the public ownership.

Speaker 7

16:56

You're talking about great British energy. He talked about new workers rights and they're doing some of that. He talked about green energy and they're doing some of that. Can they do everything?

Speaker 7

17:04

No, they can't. And we know why. It's not just Covid and Ukraine. It's because the economy has been trashed.

Speaker 7

17:11

I sometimes think that sometimes they should be bolder about saying what they are going to do because they actually do have quite a radical program.

Speaker 5

17:17

You went through an election with Ed Miliband, an election that he lost. How wise a message is it to go in and say, dear voter, we can offer you jam tomorrow, but I'm sorry there's no Jam today. That's a very difficult message to communicate, isn't it?

Speaker 7

17:34

Yeah, but when Ed was leader of the Labour Party, we were in actually similar circumstances where the perception was there was no money to spend. And I think The sort of dominant narrative was that austerity economics was here to stay, that didn't last very long. And there are 3 ways you can get around that.

Speaker 7

17:53

You can say you're going to tax more, you can borrow more, or you can do what Ed did, which say we're going to regulate more, we're going to put the burden onto business. Now, that resulted in 2015 with not a single business coming up to support the Labour Party, because they thought Ed's rather moderate social democratic reforms were much scarier than David Cameron's plan to have an in-out referendum on Europe. How's that working out for you guys?

Speaker 4

18:16

And did you at the time think that Ed was on the right track there? Or do you think it was loony crazy but couldn't say?

Speaker 7

18:22

I think part of the problem is we presented actually moderate reforms in quite a scary fashion. We made it seem bigger than it was, partly because of that pressure of what are you going to do immediately? You talk about

Speaker 1

18:32

97,

Speaker 7

18:33

I think, is interesting, because everyone thinks that Tony Blair came in with this great big bold modernising offer. If you look at those 5 pledges, they were micro policies, the policy on the NHS. Do you remember it?

Speaker 5

18:45

Reduce waiting lists.

Speaker 7

18:46

By spending 100 million pounds more. Cutting red tape, 100 million. Microscopic sum in terms of NHS spending.

Speaker 4

18:53

So when you hear the Mick Lynch's of this world say, he's got to show us who he really is, Is that actually really helpful for Keir Starmer now? I mean, is that, does he want to be losing, as it were, the voices of the hard left?

Speaker 7

19:08

Again, I think you can see it as a sort of cynical game, where as a sort of act of triangulation, or he's trying to prove He's not Jeremy Corbyn. He isn't Jeremy Corbyn. He's a grown-up who believes in long-term change in this country.

Speaker 7

19:22

I think he is having trouble getting that message through at the moment.

Speaker 6

19:26

Why?

Speaker 7

19:26

Partly because he's not yet in that final stage of his leadership, I think. Somebody said the other day he's trying to do Kinnock, Smith, Blair in 1 parliament. You know, he's changed his party.

Speaker 7

19:39

He's offering reassurance to British people that, you know, he's not going to wreck the economy And people do feel very, very insecure at the moment. He's showing that the Tories aren't fit for office. And then there's a question about that final stage. Now how you pitch that, I think, is important.

Speaker 7

19:57

Because we've had these big transformative offers in recent years. We've had modernisation, we've had Brexit, we've had austerity. I don't think people feel much better for them. I think people are suspicious of a single big transformative idea, a vision.

Speaker 7

20:15

What they might want to is grown-up, respectful leadership, which is going to get us to a better place, but it's going to be tough. Now, that I think is Keir's essential message to British people. At the moment, I think it's getting obscured by... You know, I listened to an interview on the Today program the other day, he was announcing his fifth mission on breaking down barriers to opportunity in education.

Speaker 7

20:44

And all he was asked about was VAT on private school fees and these micro issues. And I think we do have to sort of try and break a habit in the sort of political class more generally, if we're going to start fixing these problems in the long term.

Speaker 5

20:59

You're almost arguing for, please, can we have a more civilised, reflective, mature media? You've worked in journalism for years, you've been a comms director, you know what the journalist class is that you're going to be up against.

Speaker 7

21:15

I thought that was the whole point of the newsagents.

Speaker 5

21:17

Well we're trying but obviously there is the space to expand on this. Unfortunately I don't think yet.

Speaker 4

21:23

Do you think it's realistic? Yeah. Okay let's just ask you, did Keir have to go to the Murdoch party do you think to get himself into a place where the Sun, the Times, blah blah blah is going to be friendly to him.

Speaker 4

21:34

Was that necessary? Yes.

Speaker 7

21:36

He hasn't flown several thousand miles to Australia. Which Tony Blair did. Yeah.

Speaker 7

21:40

He went to a party.

Speaker 4

21:41

Name that island. Heyman.

Speaker 7

21:43

Very good.

Speaker 4

21:44

It makes you think That 1 John Soper was probably there in the bushes.

Speaker 5

21:47

No, I wasn't. Steve Richards got sent instead of me. I was freaking furious.

Speaker 4

21:52

OK, so Tom, nice sort of swerve, but he did still go.

Speaker 7

21:54

He went to a party. In the end, Keir doesn't need to bend his knee to Rupert Murdoch. He needs to show Rupert Murdoch that he's going to win.

Speaker 7

22:04

Because Rupert Murdoch has backed every winner of every British general election since he owned the sun. And if Keir can convince Rupert Murdoch he's going to win, that's all he needs to do. He doesn't need to make any more concessions to him.

Speaker 4

22:18

But he has to go to the party.

Speaker 7

22:20

Look, he's running to be prime minister. It would be crazy to boycott a party of Britain's second best selling newspaper. Tom.

Speaker 7

22:28

Why would you do that?

Speaker 5

22:29

Is your biography going to tell us anything we didn't know?

Speaker 7

22:33

I think it will tell you something you don't know. And I hope you'll paint a picture of someone who's very different from the public image that you're getting at the moment.

Speaker 5

22:41

What do you think the public image is that we're getting at the moment?

Speaker 7

22:45

Someone who's dull, someone who's stiff, someone who feels deeply anxious about carrying a Ming vase across a polished floor.

Speaker 5

22:54

And that's not true?

Speaker 7

22:55

I think he is someone who is very focused, 1 of the most competitive people I've ever met.

Speaker 4

23:02

Is that right, really?

Speaker 6

23:03

Keir Starmer is 1 of the most competitive people I've ever met. Is that right? Really?

Speaker 6

23:03

Keir Starmer

Speaker 4

23:03

is 1 of the most competitive people you've ever met.

Speaker 7

23:05

I was interviewing 1 of his legal colleagues the other day. And they said that when he became leader of the Labour Party, everyone was saying, oh, yeah, maybe he'll get Labour in better footing. Maybe he'll be Neil Ginnick.

Speaker 7

23:17

And now he'll win, Because that's what he does. And really, I wouldn't underestimate him.

Speaker 4

23:25

Don't you just have to say that because you're his?

Speaker 7

23:27

No, I don't. I can say what I want. It's what I believe.

Speaker 4

23:30

Tom Baldwin, nice to have you.

Speaker 5

23:32

Thank you very much.

Speaker 6

23:32

Nice to see you.

Speaker 5

23:39

And after the break, we will be discussing Iran and whether the return of the morality police to the streets is a sign of strength of the regime or its profound weakness.

Speaker 1

24:00

This is the

Speaker 6

24:01

News Agents. This is

Speaker 1

24:01

the News Agents.

Speaker 4

24:13

That's the sound of the protests on the streets of Iran. It seems unbelievable to realise that that was almost a year ago. August brings the anniversary of the death of Masa Amini.

Speaker 4

24:26

You'll remember the 22-year-old woman arrested for miswearing her headgear and it was her death essentially that kicked off this extraordinary volume of protests from men and women alike, not just in Tehran, but around the country. And it also provoked a retaliation by the government, by the regime, that created hundreds of deaths. And I guess Iran is 1 of those areas, stories, the protest that has been in the background to so much of the kind of frenzied British political year, but right now it's back with a kick.

Speaker 5

25:08

Because we've just heard that the morality police, what a great name for a police force, the morality police are going to be resuming their crackdown on people not wearing their hijab correctly and so clearly a degree of confidence from the regime that they think that these protests have reached their high-water mark or that they have been crushed and now they're going to enforce their will again having initially been rocked by the protests and the regime not quite sure of what to do. Well we're joined now in the studio by Rana Raimpour, who for years was a colleague of ours at the BBC, working for the Persian service. What do you make of what is happening now in Iran today?

Speaker 8

25:58

So, I wouldn't necessarily see it as a sign of confidence. To me, it's a sign of desperation. Because as we heard earlier, when the protests happened last year, there were widespread nationwide protests against the compulsory hijab, which quickly turned into a call for regime change.

Speaker 8

26:18

And it lasted for months and months. And it really shook the foundation of the Islamic regime in Iran. And then something shifted in the society. Now we see women on the streets, just walking without the headscarf, waitresses serving people at restaurants and cafes without headscarves.

Speaker 8

26:38

And especially now, because it's summer and it's very hot, we hear that young girls and women, they wear crop tops on the streets. And it seems that the regime has totally lost the plot. They have tried to push back through various tactics. So for example, if you go to a shop without a headscarf, then they will threaten the shop and they close down several businesses as a result of women not wearing the headscarf.

Speaker 8

27:03

Or 2 days ago, there was a concert in which women took their headscarves off and they started dancing and they turned off the lights of the concert hall. These little petty tactics that have failed. And now we hear that they are bringing back the morality police. It looks different.

Speaker 8

27:20

So in the past it was a white van with a dark green strap on the side on which it said Gashteh Ershad or the morality police. Now they're just normal white vans.

Speaker 4

27:30

They would literally pick women off the street and take them off or take even from schools, right? They would take them off and you'd have to spend a month doing work in a mortuary or a month doing sort of hard labour or Neanderthal punitive measures, right?

Speaker 8

27:45

Completely Draconian, yes, you're absolutely right. But it has failed. Even before this, some form of the morality police have always existed under the Islamic regime in Iran since 1979.

Speaker 8

27:56

It changed its name, it has evolved, but it's always been there and it has failed. And the Iranian society is now extremely angry and is ready to fight back. So yesterday in the city of Rash in north of Iran, a number of women were being arrested and people fought back. So it quickly turned into a scene of a street fight.

Speaker 8

28:18

And a lot of people believe that the regime is taking a risk by pushing the people to a corner that they will definitely push back.

Speaker 5

28:27

If you were in Tehran now, Presumably the overwhelming percentage of women would be wearing a headscarf.

Speaker 4

28:34

What would you be wearing?

Speaker 8

28:34

It depends on where, which city you're at. It depends on which area of the city you're at. I would have been dressed like this if I was in Iran.

Speaker 4

28:42

No headgear at all?

Speaker 8

28:43

No, no, no.

Speaker 5

28:44

And you wouldn't have felt in danger?

Speaker 8

28:48

No. Because even if they stop you, a lot of women do carry a headscarf in their handbag. So you'd

Speaker 4

28:54

have something on you

Speaker 5

28:55

at all

Speaker 6

28:56

times in case.

Speaker 8

28:56

Exactly, they have it in the handbag. And if somebody tells do it, they try to resist. And if they insist, they just put something over their hair.

Speaker 8

29:03

Normally, they don't. So for example, my mother, who is in her 70s, she just doesn't even take it with her anymore. And I had friends who visited Iran in recent months. And at first, they were a bit scared, especially because they're dual nationals, and they were scared about being arrested and getting into trouble.

Speaker 8

29:17

But after a few days, they just stopped wearing it.

Speaker 5

29:20

And how different is that to before last August? If you were in Iran before last August, before the protests, would there have been 100% compliance?

Speaker 8

29:30

Not 100%, probably 90%. So now we're looking at

Speaker 1

29:35

50%.

Speaker 4

29:35

So this has worked then. I'm looking at what General Said Monteserrol-Mahdi, who's the police spokesman, so talking about the return of these patrols, and he's saying, as of today, police will have no other choice but to legally deal with those who are heedless of dress code. He said they'll be referred to the judiciary.

Speaker 4

29:56

So that sounds to me like he's saying right we're back on, You're not going to get away with it and there's going to be a judicial process or a custodial sentence.

Speaker 8

30:07

Yes, and that's true about a lot of these laws that have been imposed by the Islamic regime in Iran, but it's impossible to police it. You can't possibly have a police force on every street corner. The same is true about so many things like satellite dishes.

Speaker 8

30:19

You're not allowed to have satellite dishes, but everybody has 1. And every now and then, the police would raid a neighborhood. They'd take away your satellite dish, and within an hour, you'd get a dealer, and they'd bring you another 1. Most of them actually work with the police.

Speaker 8

30:31

So it's just impossible.

Speaker 5

30:32

So laws have become unenforceable. Yes. I kind of think back to East Germany and the Stasi and that there was someone in every building that would be acting as an agent for the Stasi and telling them who was doing what in their private lives.

Speaker 4

30:45

Kids made to spy on their parents.

Speaker 5

30:47

Yeah. Iran doesn't have that network, or does it?

Speaker 8

30:50

There is a network of plainclothes, undercover forces, but they're not on every street corner, they're not in every house, they're often based in mosques or the poorer parts of cities and they then get deployed to the rest of the cities when there is unrest. So politically what does this mean Rana?

Speaker 4

31:10

Is it enough for the large majority of Iranian people who were against the government, against the administration, say if you just let us be at this point, we're not going to create an overthrow? Or do you think there is still the challenge to the ultimate authority of the state?

Speaker 6

31:28

There

Speaker 8

31:29

is. There is. So it's a million dollar question. The regime is still very strong and recently it signed a deal with Saudi Arabia that will give it more relief when it comes to the Iranian economy.

Speaker 8

31:40

So it's very strong but it doesn't have popular support. But the question is will the lack of popular support overthrow the regime? That's not going to be easy. A lot of people feel that something has to change.

Speaker 8

31:56

There's this sense that it's unsustainable. There's that sense in the Iranian society that something will change at some point, it's on the breaking point, especially given the state of the economy, over 50% inflation.

Speaker 4

32:09

So that's going to be the thing that breaks it, always isn't it? Yes. People can't survive on 50% inflation.

Speaker 8

32:15

But then there are so many countries in which people do. Venezuela.

Speaker 4

32:19

We just don't know, is the truth. We never get

Speaker 5

32:21

to speak or hear

Speaker 6

32:22

from them.

Speaker 5

32:23

What's really interesting, you correcting me, saying I'm not sure it shows that the regime feels self-confident. The revolution has not failed. The revolution is continuing.

Speaker 5

32:31

It may be out of the headlines and we're going to see the limit of state power by the fact that the morality police are reforming, resuming their work.

Speaker 4

32:40

Why have they brought it

Speaker 5

32:41

in then?

Speaker 8

32:41

It's a gesture. Because if they give in on this, which is 1 of the pillars of the Islamic regime in Iran, which is a compulsory hijab, then the society will be more emboldened. They'll ask for more, they'll push for more.

Speaker 8

32:54

So they have to keep this pillar. Otherwise, if they let go of that, then they'll be in trouble. What next?

Speaker 5

33:00

But it could also show their weakness and the limit of their power.

Speaker 8

33:04

Which it does, yes. It's so pathetic, even their own supporters yesterday on Twitter were saying that, do you realise that you're shooting yourself in the foot? Do you realise how angry people are?

Speaker 8

33:14

It seems that you yourself want regime change because the way you are behaving and just lack of judgment and lack of vision and lack of understanding of what people are and where they're at, you are calling for regime change.

Speaker 4

33:30

Rana, the shadow of Nazanin obviously lives long in the British mind. I mean you talk freely about what you'd wear if you went back and how you wouldn't be that scared. Do you go back as a dual national?

Speaker 8

33:40

I am a dual national and I haven't been back since I left Iran in

Speaker 1

33:44

2008

Speaker 8

33:44

to work for the BBC and I have been 1 of the anchors at the channel and I have received so many death threats that for the time being it's not very wise to risk it.

Speaker 4

33:54

So you haven't seen any family there since 2000? No, I haven't. That's hard.

Speaker 8

34:00

Yes, yes, but it's harder than being in Iran a journalist and in prison rather than being in London and a journalist and cover Iran and not being able to go. There are so many journalists inside the country that can't report and have been, in fact, the women who broke the story of Massa Amini last September, they have been in prison since then.

Speaker 4

34:19

Oh Lord. You're talking like somebody who's not going to go back to her home any time soon.

Speaker 5

34:24

And have your family been targeted at all?

Speaker 8

34:27

Yes. So my parents have been interrogated, the passports have been confiscated.

Speaker 5

34:31

So they couldn't leave the country

Speaker 7

34:33

if they wanted to?

Speaker 8

34:33

For a while. So they were under travel ban for about a year. And then all of the Persian services, 150 people were being investigated on charges of conspiracy against national security.

Speaker 8

34:46

So there's an open case against all of us. And then I, my conversations with my parents last November were wiretapped by the Iranian forces and then they edited it. They published about 2 and a half minutes of it, of 15 different conversations in order to put pressure on me and then they published it and portrayed me as if I'm someone who's supporting the regime because I was telling my mother that I'm worried about these protests and how they can turn out and they can easily turn into civil war. By the way they

Speaker 4

35:14

edited the tape?

Speaker 8

35:15

Yes. And then I had to take 2 months off, I couldn't be on air because I was just receiving so many death threats that I had to deactivate everything and just lay low for it to pass. So yes, the answer to your question that whether I'm planning to go back is no.

Speaker 4

35:31

Ron, I'm so sorry. Thank you for joining

Speaker 5

35:33

us.

Speaker 6

35:35

Thank you. Thank

Speaker 1

35:42

you. This is The News Agents.

Speaker 5

35:48

Welcome back. Now, on The News Agents, we like to think that when we ask a politician a question, we will get something that resembles an answer, rather than just going on to autopilot and just listing what your kind of pre-programmed F7, F8, F6 answer is. Well, our colleague Sheila Fogarty from LBC has been to interview Rishi Sunak this morning at a school in East London, and she tried to tackle him on the question of whether scrapping inheritance tax may be a Tory policy at the next election.

Speaker 6

36:27

When it comes to the cost of living, reports over the weekend that the Conservative Party is looking at inheritance tax, scrapping inheritance tax ahead of the next general election. People hear that and think that can't possibly be a priority when I'm making decisions about how I feed my kids, whether they can go to university, all those things that we're sadly all too aware of in the cost of living crisis. How do you defend this as a priority?