Speaker 1The Telegraph Keen to please, Andy Burnham blows up the King's Caribbean tour after saying he is open to slavery reparations.
Speaker 2So when will the Prime Minister learn to keep his mouth shut? Britain, and the people of Makefield, simply cannot afford to pay.
Speaker 3The King is not going to apologise for slavery in a formal, official way. He cannot do that as a constitutional monarch. It's not his job. That is the job for the government. It's what the palace constantly says, refers back to government. So there are two issues for him, I think. The first one is that out here, although we understand at home that the government and the King are two totally different things, we understand that relationship and those responsibilities. Out here, it's much more that the King is just the face of Britain.
Speaker 2You're back! I'm back! From outer space, with a lot of tan on your face.
Speaker 1Do I look tanned? I'm really Tenerife-y. It was fun. Yay! Enough to see the little smile on your face at my return. Did you miss me that much?
Speaker 2It is a relief. Is it? It is a profound relief. I cannot do this job by myself.
Speaker 1Well, also, when the woman in any marriage goes away for a period, things do collapse in the man's life.
Speaker 2There is actually a big pile of dishes in the kitchen waiting for you.
Speaker 1Oh, so I'd better start ironing your shirts again, washing your suits.
Speaker 2Yeah, you came back and immediately made the news.
Speaker 1Well, I made the news for a number of different reasons, including a bizarre interview with Robert Jenrick, where he seemed to be taking great offence at me, asking him questions, even though I'm a journalist. Yeah. That's what he volunteers for when he comes on. But it was the interview with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury where she made this admission. So there was a debate about the previous budgets raised by Rachel Reeves breaching the manifesto because they put up national insurance for employers who could be classed as working people. And it's the same argument here, isn't it? If you raise income tax on rents and interest, you're actually raising income tax. You're raising income tax on landlords and savers. Landlords and savers are working people as well, aren't they? Well, firstly, let me say, I don't think employers are working people. They are companies, which I didn't think she was going to say out loud. I do get that they're trying to fudge this whole 'we haven't breached the manifesto' by suggesting that working people are effectively employees. But I didn't know she was going to spell out a Marxist vision for anyone that happens to employ anyone never having worked a day in their life. I wasn't anticipating that. So your small business owners, your pie makers, like that chap, Paul Bowen, who went viral last week saying, 'Thanks to the budget, I need to make 30,000 more pies a week', to, I don't know, anybody that employs anybody. I mean, literally, our bosses, people in between, sole traders, plumbers, electricians, none of them work.
Speaker 2I don't know why it reminds me of the South Park episode, Freak Strike, when all the people who go on chat shows with deformities form a union and go on strike and the police turn up to break them up. And the police say to them, 'Now, now, we're not saying you're not a real union. We're saying you're not real people.' And it's like that with employers. We're not, we're not saying, we're not saying that you don't contribute. We're just saying you're not working.
Speaker 1Indeed. Anyway, it went viral and lots of people piled in on it and it got retweeted and many people enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I was trolled by that lunatic whose name we won't mention, because he's very odd. So it was just quite eventful. It was an eventful return to Blighty. Yes. But thank God I'm back.
Speaker 2Well, you will have noticed two things there. Yes. One, that the right is now in a state of civil war. Yes. And it's getting nastier by the minute.
Speaker 1I know, there are some on the right saying, 'Do you know what? Hitler was a bit of a progressive.' Because you're not a racist and therefore you are an ardent left winger. Yeah. And I asked Reform some awkward questions and a question whether Restore, have got supporters that are entirely savoury. And apparently that makes me Polly Toynbee.
Speaker 2But I think for a while, when Reform were clearly dominating in the polls, there was some order in the universe because everyone was just reconciled to Nigel Farage is going to be the next prime minister. But now the polls are close. So Reform and the Tories are competing with each other for the second place. And now that Restore is possibly going to deny Reform second place, let alone winning, it means there's more, there's more to play for, more to fight over. And it's hard not to notice that the war of words on the right has become nastier recently. Because what people are starting to say publicly and privately now is, 'So whose side are you on?' Yes. And one thing they have to understand is here in the media, generally, but also on centre-right media, we're not picking any side. No. You come to us and persuade us to vote for you. We don't have to take the knee and support anyone at this stage because we're like all the other voters. We're all trying to figure out what's the best thing to do at the next general election. Also. And it'll probably be decided by an app. That's right. By the way, by a tactical voting app.
Speaker 1We just reserve the right to ask awkward questions of anyone we encounter.
Speaker 2Because when Generic was tearing your face off like a deranged monkey.
Speaker 1I've got a new name for him, Robert Dissingeric. Because at the end of the day, I felt like saying, 'Sorry, mate, you're doing this thing of like, 'Oh, you're Kemi's best friend and you're a squatter of the Tory party.' There was only one of us in this interview that was ever a paid-up member of the Tories, an actual sitting MP. And it's you, dude. And by the way, I remember when you were a lefty. I remember when you were voting for Remain and supporting Cameron's politics. And that was when I was writing for this newspaper and others. The trouble with the Conservatives is they've got people like Robert Generic in who just aren't right-wing enough. And now, because it's politically expedient in Newark, he's now adopting this strange thing. I mean, literally, one of his children's middle names is Thatcher. And yesterday, he's talking about the government coming in and subsidising. After the lady, not the roof. Possibly. The government coming in and subsidising Poundland. And so he then had a go at Fraser Nelson for asking about that on Scarp.
Speaker 2I'm not unsympathetic about that, by the way. After all, if you're going to bail out anyone, Poundland is going to be cheap, isn't it?
Speaker 1Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2It's a pound. That's true. But, and to be fair to you, you also asked difficult questions of Kemi Badenoch.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, I asked her why she had given that seat on the Select Committee to Rupert Lowe, if she was going to be busily denouncing anyone in reform as potentially racist and ethno-nationalist. Yeah. Because that was a little bit closer to home. And then she insisted that Lowe himself wasn't a racist, and I pointed out that he was supported by people who appeared to be racist, because Gordon's written it.
Speaker 2A strange distinction to make in a political party. That's not a standard which is applied to reform. Reform has some nasty counsellors. That doesn't mean the whole party is constitutionally racist. No. Nobody's suggesting that any of these parties are. But the Tories do try to apply that standard to reform.
Speaker 1But she's enjoying Restore eating Nigel Farage's lunch, right?
Speaker 2Exactly. The enemy of my enemy. This is like politics in the Balkans in the 1990s. I've noticed that in many of these encounters, the people we're interviewing say to us, "Why are you asking me this question? Why don't you ask the other side this question?" Yes. That's an odd way to answer a question.
Speaker 1But we do.
Speaker 2But we do. But you see my point that they're obsessed with what side do you want, because you've got to pick a side now.
Speaker 1You have to pick a side. Jenrick also, he was saying to me, "Why aren't you asking me this, and why aren't you asking me that?" I literally started the interview asking him about the budget, but then I thought, "I'm not going to ask you the same questions I'm going to ask Emma Reynolds on account of the fact that you aren't in government, and you aren't even the official opposition." And by the way, we will ask you about an undercover sting involving racists in your midst. I mean, he didn't like the line that I gave him that perhaps ITV was better at vetting than Reform UK. He didn't like that. And I've also, and you and I have discussed, this is the thing that gets missed in the quest for ideological purity. Haven't you and I discussed whether they are being disproportionately targeted? Yes. Haven't I written a column saying, "Hang on a minute, I wouldn't mind a Channel 4 sting into the racists in the Greens. Thank you very much." Yes. So, nuance. Yes. What happened to nuance, Tim Stanley?
Speaker 2Yes. So, I said your weekend telly has shown us two things. One, that the right is in the Civil War. The second is that the Labour Party is coming out. It's coming out of the closet. Is it? For years, it pretended to be straight up centrist. Yes. It's gone through a period of questioning under Andy Burnham, and now it is just flouncing out of that closet as full on left wing. Yes. And it turns out that everything that they said to get themselves into government was a lie. That's right. Beginning with their red lines on the EU. Yes. Now, not only do we know that Andy Burnham is going to reverse those at some point in the future, he's going to put that back on the table, possibly even a second referendum, possibly even going back to the EU, but how striking-
Speaker 1Or if Emily Thornberry gets her way, no second referendum. Just get over it.
Speaker 2Just do it. Do it. Get over it. Just put a gun to the public's head and march them across the Channel. But Rachel Reeves has come out and said, "On second thoughts, actually, I think we've lost out for being outside of the EU. Okay. And so why did you say we shouldn't do that?
Speaker 1No. Because you put it in a manifesto in order to get the red wall on side, because you knew that they had turned their backs on the Tories. Yes. And therefore you said it. So just as you said, we're not going to cross the red line of taxing people more income, VAT or national insurance, only to do exactly that just simply by stealth. It makes no difference if it's employers or employees NI in the same way that it doesn't make any difference if it's income tax on saving- Yeah. -or rent. It's still a tax rise. You've breached the manifesto.
Speaker 2Yeah. But that's another example of them coming out right, is the language around employers. And you'll remember during the last election, Keir Starmer let something slip when he said he defined working people as people who don't have savings, right? That's right. So now saying this point about employers are not real people, that means they are, as far as they're concerned, just an inanimate money tree from which they can pluck everything they need to finance welfare, which we also know they're not going to properly reform.
Speaker 1Well, that's the other truth. There is no welfare cut.
Speaker 2No welfare cut's coming.
Speaker 1Actually, welfare's going up by 30 billion, so the whole notion, they've had an internal now about not even making a cut. That is how ridiculous this is. Because we were initially quibbling, I think, over about £5 billion. The bill is going up by £30 billion, regardless of what anyone says or does. So we had Reynolds in this strange situation of saying, well, we're going to table some legislation. Well, you might cut a rise, but you're not cutting the bill at all. On Europe, by the way, I do find it absolutely incredible that Reeves has spent the last two and a half years banging on about us having the fastest growth in the Eurozone, banging on about us having the fastest growth in the G7. And now we need to go back in. Now we need to go back in, literally while France is bankrupt and on fire. And Germany's about to be taken over by the AFD.
Speaker 2And no one can quite figure out what's going on in Poland, but it doesn't look good. So they are out and proud on Europe. They are out and proud on tax. They are out and proud on protecting welfare. As we speak, we turn on immigration, which because of the time we're recording, we'll have to come back to later. But we all suspect that Shabana Mahmood is not going to go forward with the dramatic change for indefinite
Speaker 1leave for people
Speaker 2who are here on a visa.
Speaker 1A carve out for social care workers, which we could question the wisdom of because Boris Johnson did that. And then suddenly four to six million people came over here in a big fat wave.
Speaker 2Either way, we've had it. We've been whacked over the head with Shabana Mahmood is really right wing, democratically far right. And this is this is a this is a blue labor government and they are determined to bring immigration under control. Well, we'll we'll wait and see what what comes of that. But finally, they are out and proud on the question of foreign aid and slavery reparations.
Speaker 1Slavery reparations. Can you even begin to fathom a situation where paying slavery reparations to the Caribbean and other countries passes Andy Burnham's make a field test? Can you imagine knocking on those doors again, as we did in that by-election and having the good people of Makerfield say in the midst of a cost of living crisis, following a budget that has literally given the great UK 4p off a jar of gherkins? Would you now like to pay trillions? Yes. For the mistakes of people centuries ago.
Speaker 2Before we get into into the rights and wrongs of that, I just think it's important to add for a bit of context. Britain's foreign aid regime has changed dramatically. And it has been a bipartisan change. It has gone from David Cameron setting at 0.7% to being reduced to about 0.3%. At the same time as they have shifted away from giving direct grants to say right here, go and build a well towards investment in businesses that produce a return. Yes. Or else spending on things within this country, such as helping refugees. Some of the development budget actually is spent within the UK. That was begun under Brexit that move away from 0.7% towards spending less money and spending it more sort of towards business goals and domestic goals. And it was continued under Keir Starmer. Labour signed off on that and continue down that path. So this conversation about slavery and reparations, I think that's going to be a big one. I think that's going to be a big one. So don't just see this as a sort of a GCSE's moral issues debate. The interesting thing to watch is, is Andy Burnham going to take us back to the old regime where Britain handed out large amounts of money to developing countries?
Speaker 1To Ethiopian Spice Girls and the Indian Space Race.
Speaker 2Well, that was one thing we did. It's worth noting, we do already send large amounts of money to the Commonwealth, including Nigeria, which will receive £75 million this year, and Jamaica, which will receive £2.4 million. But I doubt that what's going to come out of this, as I say, is we're going to give $2 trillion to the rest of the world to say sorry. What I think is interesting is, is this going to start the process of returning to the old foreign aid?
Speaker 1Isn't it astonishing how seemingly comfortable Andy Burnham has been both as Manchester mayor and now prime minister with huge amounts of investment coming in from Middle Eastern nations, which probably don't have a great relationship with modern slavery? I mean, we remember all of the stories that Oliver Brown did about Qatar and the World Cup. So on one hand, let's turn a blind eye to actual slavery still going on today. Meanwhile, let's self-flagellate and issue an apology for a slave trade that we helped to abolish. But let's make no demands whatsoever on the Arab nations that took literally millions more slaves than Britain ever did. Their numbers are up to nearly 20 million. Ours are around 3.5 and not demand any apology either from the African nations that also took slaves. This is becoming party political. And to be fair, I would say this, wouldn't I, Robert Jenrick, because we are literally besties on the phone with each other the whole time. But hasn't Bade not got this one right? Speaking both as a black woman, but also just speaking some common sense. Let's be honest.
Speaker 2She gives us permission to think and say things we'd feel uncomfortable thinking or saying. She gives it. She does. There's no escaping it. And her perspective is someone coming from those developing countries who can say honestly yeah there's some trauma there there's no denying what happened there's no denying it was bad but much of what has happened since has been done by africans to africans yes and has nothing to do with us also
Speaker 1people have got very short memories tony blair made these apologies back in the day didn't he
Speaker 2yes second of all and twice he did it twice forgive
Speaker 1me this is a point that
Speaker 22006 and 7
Speaker 1This is a point I made to Hannah Finesse, who we're going to speak to in just a minute because she's in Antigua. I made it to her on a previous Royalty. Is this a facile point to make? Or if we are going to constantly apologise for slavery and the empire and all the rest of it, shouldn't we equally be demanding modern day Germans permanently apologise for the Nazis?
Speaker 2To be fair, they do.
Speaker 1Well, they don't really. When anyone, when there's a Royalty.
Speaker 2To excess, I think.
Speaker 1Hang on. Hang on a minute, though. But when there is, say, for instance, a royal visit or a OK, say, for instance, if Mertz or Merkel or someone went to visit another country, are people constantly demanding of them an apology for Hitler?
Speaker 2It's a bit different because we beat them in a war. And also they are we are now a powerful country. No, but I'm really talking
Speaker 1about the principle of modern day people being held responsible for the crimes of their ancestors. Yes. What possible role can modern day people in Britain in 2026, what possible responsibility can they take for something that went on in the 1500s onwards? I just don't quite get it. Should we? Well, do we need to apologize? I don't know. Like, could one of your ancestors, God forbid, have spread the plague or been responsible for the fire of London or what more can we apologize? it's just it's preposterous no
Speaker 2okay so the argument for reparations would be there is a contemporary lasting effect of slavery people are in the caribbean because of slavery and one consequence of slavery was that it drained the wealth and labor of african nations and prevented them from developing maybe they would have looked very different to how they look today if we hadn't raided and raped their countries in the way that we did we weren't the
Speaker 1any people doing it. I just don't quite understand why this is a unique question asked of Britain and not anyone else.
Speaker 2And Muslim civilization did it too. But the point is, is the world we are in today is a consequence of the transatlantic slave industry. And countries today, which are perceived as being at the top of the pile, like Britain and America, are there in part because of slavery. And therefore, they have a historic obligation to those who they damaged in order to get rich. And if you think about it, some people, I feel, sometimes rather glibly say, I have no relationship to anything that happened in the past. Well, we're about to commemorate Remembrance Sunday, right? There's no one alive from the First World War. But the First World War made and defined our country and shaped the way that we think about the military and valor and conflict. So we still commemorate it. Well, some countries feel the same about things like the Holocaust or slavery. Yes. I mean, there
Speaker 1are people in Poland that want reparations
Speaker 2for the damage caused by the Germans. Exactly. On the other hand, you have to be hard-headed and realistic. There is a statute of limitations in life. Yes. We do not, we should not, in my opinion, arrest a 90-year-old man because he stole a car when he was a boy. Yes. Right. Likewise, you cannot go around saying to different countries, you did this a very long time ago, because to borrow a woke argument, that country itself has changed so radically in those centuries. Who exactly is it we would be prosecuting here? I can pretty safely say my relatives did not profit from slavery because they were poor. No. They're not the kind of people who did well out of it.
Speaker 1No, mine were Irish-Italian, so I doubt they did either.
Speaker 2Right. And we've since had some immigration. We've had revolutions. We are a different society. It might be at some point of, dare I say, I don't want to sound patronizing here, but it might be some point of confusion for people. and developing societies, that they're still visited by a king. It might give the impression we are still a feudal monarchy. Yes, possibly. We are not. No. He's really just the face of the country, but he's not the government of the country. And, of course, one always comes back to that question of, so if we do accept that societies today must bear responsibility for everything that was done in the past, do we have a right to require reparations from Norway and Denmark and Sweden for the Viking raids? Yes. So where do you stop? And ultimately, I think the argument comes down to a question of utility. What is useful? Is this constant debate useful, or is it more useful to think about moving forward, building businesses, building partnerships, treating each other as equals, which is the point of the Commonwealth, or is it useful to constantly go on about things that happened hundreds of years ago over which we have no control and for which there probably isn't. There isn't enough money in the world to fix.
Speaker 1Well, Tim, obviously it is ignited debate on the Telegraph website. Liz Oldfield writes, By apologising, you are admitting guilt. And once you have admitted guilt, there is a potential case for reparation. His Majesty is perfectly correct here. Why Andy Burnham has to stick his four pennyworths is beyond me. Who cares what he thinks? Well, he is Prime Minister, Liz, but I do take your point.
Speaker 2Jim Blade says, Charles, be a king. You waited long enough for the job. Don't cringe. Bang your fist on the table. And, Jim, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. That's not the king's role. It's the Prime Minister's role to put his people first, the people who he was elected by. No, he wasn't elected. But to put the people of Makerfield first, and it's for him to set the policy and then the king to represent it. The problem here, as we discussed earlier, is partly about Labour coming out after Starmer as being more soft left, but it's also that Burnham has a habit of saying the first thing that comes into his head. He's all about starting conversations, and dialogue, and seeing where they go. As Richard Maidley said, you're flying kites. This is another classic kite. We've actually no idea what the purpose is of this, or where it's going to go.
Speaker 1Yeah, but it's not a little fix, is it? It's not like legislation to find the end of the sellotape, which has been going far on social media.
Speaker 2Oh, do you think he's going to put a cap on Caribbean bus fares?
Speaker 1Well, who knows? But it's amazing. He seems to be confused. On one hand, he wants to help us with all the little things. And on the other hand, he's talking about reparations that could literally, drum up a bill of trillions. Yes, yes. Make your mind up, mate. You're doing the big stuff, or the little stuff, or what? Shall we speak to our girl in the Caribbean, Hannah Furness, the most popular ginger that has entered the Caribbean since Prince Harry's last tour. She's with the King right now.
Speaker 2Hannah, may I just say, you look fantastic.
Speaker 3We're in the Caribbean, yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2You're in the Caribbean, but it really suits you. You've got lovely hair, and the view behind you, we've got palm trees, you've got houses with red roofs. It's just a classic Caribbean vista, and it looks so nice. But has the weather always been this good?
Speaker 3No. As you know, out here, there is torrential rain occasionally. And did you see the clip of the King yesterday? We did. Yes, we did.
Speaker 2It's all anyone's talking about.
Speaker 3Poor, poor man. 78-year-old man with cancer. So we were at the, it's like a military parade for Antiguan and Barbudan independence, 45 years celebrating. Lots of military, lots of marching, Boy Scouts. He stands up for hours, as he does at Trooping the Colour, as everybody goes past. So the weather had been lovely all day. As they get out of the car, the King and Queen, they do their bit, they stand for the national anthems, and the heavens just absolutely opened. And you know you're kind of writing your analysis drop intro, it rains on the King's parade in your head as all this stuff happens. It's a metaphor for the tour. And then somebody gets the Queen an umbrella, she goes under it and pretty much runs up to go under shelter. The King has to stay out for longer. And nobody can seem to locate one. So the poor man is going, where's my umbrella? Where's my umbrella? With increasing urgency. And then eventually gives up and he just stands there in the absolutely pouring rain until an equine manages to source one.
Speaker 1There were shades of two different events. Fountain Pen Gate, when he got a little frustrated with his illness. With his ink pen at the accession council when he became King. But also I think Rishi Sunak announcing that snap general election. The suit and the horizontal rain meeting in perfect misharmony.
Speaker 2Awful. But was there a good reason why someone didn't bring him an umbrella the moment that the clouds opened?
Speaker 3Well, there is a convention out here, more so than in the UK, that when the national anthem is playing, you know, we've been told you must stand stock still, no talking, no moving. They take it very seriously. And I think there was an issue of what's more offensive. Do we dash around trying to find an umbrella and potentially offend our host, which is what they're concerned about the whole time, obviously. Or do we let the king get wet? Or was it just a bit of a muddle between the staff out here? They sorted it out. It's okay. He bounced back. He had a good joke with the prime minister once he was back inside again, saying Watercress was about to grow out of his trousers.
Speaker 1That's actually quite a good line, isn't it? For an inveterate gardener, there was a scene once. Once when the Duke of York, the former Duke of York, asked an aide who will remain nameless, but did give the story to me and others, that Prince Andrew got wet once and turned to this aide and said, why haven't you brought me an effing umbrella? And it went down very badly. There are very serious. It could have been worse. Could have been worse. There are very serious matters being discussed there, though, Hannah. And has the prime minister, Andy Burnham, put the king in a bit of a pickle? Because over in Blighty, back in the cold and wet, outside Dining Street, we've got Burnham prevaricating between wanting to make an apology for slavery, not wanting to, wanting to pay reparations, not wanting to. And it's been suggested in the papers here that actually his flip-flopping has put the monarch in a very precarious position.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think that's right. And it does feel like that out here. I mean, on the ground. So we've been to the Bahamas, we've been to Guyana, and now we're in Antigua and Barbuda. And this is a live discussion among leaders, politicians out here. It's a very grown-up debate. You know, they always talk about the king as a personal friend to a lot of these leaders. They talk about, you know, maybe they don't want him to be the monarch here, but they're very happy to have a relationship with him and a good relationship. So he's sort of playing on this out here, but this has made it very difficult for him. Andy Burnham saying that he is open to an apology. It's not his job. For the government, this is what the palace constantly says, refers back to government. You know, normal people who talk about reparations here look to the king. The king's the face of this. And if we've got Andy Burnham saying he's open to calls for an apology, it does leave more of a question for the king. Of why he isn't doing that. And it's quite difficult to explain. The other thing is, and this is what the palace, as you know, are always wary of, is that it's dragged him into a political issue, but it's very quickly become a party political issue, which is the kind of red line absolute no that the king can't do. So back in Britain, I mean, you tell me, but as I understand it, it's immediately divided down Labour, Conservative, and Farage obviously feels very strongly about it as well. And it's put the king just in, again, for the, I feel like the thousandth time I'm talking to you about this in the last few years, quite an uncomfortable position. He can deal with it. The palace call it a diplomatic tightrope that he has walked for a long time and he can still do it, but it doesn't make his job here easier.
Speaker 2From what you've seen, are Caribbeans unanimous on demanding an apology or reparations? Or are there some people in the Caribbean saying, let's let this go and move on?
Speaker 3Well, what we've seen out and about, it's slightly different in each country. So in the Bahamas, what we thought were going to be fairly significant protests turned out to be five very gently spoken, articulate women with placards amid crowd of, you know, hundreds and hundreds who have come out to dance and see the king and have a good time. In Guyana, there was, it was a little bit more vocal. I would say about 20 people with placards, with sort of slightly more, not aggressive, noisy shouting, reparations now, as the king walked into a building. But that was that. What we've seen more is a little bit of bafflement really about why people like us keep talking about it. The host countries, the palace told us in advance that when they're working with these host countries, the countries themselves wants the focus to be on the future, showing off the best of their country. What are we going to do for young people? How are we going to develop our relationship with Britain? So there has been a degree of bafflement of why we're also obsessed with it when it's not a huge discussion on the ground, apart from these campaigners and TIGA itself. So as Chogham kicks in, which really gets into action today when the prime minister arrives, I think it is going to feel like a lot more of a live, serious issue that people are talking about.
Speaker 2Hmm, that's so interesting because you wouldn't know that if you didn't go there. I mean, that sounds obvious, but from our perspective, we assume the Caribbean is obsessed with this and it's all they want to talk about. And they just see us as a Czech, waiting to be signed.
Speaker 1Also, you assume that the whole of the. caribbean wants to ditch the commonwealth and become republics as barbados has and all the rest of it but you normally when you're on tour you've got many more people turning out for the royals than turning against the royals yeah
Speaker 3and there's the the biggest danger i would say out here is apathy actually towards the monarchy um there's a there's a section of people that talk about reparations all the time there's a section of people who for decades talk about derailming and republicanism most people who we've met are kind of curious to see the king curious to see the royal family interested in a relationship with britain in historic terms lots of them you know the leaders especially have very strong relationships with the late queen and now have them with the king so it's as we've traveled around it hasn't felt any different to me this time as we've seen on many other royal tours and you will have seen as well camilla of you know you have the press and a section of people talking about one thing and it feels different out here and that is that's why we can't see it with our own eyes
Speaker 1um final very serious question can you confirm or deny that in their infinite wisdom buckingham palace recommended a hotel for the press pack that uh maybe adults only and uh frequented by swingers saying how nice it looks well it looks a bit like the set of neighbors for those listening like hannah seems to be in some kind of ramsey street-esque cul-de-sac but um is it adults only there hannah have you been painting the town red what's been happening at night what what
Speaker 3goes on tour stays on tour camilla as you know yes yes don't i know it's been a bit difficult to file sometimes there's quite a lot of loud music in the background is
Speaker 1there loud music and loud drink it who would have thought it on tour tim oh i remember such a lovely tour to the caribbean where we stayed at a sandals resort and i'm not quite sure what happened but i did end up kissing an american tv anchor on the lips oh really yes um what about on air you told your
Speaker 3husband this yeah well
Speaker 1it was just like it was a kiss without tongues can i just stress but right he was a very very attractive man you're a married lady i know i am but it's fine to kiss somebody on the lips isn't it
Speaker 2well okay but that's a separate podcast we'll put that out as a weekend special put that out that is not one i plan to
Speaker 3research any further out here
Speaker 1no fair enough um hannah have her brolly handy lovely to see you welcome you back to the uk soon thank you you you
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