How the Government bungled its response to fuel protests

You're listening to The Irish Times. It's Friday, April the 10th and you're very welcome to The Insight Politics Wrap of the Week from The Irish Times. I'm Hugh Linahann joined today by Alan Coyne and Jack Organjones. Hello to you both. Hi. Before we start, I just want to confirm the exciting news that Insight Politics is heading into the West and across the Shannon. We're going to be in Goalway City at the Rochine Dove on May the 5th for a special live by-election special podcast. And if you'd like to come along, we would be delighted to see you there. All you have to do is go to Irishtimes.com/events where you can get your tickets. So, looking forward to that. Everybody? Looking forward to the by-elections actually as well. We always like a nice by-election around these parts, don't we? Yes. If the weather is good as well, it would be nice. Hopefully it will be in May. Speaking of big news events, this is usually a pretty quiet news week. Jack, the week after Easter and just before we started recording, we were discussing whether this blockades, which are right across the country, whether anybody saw this coming. Well, they knew something was coming. If you go back to the tail end of last week, so the week leading into Easter, it was clear from some of the online chatter. That a protest was planned for the early part of this week and talking to people for a piece that myself and Connogala have in Saturday's paper kind of charting the evolution of the protests and also the government reaction that we saw over the course of the week. I was talking to the fuel industry lobby in particular. Their view is that from about Go Friday onwards, they were seeing screen grabs of social media accounts of WhatsApp conversations, of telegram channels which suggested something big was coming and something big was being planned for over this week starting on Tuesday. Now, I suppose the question is if an industry lobby group can make itself aware of something like this should the government should the wider apparatus of the station not also have been aware of it and also the extent to which they are warned of it. We go into this in greater detail in the piece, but there does seem to have been warnings to government and the Guardian over last weekend. Over the long weekend of Easter, about a large scale protest coming, but for whatever reason. I know this is more Connors beach than yours, but the guards for example have beefed up their kind of monitoring online discourse and things like that. What might have an impact on law and order, don't they? They have and look, they were strongly criticized particularly in the aftermath of the November 2023 riots for not being able to react quickly to what was clearly forming online and what then crossed into the real world with those very damaging rights that we saw in Dublin City Centre. I think that if anything, the criticism may be stronger this time around because it was more of a slow burn and more of an organized thing than a spontaneous reaction to events as happened on a connoisseurish. So I do think that there are questions to be asked and read answers arising from that because talking to people, you know, security people, government people. There was a kind of simmering awareness that something was coming, but they had no idea of the scale of it. They were rapidly disabused of the notion that this might be a flash in the pan or something small early in the week when we saw rolling blockades of major transport arteries across the country. All the major motorways, the city centre and the capital city being locked down, Tuesday into Wednesday, fuel depots being being blockaded, Tuesday into Wednesday, white gatoroe verifying, being blockaded on Wednesday and ultimately the decision on Wednesday evening to seek the assistance of the defence forces on Thursday morning, which sparked its own its own sequelae of, you know, recrimination from the protesters ultimately the army didn't really turn up on Wednesday. And this maelstrom of confusion really Thursday night into Friday where it seemed that the protesters were going to be invited into talks with government that then transpired that wasn't the case this morning and confusion reigned as well as chaos reigning up and down the country. And there are many different aspects of this which are absolutely fascinating and I'm sure we'll get into all of them, but one in particular is the organization of the protests both in a visible and kind of semi private way online. So we've seen Facebook groups which have been active for some time but become a real locus of a real rallying point for dissemination of information about the protests. But also an entry point into WhatsApp groups which people have set up and are using to organise locally opening the country of for my sins, spent quite a bit of time in these WhatsApp groups this week and you know it's a fascinating insight not only into the kind of organizational practices of a encohase leaderless movement which is kind of taken over the country. It's certainly the transport arteries of the country and holder and private but also to an extent you know the messy politics that underlies all this as well. There's an awful lot in that and we'll come back to some of it again just before we started recording Ellen. And we were discussing how this or why this at this particular point obviously it's driven by the current the energy spike and the prices but you were saying there had been an attempt to do this previously. Yes so as Jack said there is this one particular Facebook group that has become like a central online point of infrastructure from which different WhatsApp groups so like a local WhatsApp group for a sligh or for Johnny go or whatever can be created but this Facebook group had existed as far back as the cost of living crisis that was sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Those poster it was not very active over the last number of years so it's quite easy to scroll back and see that there had been attempt which I do not remember honestly for this similar group of protesters and HGV drivers and I'm not sure if farmers were involved to try to create a blockade near the tree arena on the way to the port tunnel. And when I was going back looking at the post there was a lot of angry posts from the group itself saying where were all of you like all of you had promised that you were going to show up today apparently it was very like meager turn out and it didn't really result in that it didn't really work with which I think is kind of an interesting story in and of itself because we all remember that that cost of living crisis was biting quite hard. The prices of fuel were rocketing and everything that we're talking about now is being discussed in parallel to what the government did or didn't do in 2022. I think there probably is an interesting story there and I'm not sure if it's one that we can tell today about how and why this attempt a few years ago didn't work out and this effort this time around seems to have caught fire quite quickly. I think one thing that I think is interesting politically is that there's been a lot of chatter from you know the politicians who have not been able to resist the law of climbing up onto the side of a HGV like patrote bean Matt Carthie, independent Ireland talking about this is a kind of organic movement. If you go back a lot of those politicians certainly patrote bean and the independent Ireland TDs were putting up videos promoting the protest before they didn't happen over the Easter Bank holiday weekend so I think in one of those WhatsApp groups some people are actually crediting Richard O'Donohue with organizing a protest in limerick because he was promoting it so much and patrote bean who Jack is an interesting no get in the piece that will be out tomorrow about how. Patr was kind of conceding to governmental I don't really like that these protests are actually happening here to video up on Facebook inside his car on Easter Bank holiday Monday saying tomorrow these protests are going to happen they're completely organic and they're being organized because the government is failing the people of Ireland so I think it's interesting that there seems to be some recognition from a certain strain of Irish politics that there is some capital to be got here but because it's such a messy not centralized not necessarily well organized. National movement the politicians are also recognizing at the same time that there could be some danger here which I think might be why Mary Lou McDonald in particular has been a little bit cautious about how much support the government should talk to them well she's kind of saying it proves that we were right all along because the Sinn Fein was the only opposition party that didn't vote for the 250 million Euro package a couple of weeks ago to the chagrin of those in government buildings and she was just kind of saying if you don't need listen to us and if you've gone for it. There was a lot of politics in this and we'll come to the politics and maybe just briefly first of all to address you know they haven't legitimate grievance people who are working in these in these sectors in terms of the pressure on them economically no Jack do they for sure I mean you know cost living crisis real. I see these claims for you know how much contractors who have X number of vehicles and why number of employees and they say their costs have gone up by another some I don't really have a way of judging judging exactly what that means yeah look I mean I think you could make an effort to get super granular on it and try to kind of actually assess the economic exposure of different categories of haulier or farmer or farming contractor to a price shock of this scale but I think that you know in trying to zoom in that closely you'd miss something of the bigger picture I think the fact is that you know we've been hit with a massive inflation or a wave and if you are your business are particularly dependent on agridesal or diesel you've been hit harder than your average bear I mean there's just that there's no getting away from that and you pass that onto your customers that don't you you pass the business works. Well, I mean, to an extent, I'm not sure this can necessarily be easily absorbed. And it's just the fact of economic reality that when things like this happen, margins get more tightly squeezed, and it's a fact of political reality. In Ireland, generally, the extractor has been deployed to soften that blur to buffer people to a certain extent, but in the assessment of the organizers and participants of these protests, that has been insufficient. And their asks are effectively well beyond the scope of what the government is willing to do. Well, it's an idea to tell what their asks are because they seem to change. It is. I mean, it isn't. And it isn't. The two most consistent ones are for a cap on fuel prices and for the scrapping abolition or temporary suspension of carbon tax, both of which our red lines government are not willing to cross because they think that the introduction of a fuel cap would be economically runestly if the extractor exposed billions in costs and ultimately damage both retailers and consumers. And so just to take those one at a time, a fuel cap would essentially mean that the government would subsidise the fuel to make sure it doesn't go. It's not preventing people. It's, you know, because you can't do that. It's not keeping a cap on the individual's rights of energy. Exactly. It lowers the cost at the pump, but it exposes the extractor to backfill the difference between the cost paid at the pump and the cost paid by retailers and wholesale suppliers. So, you know, an open-ended commitment to do something like that is assessed as being way too risky, way too costly and kind of way too economically destabilising an intervention by the coalition. So that's dangerous precedence. Yeah. So that's not going to happen. And equally, they've said that they're not going to do anything about the carbon tax because it is to use one of my favourite jargonny words, 'hypothicated', it's already spent. It's used for retrofit schemes and all those kind of things. So they're not going to go near those things. All of which means that like, it seems to me that the protest groups are asking something that can't be delivered and also that their goals and their asks seem to be somewhat fluid. So we saw, for example, this morning on NewsTalk, James Gagan, one of the most more prominent spokesperson for the campaign going on and disclosing for the first time that one of their requests was that they wanted to restarge oil exploration drilling in Irish waters. That's pretty jump. Both from the blue, you know, and again, something that I would imagine is not going to be countenanced by the powers that be. All of which leads me to in the place where I. I'm struggling to see how this is resolved through dialogue if both parties aren't willing to cross any of their red lines. And not what's standing the fact that we do have a meeting this afternoon between government and a bunch of officially recognized groups. Now there's an open question as of midday or so on Friday as to whether some of the protestors will be accommodated as part of the delegations of those organized groups. But I just don't see. I don't see any settlement emerging from this. I do see potentially the government throwing more money at the problem. You know, more more schemes or benefits for hauliers in particular or for agridies or for whatever. But there seems to me a kind of deeper grievance at work within the political attitudes of the protestors that won't simply be addressed by something like that. I mean, what we're dealing with here in part is a set of demands and a set of direct actions, direct protest actions. But I think in another way it's an expression of the politics of anger, resentment, feeling left behind, feeling alienated from progress, which we've seen spark up in other jurisdictions. I mean, I think. I think I think people have mentioned the good things. The G. Leijon for example. There are parallels there. Yes, I think that's the closest parallel. I can think of it, but there are analogs in Irish politics. I mean, we saw some of this in the water, the charges, protests, movement, I think. Yeah, a parallel to struck me. The teacher was due to go to Canada next week, but he's not not apparently. There was a trucker protest in Ottawa in early 2022, which was to do with COVID restrictions actually. But again, a similar segment of the population alienated from certain policies, perhaps particularly skeptical about certain kinds of progressive policies around taxation and the environment and things like that. Very reliant and very sensitive to energy prices. Again, a bit like the G. Leijon as well, which was similar to that too. So it's not entirely unfamiliar. It's sometimes characterized as a set of populist right point of views. I'm not sure. It can sometimes be a bit more diffuse than that, I think, though as well. Well, I think that's actually quite a difficult question for the protesters because again, I'm interested in a well proportion of people in these water groups are journalists because I've been spending some time in them as well. But I did pick up that there was some friction about the fact that there was videos appearing online during the week, particularly from the Dublin protest of people showing up who, to my untrained eye, didn't look like ordinary everyday farmers talking about the LGBT agenda and immigration and stuff. And there was some friction in the water groups with people saying, "I really hope the organizers can be more disciplined, but maybe and keep this to things like the cost of living." And while I take those concerns from ordinary protesters who want to support this, from the cost of fuel, what's supposed to be the core point, unfortunately the call is coming from inside the house a little bit because some of the people have put themselves worried for spokesperson, but sometimes spokespeople just for the Dublin branch who can't actually talk for the Limrich branch or whatever, like have had activity online that has involved them sharing some pretty inflammatory stuff in terms of climate change denialism, some very extreme commentary on immigration. Christopher Duffy who's been very prominent as the spokesperson over the last 72 hours enthusiastically shared a picture that has garnered a lot of attention of someone who showed up to the protest with a trailer that had a new sonnet and a placard that said, "Hang them high and death to WEF traitors, world economic forum traitors." So that sort of stuff is obviously going to alienate the ordinary workers who are being discommoted by this. The people particularly in monstrous LIGO, Donnie Goll who can't actually buy fuel at the moment, including farmers who are busy working who don't have the time to take three to four days off to go off to Dublin, being entrepreneurs. It's constructions that they can do that if they're under such economic pressure. Well some of them are like I suppose I would not want to doubt the sincerity of people because it is a fact that HTV drivers and farmers like industries that rely on diesel are being disproportionately hit. And I think the government conceded that in the fact that Darryl Reinhne had been working with the Irish Road Hallyers Association, had a meeting with them last Friday, had teed up in the Sunday newspapers that they were considering, I don't know if this is going to happen, bringing back a scheme that had existed in COVID for these people. So I don't doubt when people are saying that they are being hit hard economically, but some of these people might be contractors that work for farmers and with different factors like the fact that the weather hasn't been particularly good, they might not be as busy as other people at the moment. Like they would say that they're making sacrifices that they can't afford to not be part of these protests. But I guess this strain that's coming through of more extreme views of things that are not actually related to fuel issues at all will challenge the support of the public, which I think exists, but is not unconditional. And we're getting into this space now where different parts of the HSC are having conversations about how prepared they need to be to prioritize fuel. If they're going to need to start formally counselling appointments, I had friends that were in both Hollis Street and the Ritunda this week, and very important appointments for women were being counselled or postponed because it's what pregnant woman wants to go down to colonel street at the moment in fairness. So while I do think that our people are naturally empathetic to the core cause of this protest, I think that that is support that the the protestors should not take for granted. And I heard Sarah McNeer any making an important point that why is it up to them to say, oh, we'll let this person pass through the refinery. We won't let this person like you kind of be forgiven for thinking who died and made you the itala. Well, also it's reminiscent of some of the attempts to control transport around protests around, you know, refugees' entries, for example. Exactly. It's not a million miles away from that, is it? It is that kind of question of, you know, you are taking the law into your own hands. And as Jack said, the guards have not really shifted into like a full enforcement mode at the moment. I think it was kind of like dialogue and management for the first few days of the protest, but if we're getting into a situation where dozens more petrol stations are expected to run out of fuel by tonight, what does that what does that do to the public mood towards the protesters? When the schools are back on Monday, the whole nature of the way that the country moves around on a day-to-day basis changes, doesn't it, Jack? Yeah, exactly. And kind of throughout this week, I've suspected that if there is a hard ceiling to that ambient level of public support that may instinctively be out there amongst, you know, the Joe or Josephine soap in the streets that Ellen was talking about. We may discover just where that that ceiling is when people are trying to get back to the office in a more meaningful way after the Easter holidays and get their kids into school and organize their the home drum of the day-to-day lives as they as they need to do. So maybe that will engender some kind of change. And I do think that the government has perhaps been mindful of that in seeing how this plays out and seeing if there is a sea change in wider attitudes towards the protest. if people start to really get cross-ad-angry with people on blockades or on rolling convoys, then maybe they might shrink back a little bit in and of themselves. But I think in allowing that time and space to emerge, they have also allowed a kind of serious challenge to the authority of the state to also coalesce and the kind of things that Alan was talking about. You know, people policing access to critical infrastructure, points of egress, and exist for goods and particularly commodities like, you know, fuel and oil being a pretty serious thing. You know, and there has been alongside that kind of weight in sea dynamic, there has been a growing frustration certainly within parts of the coalition that we haven't seen more aggressive action by the Guardian, largely by the Army. I mean, like, I kind of think their authority was really badly undermined by what happened on Thursday where across Wednesday, particularly when Whitegate Oil refinery was blockaded, there was a serious gear shift within government and thinking about this, where there was flurries of calls between the T-Shick, the Tarnished Independent Minister Sean Caini, who represents the independence of Kavanaugh, Minister of Defence Alan Mackinthi, Minister of Justice Jim O'Callan, meanwhile the Guardian, the Defence Forces were talking as well, and it was basically decided that this cannot be tolerated. That led to the, what's called a C-70 request from the Guardian to the Defence Forces to assist them in their role, being developed overnight Wednesday into Thursday and being publicly announced on Thursday morning. And all the indications were that something was going to happen quite quickly. I mean, we were talking to people in government who were saying, you know, I'd get a reported end to White gate soon because, you know, there's going to be action down there. But the longer the day went on, the more I think this kind of credibility got began to emerge. And the more the protesters were kind of marinating in their own sense of outrage about this, the suggestion that the state was turning, its defence forces on its own people, and also the more chance people had to kind of take proper defensive measures like lifting up trucks and trailers off their re-wheels, making them more difficult to tow away. And then you get to a point on Thursday evening, where James Gage, and again, one of the, one of the main kind of spokesperson for the protesters, goes on prime time and claims that there's been a breakthrough and that they've been invited to talks. That moves very quickly through the WhatsApp groups. It's taken as a moment of victory or significant achievement because on the face of it, if that's true, it is because you have the government stepping back from what had been one of its core aims, which was not to engage directly with the protesters, instead to emphasise the official lines of communication with bodies like the Irish Farmers Association and the Irish Road Hordeers Association. And if they're rolling back from that, then surely what is that, if not a victory for the protesters and you have a situation or Christopher Duffy, one of the spokesperson of the Alan has referenced as well, is giving what amounts to it to a victory speech on an O'Connell Bridge. And also again, shifting the goalposts, saying we said we got to meet, if we got a meeting, we'd go back, but we're not going back now. It's a remarkable situation with no clear way out of us, other than perhaps a swing in public sentiment or an effective intervention by the Security Force of the State to discourage the front back. So just to be clear on that. In your analysis, the government made a complete haemes of that then, if I understand you correctly, that by announcing that they're calling on the defence forces were back up, but not acting on that, making the announcement but nothing happening. They both lost any element of strategic advantage or surprise and they didn't do it anyway. And they were just left looking like the emperor would know close. Yeah, and then we're left in a situation this morning where everyone's entirely confused and the government is unable to convey a clear message about kind of who has been invited into the meetings and T-Shick, Neil Martin gave comments to Pat Leigh this morning kind of indicating a willingness to enter some kind of dialogue that won't remove with the protesters. And it's 1pm now this meeting is due to happen in about an hour and a half. Yeah, so we will know more about the outcomes from that meeting. If there are any of no's, presumably by the time a lot of people are listening to this, and maybe some kind of settlement can be arrived at, but again, going back to the WhatsApp groups, James Gagan was in there this morning, being extremely kind of, he was bragging almost like he was in there saying, we're running that meeting. A meeting that they may or may not ultimately end up attending. And saying things like look around the country if you want to know who has control, we have control. I'm paraphrasing a little bit there. So far, looking at that from the government's perspective. Or indeed from the guard's perspective on the law and order front, that's a direct challenge to the authority of the democratic state, isn't it? Yeah, and I suppose just on the not to get bogged down in the two and fro of the confusing meeting thing, but I think I'm past references in a piece that he has in the paper today about why the government didn't want to agree to a meeting with this group. They kind of felt that as soon as they did, the goalposts would move, which obviously played out in that victory speech that Jack was detailing that happened on O'Connell Street. I also think it just comes back to the core point of differentiation between the government and the protesters, which is the government has been talking to the IFA and the Irish Road Holders Association since the outbreak of this war because they represent groups that will be disproportionately affected by a high price of diesel. And as Jack mentioned, the two demands that they have most consistently made, apart from the area very pie in the sky stuff that has come out over the last 24 hours, is about a suspension, if not an abolition of the carbon tax and some sort of price cap on fuel. Now, those are both things that both the IFA and the Irish Road Holders Association have also called for. They obviously haven't demanded them in the same ridiculous terms that some of the protesters have this week, but I'm struggling to understand why this group feels that they are not actually represented by the well-established representative groups that do have the ear of government and have been in and out of government buildings and in and out of meetings with people like Darro Brian over the past couple of weeks. And you had been making progress. Like there's got there's been a bit of spin now that Darro Brian had kind of flagged in an interview with Claire Bern earlier today that there might be an announcement of some sort of package for hauliers. I'm not sure if there'll be something for farmers after this meeting today, but that's not as a result of the protest. Those were conversations that had been happening for at least a week. So the government had kind of conceded that that 250 million euro package needed to be improved upon before anyone parked up a truck or a farm or a tractor anywhere in the country. We can anticipate that that'll be finessed a little bit to look as if it's you know you were a pressure that I actually just. But if it's like Brian would you want to look like they have made a concession to this group when they haven't been engaging with the government in good faith. Like they said all a week and they had people like Patrote Bean saying for them this will all stop as soon as they get a meeting. As soon as they thought they got a meeting they were like well that's actually not going to happen at all. And like they can't control how can they actually if they can't even speak for each other. If the spokesperson in Dublin is apparently just a spokesperson for the Guy's Anoconal Street. How do they know that if they did get into a meeting and came out the people blocking the ports and refineries and other parts of the country would be happy with the result of the meeting because this is a disparate group of people who all have completely different aims. They can't even represent themselves. I think one of the important points that I'm as lighted on is the widespread distrust of those official groups, the likes of the the IFA and the Road College Association amongst amongst the protesters. I mean they see those groups as and you know I don't want to put words in their mouth but my assessment of it is that they see those groups as kind of a rotten cabal in ways in a way you know a kind of corporate structure inside the tent with government making deals that ultimately don't deliver sufficiently for you know the man in the street. And part of what we're seeing I think is a wholesale rejection not only of what those groups have or haven't been able to achieve in recent weeks and months but of that whole system of broker deal making. And the whole Irish system of social partnership that goes back decades. Which we are apart. Yeah which I think is one of the reasons why the coalition was so nervous about the idea that they would interact directly with the protesters because there's a lot of invested in that system of government talking to big organized lobby groups and that they feel you know these are people we can do we can do business with. So by reaching outside and not only would they undermine the road-haulage people and the IFA but you can bet your bottom dollar as well that the unions and others were in their ears saying you know we're all invested in this system that that that knits together from time to time and we all you know take pot shots at each other and criticize each other but ultimately at the end of the day some kind of Fudgy consensus emerges and that's why I think that this is a particularly interesting political moment potentially a threat to that because it is as I say it's a wholesale rejection not only of the outputs of that system but in in many ways of that system itself. So here's a last question for the moment anyway on on this that Canadian protest I mentioned last I think for at least a month the Gilles Zon went on for months and I see one protester quoted an RGE this morning saying there'll be grass growing on the M50 and I'm going to have to find alternative means a transport to get in to go away for the last I'm sure. The most important thing for that commission, a helicopter, go back to the boom day. I did hear there was another protestor on O'Connell Street to give a similar quote to Ority saying that they were willing to stay there for a month. But I just think that so much of that will come down to the public support actually lasting. And I think that I really think, and you touched on earlier, schools coming back will really set a finite limit on the patience of the parents of Ireland. If they're still blockades, I know that obviously we are visually focusing a lot on O'Connell Street because you have obviously this iconic image of all these tractors down what is the main street in the capital. But it's actually the blockades around the country that are causing most chaos, like I had a friend who was in a very, what was already a very long journey with a newborn baby that was exasperated and made a lot longer because it's harder to get around by roads and smaller country lanes. If they, those are the ones that are being blocked. It also puts pressure on people are already in dire straits trying to make sure they have enough fuel. There is an element of panic buying. There's a lot of people who actually went out after the 6-1 last night to fill their cars. If you don't have petrol for the school run, again, your patience will run quite short with these protesters. And I don't know. I've never seen anything on that scale of what happened in Canada and France happening in Ireland for that long and still maintaining public support for that long, particularly with some of the Shambhalek stuff that's come over the last 24 hours where the public now know that they actually can't take the protesters at their word because they made one promise. Yeah, that makes a difference, doesn't it? Yeah, that was the only promise that they made to the public. We'll stop this as soon as you help us pressure the government into a meeting. Whether or not they did or did not get their meeting, they've shown that they weren't engaging in good faith on that and they went back on that promise as soon as they thought they got the meeting. What do you think, Jack? Go on for very long and what have anything can the government do to end it? Like if I was a betting man, I would say that we won't be here or we won't be here at this scale anyway in a week or 10 days. But such is the level of uncertainty and such is the level of anger amongst enough people are not saying every person and such is their proximity to the means to cause big disruption by controlling a lot of tractors and trucks and such is the evidence that they can do this if they want, you know, that it actually isn't beyond the realms of possibility to organize something like this, that you can't say with confidence that this is going to be put away and also add in the other stuff that we're talking about as well about the difficulty of identifying a landing zone that might defuse this. So in the round, I think that things may piece of rouse over the next week or 10 days, but a lasting settlement to it which dispells the idea that something like this could come roaring back as long as we're exposed to significant the high energy and fuel costs. I think that's another thing entirely. All right, we're going to take a break. When we're coming back, we're going to talk about the man who's actually responsible for all of this. And you're welcome back. That man, of course, is one Donald John Trump, 79 year old New Yorker, now living on Florida most of the time these days. He had a famous victory, according to himself, on Tuesday when a two week ceasefire was announced in the war between Israel and the US and one hand around on the other. That ceasefire, of course, does not apply to Lebanon, which is a continued suffer, severe bombing from Israeli forces. There's a terrific piece in the New York Times about the background to this and how it all came to pass and how it all ended up by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman. Donald Trump is claimed to famous victory. This looks like an unprecedented humiliation for the United States to me. What do you think of? Yep. And the piece that you mentioned had detailed really granular detail from the situation room about basically what the four aims or objectives of this was. The first two America thought that they could achieve. So the first was the decapitation of what was the existing regime and second of all diminishing Iran's power on the global scale. Now on the second point alone, I mean, if the mission here was to humiliate Iran and make it look less powerful, very much mission not accomplished because the situation we have now is that Iran actually has more autonomy and control over the straight of four moves than it ever had before, the art of the deal, I guess. And to go back to the other piece, I mean, that was singled out by America as something that it could achieve. And the briefings coming from Washington was that the other two aims, one of which was regime change and the second one, I actually can't remember, but they were saying that those were kind of ones that were inflated by Israel and they were over promising. So there was the ballistic missiles. Yes. There's a nuclear program obviously and the leadership, yes. Yeah. So what America thought was achievable, it has not achieved. And the peace deal already seemed fragile when it kind of just first emerged. And then you had a situation where for the days that followed, all of the media coverage showed us the massive gap in comprehension between what Iran thought the deal was and what America was. There was one farceical situation where CNN, I believe, accurately reported some quotes from Iran where they were describing the deal as a success for them. Donald Trump actually threatened to take legal action against the network because he was so convinced that it was a made up quote. So I know that sometimes in peace deals, like you need to kind of, if there's a kind of old saying that you kind of have to create a situation where both sides feel that they have lost something, I feel like this peace deal shows the risks of both sides feeling that they have come out of it, winning. And I suppose part of this is a problem that arises when you're negotiating team, is it used car salesmen under a shady selling law, isn't it? Yeah, and like there was some really offensive stuff about instead of focusing on what clearly were some of the failures in skill on the American side, making really patronizing calm and saying, oh, if Iran is interpreting this differently, it's probably because they just didn't understand the English that we were using well enough. I mean, it is, we kind of predicted at the very start. And I think everyone did that however they send it, it was going to end with rhetoric on truth, social about how this had been like an omitigated success for the United States. But surely even Donald Trump can accept that any enemies that he has around the world are looking at this and recognizing that you can make America fold. And it's kind of like a bit of a, there's a bit of like a greece and tragedy to it in that the man who came into his second administration, trying to use economic sanctions to punish the world and get it to bend to his will has now had effectively the same strategy used against him by Iran, a country that he has been fixated on as an enemy of America since he was in his early 30s. Very, very much so. I mean, even whatever about the level of incomprehension between the two sides, it seems to me that well, I mean, this is obviously a kind of a textbook case of asymmetrical warfare here at Jack, you know, that there's a famous quote by Henry Kissinger, I think about the Vietnam war, he said, you know, the large strategic huge, you know, American forces on the one hand and the Vietnamese on the other, he said, in order not to lose, the United States had to win. But in order to win, the Vietnamese only had to not lose. And this is the case in this with Iran, it seems to me that of course, they've suffered enormous damage and they've been horrendous casualties and there's been all kinds of losses, but they are, they are definitely the winner. And the other thing it seems to me about it is that in asymmetrical warfare, the little guy often understands the big guy better than the big guy understands the little guy. And those horrendous, true social posts last weekend from Donald Trump, which everybody was holding their hands up in horror, about, about, open the fucking streets and threatening civilisation, all extinction. It struck me that Iranians just looked at that and that this guy is panicking. We have him. Well, yeah, and I mean, different aspects of that asymmetry have been particularly fascinating to see play out over the last few weeks of this war. I mean, one thing that's been really interesting has been how conversant the Islamic Republic is with the language of the internet, how effective they've been at just kind of mocking Donald Trump and producing these AI videos of him as a baby and stuff like that and a skill in exploiting and understanding what will travel well online and just kind of undermine an infinitely more powerful foe. Now I don't think that's necessarily a key component to the, I don't want to say they're already win here, but like any kind of wins that they've had out of the ceasefire. But I do think it is something to remark upon. Another aspect of the asymmetry that is really interesting is that we shouldn't lose side of the fact that notwithstanding being absolutely pummeled from the air for weeks on end with everything that the US had and Israel had short of nuclear weapons, they retain the capacities take down fighter jets, they shot down NF15, I think they shot down an A10 as well and that launched this very kind of movie-esque. I'd say the option stuff, but the rights have been option to already be done. And again, it was trumpeted as a big win for US Special Forces, Bervado and I'm sure it was an incredibly impressive operation. I was standing the fact that they left a couple of planes on the ground behind that they had to destroy, but like the risks of that pilot not being saved. You know, Iran would only need to have one hostage to make this extremely difficult position. The very nature of these kind of conflicts, it's a big impact. That's the point, it depends. By some accounts, up to a billion dollars to get this guy out of there. And on the other, at the same time, virtually, the Iranian government is putting civilians around power stations, including children. So there's a different set of calculations about human life involved there as well. But the greatest asymmetry has been the fact that they control or at least can make things very difficult for commercial traffic in a little strip of water called the Straits of Hormuz. And that has ultimately, I think, strengthened their hands beyond any estimation that the US seems to have made pre-conflict. But surely it wasn't beyond the weight of man to establish that that was a very likely form of asymmetric asymmetrical power. Do we think Donald Trump's learned less and then he'd be much more sensible for the remainder of his term? No, I think that that man has mastered the art of a parallel universe within his own mind. And I think that what he might have been privately humbled by the way that this has gone, as Jack said, like there is this kind of mythology around the might of the American military that he finds very intoxicating. And a lot of analysis has attributed the rush of blood to the head that he got with Iran with what had previously happened in Venezuela. And that's just the way that American war propaganda works, like everybody's talking about the success of the mission to rescue the pilot who got stuck behind enemy lines. Nobody is talking about how and why it happened after weeks of peace, headset, bragging that they were able to fly big, slow B-52s over Iran. And their air defense was so completely depleted that they actually had no capacity to fight back at all, like the fact that that mission had to take place was actually an example of a very significant American military failure in the first place. There was a second plane that had crashed around the same time near the straight of formulas, but obviously they are seduced by the stories that they tell themselves. He won't be the first or last American president to unnecessarily try to intervene in a foreign country to his own political demise. And no, I don't think that Donald Trump will learn any lesson, but I think that we have moved into a frontier now where the so-called anti-interventionist American president is obviously none of those things anymore. And there's still significant time left in this term for another Venezuela or another Iran to happen, which obviously should trouble all of us. He could face it other last Sunday. If Hungary changes its government as well, we'll know that by Sunday evening, because the Trump administration had JD Vance there this week is very much 100% behind Victor or Arband, who is training in the polls by 10 points or more according to the polls. So we will look forward to that and we'll be covering that next week too. At this time every week we do also like to pick articles from iristime.com to recommend to our listeners. And a new picked a really interesting piece about court reports. Yes, so this was a piece that was in the paper during the week by Isabel Hayes, who is a court reporter. And I think it's really interesting, first because I think that court reporters are kind of like the unsung heroes of irisjournalism because what they do is actually so skilled, so precise, so important. And they often don't get the credit that they deserve. Really like it's a really, really skilled and really important form of journalism. But she wrote an opinion piece for us about how language matters in court reports, the language often being distressing language. And she singles out specifically cases to do with rape or sexual violence. And sometimes you can see a bit of a backlash online to some of the language and some of the detail that is used in court reporting. But I think it was a really excellent piece because it made a strong argument for something that I think has been diminished in terms of the way that the criminal justice system deals with domestic sexual and gender based violence in particular, which is that justice is supposed to be done in public. Now, obviously there is special conditions there. There is the in-camera rule that is used for a lot of sexual violence cases, for a lot of domestic violence cases as well when people are seeking court orders. But when those details are being made public, she mentions, I'm sure we all remember the graphic detail of a tampon that Nikita Hand was wearing that became public during the civil case that she successfully took against Conor McGregor. And sometimes people feel that when that detail is put in public, it is degrading for the survivor themselves. I actually think it's very important given the fact that Conor McGregor is still pickishly going around the world with aspirations for political office, that detail does exist out there, that was the brute force that he allegedly used in that incident. She makes the point, I found a very informative as well because I think I didn't fully understand this myself. That from a court reporter's point of view, you include those incidents when they're clearly central to the, either to the verdict or indeed to the sentence. Exactly. It's the information that was most important to the jury in them making their decision. And she also makes the point that there's probably a lot of graphic detail that were all spared from the judicious professionalism of court reporters who decide that if it wasn't something that was actually formative to the decision that was taken in the case to the verdict in the case, then there probably isn't a public interest in publishing it. Yeah. I didn't understand that fully before I read her piece. And there are times when I read these pieces and I go, God was that really necessary? It's uncomfortable reading, but I suppose if it didn't exist there, it wouldn't be recorded anywhere. And I just think that it's very strong public interest journalism and unfortunately some journalists have to do work. That is very difficult and sometimes it makes the rest of us kind of want to look away from it. But I just thought it was an excellent piece that probably explained the process of court reporting really well to a lot of us, even in journalism, who don't fully understand it sometimes. Moving from one form of journalism to a rather different one, I have two pieces actually cheating again, but they're on related themes. One is by Naomi O'Leary, who's now based in Paris for us and she has a piece about the effect of Emily in Paris, the success of Emily in Paris, the Netflix series, the negative effect it's having on the inhabitants of certain districts of Paris that feature locations from Emily in Paris, which I have to say I've only seen three minutes of in my whole life. So I'm probably in our best place to go. But it sounds like- And you're already wearing the beret. It sounds indeed. It's like absolute hell, not just the series, but the experience of the Parisians, all these bloody Americans, frankly, showing up with Emily in Paris berets on taking selfies for their Instagram feeds and over paying for everything. She does point out though, because it's very magic piece as you expect from me, that actually even in Paris is pretty popular in France as well. So it's not just awful Americans. Meanwhile, our consumer correspondent Connor Pope, I always think that one of the reasons Connor is such a consumer correspondent is because he's terrible with money. And he's in two places. And he was in London and in Paris with his family and various observations to make about both of them. But he wasn't very nice at all about Paris because he had a terrible time there and was ripped off left, right, and center, including he went for, I don't know what you guys think of this. He went for an outside table at a cafe in Plastin, Madeleine, one of the most touristy parts of Paris, the three of them. They sat down, they ordered coffees and croissants. The waiter said, "Would you like some orange juice with that?" Connor, consumer correspondent of the artist time, said, "Oh yes, please, Carzon." And then he ended up getting a bill for 60 euro. And then he's complaining about that. I mean. The orange juice is nine-year-old, do you think? Yeah, something like that before. What do you expect? Would you have been surprised? I think the obvious message from this is that we may want to be in Paris, but the Parisians do not want us there. And they're going to make that clear at every single opportunity. So my experience in Paris is once you negotiate the fact that there's going to be slightly more groupy people there than necessarily in your average European city, it's still very beautiful and you can get good bargains there quite easily. I like that the lasers are kind of rude because I don't like when people try to be your friend when you're having dinner. So I actually like that they're kind of cursed with you. I think it's kind of perfect. You don't like that hook? Hi, I'm Steve and I'm going to be your wife. I can't. And I think when they're like, have you been here before? If you need the menu, explain to you. I feel like I just don't really want to be there. I think it's kind of charming. On the Emily and Paris thing, I'm not actually, it's rare to find a really shite TV show that even I don't like, but this doesn't meet the threshold. But I think it's kind of like an evergreen complaint. Like when we went to New York on the way to our honeymoon, I left my husband to go on a very boring trip to Ellis Island so I could go and visit Carrie's stoop from Sex and City and the big ones. Of course, other basic women, just like me who had Jettison, their husbands and partners for the day. But look, I mean, it's because the series is just out of it. Like the Parisians will figure out a way to profit from it and I'm sure they'll be happy enough with their reluctant relationship with Americans who are quick to part with their own money. Jack, you're thinking more elevated thoughts because you're looking at photographs and space this week. The Artemis 2 mission is as we speak, as we swing its way back to Earth, I think. I think it splashed down quite yet. Not yet. Today, I think. Am I? Sorry. I also had chosen two and said I do one of them and then I decided this morning to do the other one. But just in this moment, I realized I told nobody that. So. So let's stick with the original plan and talk about an entirely visual. This is our first citation of a photograph and longest podcast. Yes. Yes. Yes. I spent an awful lot of this week thinking and looking at WhatsApp groups and thinking about troker protests and reporting a big piece of Saturday and all the rest of the rest of the week was spent looking at the images from the Artemis spacecraft as it went around the dark side of the moon, particularly the one and people who have seen this and I'm not going to do a good job of describing it, but the one taken of the solar eclipse from the dark side of the moon, which I mean, perhaps tragically one of the first things that struck me when I saw this as it looks like AI. The second thing was, a brilliant that we can capture something that looks like it's almost science fiction and unreal and stretches the capacity of the human mind to absorb this as something that has actually been mechanically captured by a photograph and then transmitted back to Earth. But I think there's, you know, I'm not the only person, I'm probably not the only man approaching middle age who has found a kind of pleasurable escapism in the fact that people are doing something extraordinary in space again. You know, there's the kind of everlasting romance of the space age and the space race. I mean, one of the things that I found most charming about this week is the re-instruction of the kind of weird, clipped mid-century American polite lexicon that attaches itself to space travel, you know. So it feels like nostalgia, to some extent, nostalgia for the on-remembered 1950s, yeah, to badly paraphrase and misquote James Murphy of LCD Census. But anyway, well, go down that. Digression. The-- Oh, please, too. One of my favorite books is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolf and just for a little while this week, you know, I think we're all kind of transported back to that place and perhaps to a place that was, you know, a little bit far removed from the straights of hormones and bombing and fuel progress and all the rest of us. I safely say I'm the only person in this studio who was actually able to watch Neil Armstrong live on the television as a very small boy. When he took his first steps in my garden, JJ Vernon made a disagree with that. I can check with him afterwards. But I know everybody else wasn't around and there is a sense of a return to that and that at the time, I mean, a lot of people think, for example, that the modern environmental movement was sparked by those first images, looking back at the whole of Earth for the first time. It caused people to think differently and there is a huge contrast, isn't there, between the sense of that this opens up, that the Artemis mission opens up in some ways. It's also got its military and imperial elements to it, to it as well. And they're kind of down and dirty stuff that's happening back down here on Earth. Put that to one side. Enjoy the pictures. So, we actually ignore the-- I'm trying to studiously ignore the fact that we're probably trying to colonize the moon and just focusing on the inspiring side of it, particularly if you've got kids, it just also makes the mission ten times more amazing because there's so many times when your kids are-- you kind of have to feign mock excitement for something with your kids. But I'm like, no, childlike wonder is actually the proportionate response to this because it is so cool. Also, the tenacity with which space travel has persisted within child children's imagination, despite its fading relevance, perhaps in the intervening decades. Like, kids still love rocket ships and showing your kids that rocket ship taking off was great. There's a lot to be said, for a childlike wonder. We will leave it there. Thanks very much to Alan and to Jack. Thanks to a producer who was Declan Connan this Friday and also to our engineer and I'm going to check his age just after this JJ Vernon. We'll be back with you after the weekend. We'll talk to you then.