Transcript: Rishi Sunak’s big fat Greek row

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Rishi Sunak’s big fat Greek row’

Robert Shrimsley
He was one of those figures who radiated integrity and decency and seriousness, although he actually had a very, very dry and somewhat mischievous sense of humour.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix, the Financial Times essential insider guide to Westminster. I’m Lucy Fisher. The FT’s Robert Shrimsley there talking about the Labour politician Alistair Darling, who died this week. Also in this episode, Rishi Sunak whips up a diplomatic storm. Plus, we ask whether migration threatens to tear the Tories apart. To discuss all that, Robert is here with me. Hello, Robert.

Robert Shrimsley
Hey, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
Also in the studio is Stephen Bush. Hello, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
Was it a massive fit of pique or a genuine desire to protect our cultural treasures that made Rishi Sunak cancel his date with the Greek prime minister this week? Either way, the Labour leader seized on the chance to ridicule Sunak during PMQs on Wednesday.

Keir Starmer in clip
The Greek prime minister came to London to meet him, a fellow Nato member, an economic ally. But instead of using that meeting to discuss those serious issues, he tried to humiliate him and cancelled at the last minute.

Lucy Fisher
Well, firstly with the back story, Robert and Stephen, even the names cause a row, don’t they? To start with, are we calling them the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon sculptures?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, I suppose it depends how widely this is being broadcast. In Britain, they are universally known as the Elgin Marbles, but for quite understandable reasons that the Greeks prefer to call them the Parthenon sculptures, which also makes the point about where they’re from.

Lucy Fisher
Of course. So they were nicked, essentially, from the Acropolis in Athens 200 hundred years ago.

Robert Shrimsley
Taken into protective custody, I think you’ll find (inaudible) . . . 

Lucy Fisher
An act of imperial theft, as the Greeks might say.

Stephen Bush
I’m actually going to do Elgin apologism here, which is they weren’t nicked. Elgin bought the right from the Ottoman Empire, then of course, the legitimate authority, occupying state — depends whose account of history you prefer. He very hackishly, it must be said, removed some of the sculptures from the Parthenon and brought them back to the United Kingdom, inspiring Byron’s famously critical poem of it. So, I mean . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Can I just say there’s a cheer coming from the gallery, from our producer, Philippa, who actually dug out the poem by Byron, Stephen. We might get you to read it as a little addendum to this episode.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, fascinatingly, probably the most successful bit of propaganda by a poet ever in that there is a majority in the United Kingdom for giving back the Elgin Marbles. I mean, ultimately, the real power move from Rishi Sunak would be to give it back to the Turkish government on the argument that they are the successor state. (Lucy laughs) But so yeah, he didn’t steal them. But, I mean, the other argument for returning them is . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
That they belong there?

Stephen Bush
They belong there and, you know. Well, also, they are intended to be part of a set and they currently aren’t. But yeah, they weren’t . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
Just to clarify, your justification is that somebody came to your house and squatted in it, and while they were squatting in it, they sold your property to a third party, so you shouldn’t be entitled to it back. That was your, that was basically . . . 

Stephen Bush
That is essentially my. I mean, I’m not even saying we should keep them, but I just feel like stole is . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Stole is strong.

Robert Shrimsley
He bought this looted property in good faith.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, it’s not. (Laughter) Yeah. Fair enough.

Lucy Fisher
OK, well, let’s argue now about what Rishi Sunak was up to, the reason why he snubbed the Greek PM. And I think — and I’ve spoken to a bunch of diplomats this week who have just said this is just unprecedented, you know, in diplomacy as well, the level is everything. So the fact that he offered to substitute in his deputy was just this really offensive snub. The smarter thing to do, the thing that normally signals displeasure is you shorten a meeting, but to cancel it altogether at such short notice was incredibly escalatory. Robert, take us through your theory of what’s happened here. Why did Sunak cancel the meeting?

Robert Shrimsley
I mean, I’m inclined to take his explanation at face value. I think he was extremely annoyed about the focus on the Marbles. What had happened is that the Greek prime minister had gone on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday BBC show and had talked about it in quite emotive terms, although it was, I think, you know, it’s ridiculous to think that a Greek premier coming to Britain would not be asked about this and would not talk about it, so it’s an . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Can I ask you, is it not also sort of strange, the idea that the UK would invite the Greek PM over and try to impose conditions on what he can say?

Robert Shrimsley
I think it’s all very strange and maybe they assumed there’d be a two-minute conversation about it and it got out of hand. But the point is he felt they had an agreement they were going to talk about important stuff like migration, the Ukraine war, all these issues, and was really irritated. So this was a rather petulant, boorish cancellation. And by the way, it’s quite fabulous that if you want to insult someone, you offer them a chance to meet Oliver Dowden. (Lucy laughs) I don’t know how he feels about that. But it was a very petulant display in which the veil dropped a little bit. It showed his lack of feel for how you engage in diplomacy and foreign affairs. And it’s particularly interesting because obviously, one of the things that’s been said about Rishi Sunak’s premiership is that this is the return of the grown-ups. This is someone who’s made an effort to get on, you know, heal wounds, particularly in Europe. And you engage in this rather pointless little display, which will be seen as a snub and will almost certainly at some point have a cost when we need the support of Greece in Nato or in the EU for something, and they’ll just remember and be annoyed. So it’s one of those things you look at and just think, you’ve shown yourself here and what you’ve shown wasn’t great.

Lucy Fisher
I mean, Stephen, that’s right, isn’t it? You know, Rishi Sunak says he’s trying to build alliances with Europe. I spoke to one European official this week who pointed out, you know, Mitsotakis, he’s one of the cool kids in Europe and he’s a centre-right, not a centre-left leader. He’s youngish. He’s precisely the kind of person you’d think Sunak would want to court and be seen with. So are you surprised at this? I mean, not only the initial decision to kind of stir up a row over this, but also, I guess, the question about David Cameron, on the one hand, being in Brussels trying to smooth things over with the Greek foreign minister while Sunak leaned into the row at PMQs on Wednesday.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. I mean, so I think I was surprised by many reasons — snobby metro-liberal alert incoming. One, I was surprised to learn that Rishi Sunak had any opinions about high culture. I mean, you know, he frequently doesn’t display any interest in . . . A contact who works at the top of another cultural institution did send a message going, you know, it’s hilarious that the government has decided that it’s perfectly happy to destroy London’s museums sector when it’s saying, no, no, no, if you don’t move somewhere else in the UK, we’re gonna cut you to ribbons, they said. But the second that it can annoy a Nato ally he goes, well, no, no, this line in the sand must be drawn.

I think the thing which was surprising about it and the reason why we should take his rationale at face value is clearly no ministers were consulted at any point, right? None of the ministers doing the morning media round had any idea what the line was or why they were doing it. I think one of the things that happened is you could tell them what Rishi Sunak wanted to do was paint Keir Starmer as being, you know, against our traditions and values. But he, it’s like they hadn’t seemed to anticipate that what Keir Starmer would do is go, well, yeah, of course I met him. I said the Marbles are staying. And then I talked about other things because, you know, I’m a grown-up and you’re not.

Among other things, it did show a complete lack of central co-ordination to send your foreign secretary, your education secretary — who’s doing a media round that day — effectively out to sort of front this policy without at any point telling them what they wanted. And as a stress test for how they’ll approach the election campaign, I think it did show him to be quite brittle and snappy.

Robert Shrimsley
Just to the point that the notion of the Marbles going back to Greece under a, inverted commas, loan arrangement is being managed in Britain by George Osborne, you know, the former Conservative chancellor. So it’s not as if you can entirely separate the Conservatives from that policy if it were to happen.

Lucy Fisher
Really good point. I mean, on this issue of a lack of co-ordination and also awkwardness on the world stage, let’s just turn to COP briefly, because we know that Rishi Sunak and David Cameron and King Charles were all going on three separate planes — not exactly climate-friendly — to the summit in the Gulf. Keir Starmer’s also going to be there. Robert, I mean, is it a bit confusing for our international partners, all these different visions of Britain potentially being sold by sort of slightly rival parties?

Robert Shrimsley
I mean, Claire Coutinho’s going as well, actually. I think you said . . . 

Lucy Fisher
True. I think David Lammy as well.

Robert Shrimsley
I mean, is it confusing? I don’t particularly think it’s confusing, you know. We are where we are. The Labour party wants to show its statesmanlike European, global credentials so it wants to go. There was a period not that long ago where, like, nobody important from Britain was going so I think it’s probably a good thing that they are.

Lucy Fisher
Is Sunak at risk of being sort of overshadowed by Cameron and his sort of lustre at the event?

Robert Shrimsley
I genuinely don’t know the answer to that. I don’t particularly think so. But I think it’s a risk because Cameron is just so much better at these things.

Stephen Bush
And I think Rishi Sunak’s bigger problem is not that — although David Cameron obviously does have more polish; is a, you know, top-class politician in a way that I don’t think anyone could claim with a straight face Rishi Sunak really was. But his bigger problem is that Keir Starmer, who I don’t think has the same polish as David Cameron either. But when Keir Starmer arrives and people know he is the person who is overwhelmingly likely to be the next prime minister. And that’s just a fact of life when you’re 20 points behind in the opinion polls.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Let’s move on now. If you think the Elgin Marbles is to some extent a manufactured row, an opportunity for some political grandstanding, our next topic really isn’t. The difficult issue of migration threatens to cleave the Tory party asunder. That’s not just my verdict, but what a close ally of Rishi Sunak’s warned me this week. Robert, we had the net legal migration figures last week which revealed a record 745,000 people came to the UK last year, net. Clandestine migration remains an issue. What options are the government looking at? What’s actually workable?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, it’s a really good point. I think there is a major gap between what the government could actually achieve and claim some credit for and how well it will satisfy the people who are agitated about this. I think there’s a gulf that’s really opened up there, and I think the Conservative party has talked itself on to a hook on both legal and illegal migration that it actually has no way off. But I think what’s particularly bad about the last week has been that the focus has moved from the small boats, as you say, from clandestine migration, where they at least have a bit of a story to tell. A 30 per cent reduction is actually a pretty good result for any kind of policy in a year. It’s really, it’s not as much as he said he was gonna do because he said he was gonna stop the boats. But actually, if one discounts the hyperbole, 30 per cent is not bad.

Lucy Fisher
But just to push back on that, I mean, that comes from almost solely the deal with Albania, right? And that can’t be easily replicated for the other . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
I think that’s a fair criticism. But nonetheless, in a year, it’s not bad.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Robert Shrimsley
But I think what’s really damaging is that this has now moved to legal migration, which they didn’t want this to be about. There’s two exceptional issues, which is Hong Kong and Ukraine, and they believe — and they’re starting to come down already. But the truth is, it’s very hard to see how they can show they’ve got immigration under control. The issue is never the numbers or the particular policies. Does the public believe you’ve got it under control? What can they do? There are things they’re looking at. The discount that firms are allowed to offer. You can pay a legal migrant in certain occupations 20 per cent less to bring them in. I think that’s guaranteed gone now. I think there’s more work to do that they will do on bringing independence. But the truth is, there is only a limit to what they can do. And so it’s a real fixer and I’m not sure I see the way through in political terms.

Lucy Fisher
Well, on the politics of it, Stephen, I mean, from the picture that I think Robert has very eloquently set out, I mean, the Conservatives have themselves to blame for a lot of this by talking up, you know, the problem with legal migration, even though, you know, parts of the economy — the care sector, the health sector — rely on it. It feels to me we’re seeing this week a bit of a pushback from the centre of the Tory party. The right have been making all the waves in recent weeks, you know, talking up the importance of cracking down, of making headway on Rwanda or other options that Robert has been through. George and I have just been working on a story about 20-, 30-odd centrist, moderate Tories, whatever you want to call them, writing to Sunak, warning him not to pull back from the UK’s human rights commitments when it comes to migration. I mean, the party is just so split over this. I mean, is it going to tear them apart as some of Sunak’s allies think?

Stephen Bush
Well, it’s not gonna tear them apart in that at the end of this there will still be one entity called the Conservative party. But it is a huge political problem and it’s gonna continue to do them, you know, a large amount of damage, right? So I think the only way it will be resolved is for them to go into opposition, to have an explicit fight about it. And then for whichever faction wins, to be able to assert that on the rest of the party.

Lucy Fisher
Hmm. I mean, Robert, Sunak is under a lot of pressure still from the right. The three of us were lucky enough to have tickets to the Spectator’s glittering Parliamentarian of the Year awards this week, where Suella Braverman made a speech where she accused essentially the PM of disrupting her plans to bring down legal migration. I’m interested in your take on how her speech was met. But equally, her former deputy, still the current immigration minister, Robert Jenrick. His view seems to be hardening on this a bit, doesn’t it?

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah, it really does. I mean, I think Suella Braverman in her (speech) showed why she probably isn’t the threat that some people would like her to be, because it was a terrible speech completely misreading her audience. Lots of Conservatives in that audience. It was quite an angry speech when what you wanted was a self-deprecating, witty speech or a quick speech or one quick point. She just got the room completely wrong and a lot of people left saying, well, she’s really blown it, which is quite an achievement for a single speech.

Robert Jenrick — as you say, her deputy, the man who was supposedly put in by Rishi Sunak to keep an eye on her appears to have bought in entirely to her agenda to have become every bit as hard line on both legal and particularly illegal immigration and pushing very hard on notwithstanding clauses they can set aside the European Commission of Human Rights if they want to. And it’s interesting to wonder what’s happened to him. Is it just that he’s been in the Home Office so long, he’s gone over to the dark side, as it were?

Stephen Bush
Or is he bothered by net migration into the Cabinet? You know, he sees all these Trotts, these Coutinhos coming here, taking their seats around the Cabinet table and he’s still . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
Just below the Cabinet.

Stephen Bush
Just below the Cabinet, essentially appointed there, as you know, originally the auxiliary home secretary. Now there’s a new home secretary. It still isn’t him.

Robert Shrimsley
And I think that’s quite possibly true. And I also think he’s possibly seen a gap on the right of the party if he wants to prolong his status at the top of the party. He’s certainly gone rogue at a time when they all want to be pulling together. And it’s a very strange moment for him to do so. And it’s not at all helpful for Rishi Sunak. And it indicates the problem, which is that he’s losing people he used to be able to rely on. And that’s as much about the breakdown of discipline within the Conservative party and the sense among them that they are you know, they’re heading to the rocks and it’s every man for himself.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Well, as we said, one of the areas where migration figures showed an increase was in the number of people arriving with visas to fill chronic shortages in social care. The FT’s economics correspondent Delphine Strauss has been looking behind the numbers to find out more about these workers’ experiences and she joins us now. Hi, Delphine.

Delphine Strauss
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So migrant care workers have been seeking help from Unison, one of the UK’s largest unions, in their hundreds recently. What’s going wrong?

Delphine Strauss
So as you say, the social care sector’s got a chronic staffing problem; it has had for years. It depends on state funding that’s dispensed through very stretched local authorities. And the result is that there’s low-pay, high-stress jobs with really poor working conditions. People are rushing between 23, 24 different calls a day between clients who are often, you know, 10, 20 miles apart. They don’t have time to fit them in. They often say they’re not paid for the miles they’re driving or for some of the time they spend on night shifts.

It’s a really insecure sector. Companies come and go and you can work in it for years and still be paid only a few pence more per hour than you were at the start. So unsurprisingly, it’s not very easy to hire in the UK. It’s even worse since the pandemic and since Brexit, and the policy response is generally to trickle just enough money in at the last minute to stop things collapsing, but not enough to really put proper funding in place.

So what we’ve had instead from 2021 is that employers have been allowed to hire senior care workers from abroad. In 2022, that was opened up to entry-level jobs. And what we saw was this enormous surge of recruitment from lots of countries, large numbers of people coming from Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Philippines, Sri Lanka, India. And, you know, people often took on quite big debts in advance with the hopes pinned on a first-world job. And in a lot of cases, that job’s been a really crushing disappointment and people have been finding their way to Unison in all kinds of difficult situations.

Lucy Fisher
Well, your piece — you’ve written about this and some of the experiences of people you’ve spoken to — is incredibly hard-hitting, and I’ll put a link to that free for listeners in the show notes to the podcast. I wanted to ask you, you know, some of the options that the government is considering. Robert mentioned cracking down on the number of dependants that people can bring to the UK. If the government does do that, do you think that will be a deterrent for people to take up these care jobs and what does that mean for the sector?

Delphine Strauss
I imagine it would be a deterrent, yes. I mean, a lot of people are coming over with their families. Some of them come for, you know, six months, a year, first to get settled in and find somewhere more stable to live. And then they bring, you know, partners and children over. And, you know, that’s not just obviously a normal part of settling into the country; it’s also often essential financially.

So I spoke to a couple of people for this week’s story who had recently lost their job because their care company had gone under financially and they were only managing to pay the bills because they had a partner here who was also legally allowed to work and had, you know, taken a job to tide them over. And so, you know, it’s not just insulting to some people to say, you know, we want you to look after our parents, but we don’t want you to bring your husband. It’s also probably practically, you know, not as financially possible for them to do it. Certainly employer groups in the care sector have been speaking out in the last week saying this could be ruinous for them.

And I mean, what we’ve seen in the last year or two since the visa route was opened up is that the vacancy rate in the care sector has come down. At its peak, just after the pandemic, it was something like 11, more than 11 per cent of jobs in the sector were unfilled. In quite a short space of time, that’s come down to maybe 8.5 per cent, somewhere around that. It’s quite a dramatic improvement and that probably is being put at risk.

Lucy Fisher
I was really struck in your piece and something you’ve just mentioned is this issue of care providers going bust and then that creates these additional difficulties for people who come in on these visas because the visa’s tied to a specific job. If that job disappears, they are then very restricted in the number of hours they’re allowed to do. It’s only part-time work they’re allowed to do before their visa is renewed. It seems there’s so many kind of difficulties that are baked into the system.

I just want to ask you about one of the other options, again, that Robert sketched out for us, that the government is considering about raising the salary threshold. So reducing the discount that care providers can pay to foreign workers. What sort of impact would that have on the sector to sort of order these companies to pay foreign workers more?

Delphine Strauss
So I’m not sure whether the salary thresholds would be about the care sector as such. So there are salary thresholds set for people coming into all sectors through the skilled worker visa route. In the care sector, the salary threshold is not undercutting UK workers and people are being paid generally a little above the minimum wage. Whether or not they’re being paid fully for all the hours they work is a different question. But there could be a case for raising salary thresholds in some of the other sectors. There are some reasonably highly skilled, highly paid jobs that are on the shortage occupation list, where at the moment there’s this 20 per cent discount. There’s no real justification for that. And it seems a bit of a no-brainer to get rid of it.

Stephen Bush
I was really struck in your piece when you talked about how one of the, you know, problems that has emerged since the loosening of visas was that it exposed the people working in these industries to further exploitation. What are the things that the government could do that could fix that that wouldn’t also re-aggravate the care vacancies problem?

Delphine Strauss
So I think one of the issues is that they’ve taken a visa route that was originally designed for quite highly paid jobs where people coming in have choices. They have quite a lot of autonomy. They generally have sort of quite well-heeled employers, and then they’ve taken the same kind of visa scheme and put it into a really low-paid, precarious sector where the people coming in really don’t have choices. And if you’re effectively tied to your employer by your visa terms, that can leave people in a really difficult situation.

So I think there’s a case for saying that if you want to have overseas recruitment in low-paid sectors, you need to do it differently. I don’t think anybody sees an easy way out in the short term in the care sector. But one thing the Migration Advisory Committee said about low-skilled migration in general is that it might work better if you simply opened up youth mobility schemes with a bigger range of countries, so that instead of having people who are coming in effectively tied to one employer, you simply have people who were allowed to come and work here in any sector for a certain period of time. And, you know, then employers have to compete with each other as they normally would on terms and conditions to recruit.

Robert Shrimsley
I mean, isn’t the fundamental problem here, though that, I mean, we are essentially, basically at full employment. And these are very hard jobs to do and they’re very badly paid. And it’s a lot easier to go and work in a shop or a call centre and these companies, these care homes are finding it incredibly difficult to recruit. And there doesn’t seem to me that turning off this pipeline is going to resolve this problem in any way unless the government’s prepared to spend a significant amount of money improving the wages in the sector.

Delphine Strauss
Absolutely. The only way to solve the problem is to solve the funding crisis, and that might or might not involve public spending. There were various reforms set out in a white paper not very long ago that would, you know, structure funding differently, and they were delayed. And they’re still sitting out there in the aether.

Lucy Fisher
Well, Delphine, you have to come back and talk to us if we make any progress on that. I won’t necessarily hold my breath. Delphine Strauss, thanks for joining us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We usually round up with Political Fix stock picks. But I thought this week instead we could spend a moment reflecting on the death at the age of just 70 of Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor. Robert, you knew him quite well.

Robert Shrimsley
I did. I covered a lot of that government and I carried on talking to him. I last talked to him about two or three months ago. We’re hoping he’d come to the FT Weekend Festival, which was, actually, in the end stymied by the rail strikes. But I had no idea he was so seriously ill. And I think most people didn’t. He’d kept it quite secret, and which is one of the reasons why I think people are so upset at the news and were so shocked when the news came out.

He was one of those figures who radiated integrity and decency and seriousness. I mean, he wasn’t the most publicly charismatic figure, although he actually had a very, very dry and somewhat mischievous sense of humour. But he just exuded all the sort of standards and decency that it does feel like we’ve lost a lot of in modern politics. I think people are gonna feel his loss.

Quite seriously, he was a really important figure in the New Labour government. He was in cabinet all the way through it, starting as chief secretary to the treasury under Gordon Brown, rising to become Gordon Brown’s chancellor when he took over as prime minister and being chancellor all through the financial crisis, in the end actually falling out with Gordon Brown, but still having the sort of strength of character to stand up to him when Brown wanted to replace him, probably with Ed Balls in an economic argument over the degree of which they need to spend to get Britain out of the recession it was moving into.

But he was just an extremely likeable man. And it’s been very striking in the tributes that you saw. The breadth of political opinion. It’s above and beyond the usual, you know, pro forma tributes that you’re seeing. It’s very sad.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. And Stephen, as well as that key role as chancellor during the financial crisis, as well as seeing off Brown’s attempt to — I think he wanted to move him to home secretary, didn’t he? He led the No Campaign in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. And he, I mean, I think you can see the importance of his role and indeed the importance of the willingness of the Scottish Labour party to destroy itself. I mean, now it appears and it may be reviving, but, you know, to put itself really on the line of fire to save the union. And then when that referendum was effectively rerun to save our membership of the European Union, quite a lot of Labour MPs essentially went, no, you know what, I don’t want to do that. And I think without him taking A) that very clear position, one of the only people who was both sufficiently respected by the Scottish Labour party to talk to them, respected enough by the government to talk to them, and with this kind of clout and presence to in those two debates stand opposite Alex Salmond and have the sort of required force of personality.

So one of the most important and significant politicians really of the last 15, 20 years. I think one of the things which is really striking just politically about a lot of the tributes is the number of senior Conservatives who have willingly effectively gone out into the open and said the thing that everyone has always said privately about that period during the financial crisis, which is he made the decisions that helped to stabilise the British economy.

Robert Shrimsley
He’s not as famous as some political figures were. But I just think that an element that people look at — this is what our politicians used to look like. And wasn’t it better?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
That’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put free links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. That way, you’ll get new episodes as soon as they’re released.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Philippa Goodrich. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald were the broadcast engineers. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, I said Philippa had dug out Lord Byron’s poem. So, Stephen, over to you.

Stephen Bush
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed

By British hands, which it had best behoved

To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,

And once again thy hapless bosom gored

And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

It was the seventh Earl of Elgin who procured them.

Lucy Fisher
Beautifully read.

Robert Shrimsley
Very good.

(Laughter)

Stephen Bush
Sorry. That actually turns out that final, very powerful line . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
You’re a poet.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, it was actually written for one of our producers. But I mean, yeah, it was brilliant writing by Philippa because it did exactly capture the . . . very embarrassing because in my teenage years, I had a slight kind of goth-adjacent phase where I . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Ah, need to see photos.

Stephen Bush
 . . . wear like dark, velvet jackets. And it was not a good era.

Robert Shrimsley
But you still wear those. (Laughter)

Stephen Bush
Yeah, but now I wear them in a kind of cool, dandy-ish way, not in a kind of I’m tortured and, you know, yeah, Byron! Byron! But I, you know, I had a real phase of thinking Byron was very, very cool.

Lucy Fisher
Do you ever have an emo-goth phase, Robert?

Robert Shrimsley
I did not. I did not have a gothic, nor do I have a phase of ever thinking Byron was cool.

Lucy Fisher
That really is all we do have time for this week. Robert, Stephen, thanks for joining.

Stephen Bush
Thanks.

Robert Shrimsley
Pleasure. Poetry today.

[MUSIC PLAYING]