Lately, trying to kill Donald Trump on the orders of Tehran. The Financial Times reports that surging stock markets in the United States have raised worries that the economy may overheat in response to Donald Trump's spending plans when he returns to the White House. The I, meanwhile, says, Economists fear that a combination of labour's budget and the re-election of Trump will mean UK mortgage rates will stay higher than expected next year. The Star takes a look at some of the reactions to Mr. Trump's victory, including politicians attempting to take back their previous criticism of him, and the paper claims women refusing to be intimate with their husbands. The Express leads with what it calls a pro-Palestinian plot to sworn UK towns and cities on armistice day, causing chaos. The Guardian quotes Ukraine officials who say the country's relationship with the UK has worsened since labor took power. Labor is planning to bring in a four-day working week for public sector workers. That's, according to the Telegraph, having just imposed a bigger tax burden on businesses. The Mail has details of what it says is the first death in the UK directly linked to the weight loss drug, Mounjarro.
While the mirror speaks to a friend of One Direction star, Liam Payne, who died last month in Argentina, the headline, I did not abandon Liam. The reminder that by scanning the QR code, you'll see on the screen during the program. You can check out the front pages of tomorrow's papers while you watch us. We are joined tonight by Henry Hill and Zoe Williams. Thank you so much for being with us. What a week. Let's start with The Times. This is a story we've been leading here. Iran plot to kill Trump, and a man linked to the Revolutionary Guard, among three, charged, because, of course, we knew about the story a while ago, but now the men have been charged over alleged assassination plan. Henry, first of all, tell us a little bit more about what the story is and what you think of it.
Well, essentially, the story is that a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a elite/paramilitary wing of the Iranian military, which does a lot of their work supporting terror networks and so on around the world, basically, apparently had ordered an asset of theirs, an Afghan national, to come up with a timetable for were assassinating Donald Trump in the event that he became President. This plan was put on hold because they said, Well, he might not win, but the idea was that he would assassinate US President. Obviously, I completely believe that it happened, but I find it absolutely baffling that if you're Iran, you would assassinate a President of the United States. Because I think if there's one thing, you saw how they reacted after 9/11, right? If there's one thing which is going to make all deterrence considerations, all strategic considerations, go out the window and bring the hand of God down on your country, it is assassinating the President of the United States. So it's baffling to believe that Iran had this in their playbook, but that is apparently what was going on.
It is baffling, isn't it? Because I was just listening to a podcast about Skripal earlier today and remembering how close that put Theresa May to a semi-war footing with Russia. And Skripal, obviously, wasn't even a member of our Parliament. It It's such a provocative act that it makes you think it can't... Somebody's jumped the shark, or it can't possibly be what it looks like.
I mean, it could be one of those security states where basically the security services effectively run large part, and therefore there's no overseeing hand on all of it, right? And somebody basically-So you think somebody just went rogue? Well, not even rogue, necessarily, but simply, you know these countries where the security apparatus just gets too big, and then nobody's really watching all of it. So somebody in the hierarchy was like, Let's put together a plan to assassinate Donald Trump just in case, and then it comes out.
Now you're making it sound like the Bat Corridor in HS2, like some crank was just off in a-I fully believe that theocratic regimes are as capable of being incompetent as democratic conferences.
Well, let's listen to what the US attorney general said, he said, There are a few countries in the world that pose this grave a threat to the US, as does Iran. That was his reaction to the charging of this man. We'll see. Let's go to the FT now, still linked to the Trump triumph, victory that we saw a few days ago. Things like settling down a little bit, but now we're hearing that surging US stock market might overheat the economy. Zoe.
Basically, the bond markets, especially, are very excited by the promise of... They say the promise of looser regulation, tax cuts. I think probably more accurate would be to say they're excited by That's what I've promised of complete red-blooded government in favor of capital and against everybody else. But ironically, a lot of that over-excitement and overheating could be reinflationary. And that was Why nobody felt any better for Biden's presidency, however much he... Whatever the guy did, if your eggs are as expensive as eggs had become, then it feels atmosphärically like his fault. So it looks like People have voted for Trump in rage inflation, which is just going to bring them more inflation. But that's probably the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, the other one that they are potentially excited about is tariffs, right? Because essentially what this is, is If you think the government's going to come in with a range of policies that benefit certain businesses, then you rush to invest in those businesses now. If you're an American producer of something where currently America imports a lot of it and you think that Trump is going to whack up the cost of those imports, that producer will make more money, so you go in. But of course, they are jumping the gun a little bit because it's Donald Trump. We actually have no idea what his agenda is going to be on most things.
Hang on, though, because the whole thing with tariffs, and the argument he always made from the very early beginnings of pre-2016 bringing tariffs up was that he didn't care if they cost the economy money. I mean, everybody thinks- Or they can cost the economy money, but they can be good for the businesses. They can be good for businesses, but you would think that broadly, the financial markets would be hedging, literally hedging on tariffs.
I'm taking money from the FT. It mentions tariffs.
Yeah, but I'm just surprised that there isn't more caution. A, because a lot of those measures, protectionist-wise, can be bad as well as good for the local producers, the national economy. B, as you say, because the idea that Trump is definitely going to do all the things he said he's going to do is quite slight.
I suppose this could also reflect a response to a downside risk, which is if they were hedging against against Kamala's policies and they didn't like them and they thought that they would have a bad impact, then this rally could in part simply reflect an upward adjustment from a downward hedge against the Democrats. Now, I don't know enough about whether that's the case, but that's another possibility.
We've mentioned how unpredictable Donald Trump can be. But one thing he's definitely going to do is put pressure on NATO allies when it comes to defense spending, which leads us to the front page of the Telegraph, which has the story there, Trump victory forces Starmer to hasten 2.5% and to defense pledge. Apparently, we'll hear about this in a couple of months. But this is the pressure that we just know he's going to put on the allies. There's a lot of question marks about the future of the NATO Alliance and the role of the US in what we call the Western Alliance. Henry, what do you make of this specific point and the 2.5% when it comes to our government now?
Donald Trump, I think, has reflected increasingly frustration, especially amongst Republicans, at simply the amount that the United States spends on NATO. Of Of course, there's very good reasons in US interests for that, but nonetheless. This is going to be very interesting to watch because the government, one, it reassigned the money that Richie Sunak had earmarked for rearmament. Now, that was about 20 billion over about six years. I think Grant Shapp said it was 75 billion, which was book cooking, but it was 20 billion. That was reassigned. Then Rachel Reeves has said that she's given us her fiscal blueprint for the entire Parliament. She told the Treasury Select Committee just the other day that she has no plans for further tax rises. Now, this plan to boost to defense spending to 2.5% of GDP is not in those figures, which means that any financial commitments that Labor makes to get there have not been accounted for, and they will presumably have to be either cuts to other departments or further tax rises.
The thing is, is that there's a world in which they could say this was a fresh surprise. This was something that we didn't account for previously because we weren't expecting Trump. But actually, there was a lot of pressure on them to raise defense spending to 2.5. I heard some army figures asking for 3%, and so they must have had this in their sights. They must have known that it was coming down the line.
It wasn't impossible.
I mean, election was hardly a few months ago.
Yeah, all of them even It was a few points, margin of error in all of the swing states. But the other thing is that it will make this slightly difficult and could be you can make all kinds of criticisms of what the Conservatives bequeathed labor. But one thing they did bequeathed labor was that commitment earmarked money over six years to re-up. Now, labor chose. It's not just that they didn't have anything. Labor chose to recommit that money elsewhere. If they suddenly went like, Oh, well, now we're going to... It would be a very difficult line to pull off. Yeah.
Well, let's see how that develops. Now, let's go to a story that actually is probably going to have an impact on hundreds of thousands of people here in the UK directly. Front page of the eye. Uk mortgage rates set to stay higher in 2025, thanks to Reeves and Trump. Obviously, we've seen just, was it yesterday, two days ago, another interest rate cut. There was hopes of another one next month, then possibly more in 2025. Now that doesn't look like that might be the case, Henry.
Yeah, essentially the Trump stuff, because obviously we're hugely exposed to the entire world is hugely exposed to the American economy, including us. But also some of the measures announced in the budget mean that we're going to have higher mortgage rates. Just as the Conservatives were finding, that's a ticking time bomb for any government because higher mortgage rates means there's about I'm not going to try and do the math there, but about over 100,000 households a month on average, they come off their current fixed rate. It means that they lock in a higher cost of living, especially if they're locking in from a rate that was previously lower. That's basically of a thousand households a month who will probably have that high-The number they have here is 1.8.
Million fixed mortgages expire next year.
That's in one year, right? And so think about that if that's a year after and the year after that. And those people, because you negotiate for a three-year fix normally, they'll have that almost before the next election. Actually, that's potentially millions of people who will have that locked in higher cost of living and may blame the government for it. And that did huge damage to the Tories, and it may do the same to labor.
And all the people on track of mortgages, of course, have been suffering for years.
The thing is, I think it is slightly over baked because nobody was saying that... Well, nobody I know was saying that mortgage rates were going to go down fast before next year, even before the budget. It's They did go radically up after the Liz Trust mini budget, but since then, they've just stuck high, and everybody's hope was for a steady reduction. And the Bank of England has already reduced rates by a small amount. Until I see the Bank of England stubbornly staying at this rate and not reducing again, I'm going to take this as over-excitement.
That's potentially true. I think the problem is, though, that it doesn't really have to be entirely real. It's in terms of the political costs for people. It's like the political costs for people. If you think my mortgage would have been lower if it hadn't been for the budget, and that's the takeaway you get, and you as a voter are probably not going to be like, Well, I'm going to reserve judgment on this until the Bank of England has actually produced the rate. And that's where the danger is. And I think that's the danger with a lot of these high fiscal stories, and it applies to the Conservatives as much as labor, is that the actual truth can come out a few months later, and it can turn out to be not nearly as bad as expected. But if that narrative has been sold in, and even entirely unfairly, it can do huge damage to a government.
I just nevertheless think people will still be... If you just look at the way you said, most people lock in for three years, let's say maximum five. There are a lot of two-year lock-ins as well. The really painful jump was 1% to 4%. And what you're looking at now is people going from maybe 3.2 up to 4, or maybe they were on 4 and they were hoping to come down to 3. It's just not going to be the same.
We're going to have to leave it there for now. I'm sure we'll be talking about mortgage rates again very soon. Coming up, there's been widespread condemnation of anti-Semitic attacks on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam. We'll discuss that next.
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So this is a major humanitarian disaster. Well, Welcome back. You're watching the press preview with me now in the studio, Henry Hill and Zoe Williams. Let's go to a story that we've been leading with all day and is in pages 6 and 7 of The Express. These clashes that have been called anti-Semitic attacks by Amsterdam's mayor, by the police, by the King, clashes between Macabre Tel Aviv supporters and various groups. This was the match between Macabre Tel Aviv and Ajax. Henry, what have you made of what we saw on the streets of Amsterdam?
I mean, it's absolutely horrifying. Of course, the mob violence around football is something which has receded enormously, but it's not entirely an unfamiliar image. It's that picture of people with flares. It could be, when you look at the picture, two ultras clashing, but that's absolutely not what was going on here. This was people who weren't involved in the match in any capacity, basically hunting down fans of an Israeli team. I think the particularly thing that leapt out of me, I can't remember which paper it was in, is that the fans were being told not to get taxis because apparently taxi drivers were working with the organizers of these attacks and were basically trying to pick up people and drive them to places where they could then be assaulted, which is a-Oh, no, I read that that is actually fake news.
Is that fake news? Yeah.
Was it in the Express or the FT?
I think it definitely isn't in the FT. There was somebody on the radio earlier saying that that had gone round on the socials, and they did get a taxi, and it was-I don't think it was every taxi driver. No, I know. It was a taxi driver's union. It was, but people who were there were saying it was a false rumor spread to create panic. But I do think there's a massive... This story is Which an enormous case of the legacy media not catching up with the social media, but social media not having the same proof quotient, and then you get a whole swirling layer of rumor over the top of it. So the FT The FT gives a little bit on the fact that the Tel Aviv fans, I don't know whether they were legitimate fans, but people were also attacking people with Palestinian flags. There was a huge amount of both-side violence, and there are videos of that which have been verified online, but none of them have so far made it into the print media, even though some of them have made it onto Al Jazeera and been verified.
There's a couple of isolated incidents set up to a huge amount amount of both sides' violence?
No, look, I don't know, Henry, but neither do you. I mean, the fact is that the print media is jumping too fast and taking aside long before they've got the right... They've seen everything. It's creating a genuine climate of distrust between people and their media. But what we've heard from the mayor, there was a statement from the police and the prosecutor, I think the King spoke as well.
Certainly, the reaction of the authorities in the Netherlands to see these as antisemitic attacks, and it's caused a diplomatic tension. Absolutely.
But the antisemitic attacks were antisemitic, but there were also anti-Arab attacks, and Arabs attacked at the moment. We had images that were verified the flag. I think Skye did have them. That flag being torn down. But the fact is that this is generating a sense that some people don't get their violence named and other people do. Having your violence named gives you some of legitimacy, which having your violence unnamed doesn't.
If it does turn out to be the case that actually there were a load of ultras attached to this Israeli team and that they were going out and seeking out combat and it really was just an old-fashioned 1990s style. No, it's definitely not. That's one thing. But if this is A large series of coordinated anti-Semitic attacks, and then a handful of Israeli fans engaged in criminal conduct. That's not equivalent. I'm not saying it's equivalent.
I'm just saying that we're looking at this. Most of your time talking about it. No, but the most extraordinary language which has been used about an event which will go down now in print media as an anti-Semitic day when on the media that other people are consuming, which is not necessarily wrong, there's a lot of videos which have been verified.
We're going to leave it. I'll just say that the word anti-Semitic was used by authorities, at least the mayor, prosecutor, et cetera, I think the king as well. That's who's using the word, and then we're repeating. Zoe Henry, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you both so much. Now, let's take a quick look at the weather. It finally looks like sunshine will be more widespread early next week, but in the meantime, the rather gloomy conditions look set to continue for most. Tomorrow, we'll start rather cloudy with some.
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