Hello, this is Hugo Rifkin here. Now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day.

And today we're going to be talking about Kirstarmer appointing peers to a chamber he wants to abolish

and where the personal business is driving Donald Trump's foreign policy and the growing Eurovision boycott as well.

And joining me are two people are never boycott even if they start start to sing. And they are, Matthew Sayad, hello, Matthew. You go great to see you. How are you? Well, yeah, very much, though, and you're looking fit. I'm with that lovely black top. You're very fit as well, in your black top. Yeah, black shirt. I did a bit of weights. I do a bit of weights. Now and again, this is getting, it's getting very, very male.

Let's bring in Salma Shah.

He's with us as well.

Hello, Salma, how are you?

Well, weights are not male, are they? Salma, I can't see you, but I'm just going to assume you're looking very fit. Did you do any weights? Yeah, no, I am super fit and I'm also wearing a black shirt, so we're all in the gang, the black shirt gang.

I think that's inappropriate.

Let's turn that one down a little bit, so we're all in the gang, the black shirt gang. I think it's inappropriate thing.

Let's turn that one down a little bit, I think, perhaps. Why can we not see Selma? Oh, hang on. She's on the screen up there in the studio. Let's crack on. We've got a lot to cover. I want to start by talking about what's going on with the House of Lords. Kirstarmer has appointed 25 new Labour peers, many of whom are ex-party aides to increase party influence in the House of Lords. Labour's manifesto at the 2024 election said it wanted to both reduce the size of the upper chamber and move towards finding a replacement for it. Here's the Minister Alison McGovern explaining the change of direction, speaking to Stig Abel on Times Radio Breakfast this morning. If you look at the number of people that David Cameron put into the House of Lords over 150, this is, we've put in far fewer people. Well, you've appointed 62 since the election. That was only 18 months ago. Sixty two of them. I'm pretty sure David Cameron appointed more than 160. You promised that you promised to get rid of it. You promised to get rid of this

institution and you're stacking it with your friends. I don't think we promised to get rid of it, but the next

stage of House of Lords reform is to make sure that people have to retire at a certain age at 80. And

that will reduce clearly that will reduce the number of people in the House of Lords.

Samarkir Stama certainly promised to get rid of it when he was running for the Labour leadership and indeed since then as well, albeit it didn't quite scrape into the manifesto in quite such plain terms. Is this just sort of blatant hypocrisy appointing peers when you're against the existence of the House of Lords? Or is it pragmatism and just something you have to do and people shouldn't make a fuss about it?

Well, I mean, both of those things can be true. It is blatant hypocrisy, and it's politicking,

but you have to ask yourself, in an environment that's so febrile and that doesn't trust politicians and politics anymore, sort of standing by the fact that actually you do want to reform the upper chamber

would have, I think, stood him in better stead than trying to just push through appointments

because you want to get your legislation through.

I mean, I understand why he's doing it, but it doesn't actually lead to a longer-term reform. And it doesn't actually

prevent the kind of thing that we're seeing with these, frankly, not very impressive names that are

going into the House Lords. This is not just a Labour thing, by the way. I think that about a lot of

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