Hello, you're listening to the Times Red Box Politics podcast. I'm Pachy McGuire in

for Matt Chawley. Today we'll be asking what if Margaret Fatcher had fought on and fought

to win in the 1990 Tory leadership election that led to her downfall, really interesting

historical decision with the Tory peer and pollster Robert Haywood coming up. But first,

it's time for the columnists. The columnists with Aliburth, Alice Thompson and Robert

Crampton, on the Times radio. Yes, it's time for Alice Thompson Monning, Alice. Morning, Patrick.

And Robert Crampton, hello, Robert. Hi, Patrick. You require no instruction, Robert,

given we've been yakking on for the past five minutes. Let's talk about your column, Robert.

You've written that AI can't replace, certainly couldn't replace such a stimulating chat as this.

But, you know, AI, you say, won't be able to replace Robert Crampton? Well, I hope it won.

I think the columnist, it wasn't entirely serious. You're output not entirely serious, Robert,

come on. While it replaced my core functions of writing, my function of writing columns,

it couldn't replace all the other tasks that I perform around the office, kind of soft skill tasks

of what's the Robert Crampton offer to employers. You know, nice to people, you know, gossip

around about football, gossip about fashion, chat about unsubstantiated rumours, lies, slander,

about colleagues. Yeah, about colleagues. And generally, the glue that holds a workplace

and a society together, I will argue, and no chatbot is ever going to be able to do that.

Alice, do you ever worry that you might be replaced by AI?

Yes, and then some of the quite like bits of AI, I think it'd be quite useful if we didn't have to

do all the maths and the writing too much. We could like, Robert, just one around the office having

fun, doing gossip, really. You know, that's what a way to live, what a way to live the Robert Crampton.

Although that is a kind of lighthearted element to this, which is kind of what I've been focusing on,

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