Hello, hello, I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day,

including whether the government can stop teenage boys admiring Andrew Tate,

to who's got Trump derangement syndrome,

and we'll be having a conversation about how to insult a politician as well,

and joining me a two-time columnist who I'm confident will help me stay out of trouble with

Offcom.

And they are Juliet Samuel. Hello, Juliette. Good morning. How are you? Very well. And Matthew Paris. Matthew, how you keeping? Excellent. I think we each help the other stay out of Offcom. Yes, maybe. We'll see. Yeah. I think, yeah, I mean, the responsibility rests on me, so don't get me into trouble.

We've got a lot of covers, so let's crack on.

I want to start by talking about the way the European leaders are meeting in Brussels today, President Zelensky is also there. He's hoping to finalize a deal to get, I think it's 210 billion euros worth of frozen Russian assets to be unlocked in order to aid Ukraine's war effort.

What I think is really interesting, though, is a report in the Times today that says that Washington has issued a private warning to Europe against giving those frozen billions to Keeve,

with the Belgians and others protesting that will damage the reputation of European financial institutions

if the money is deemed unsafe by the people who put it there.

It's really, it fascinates me this.

It seems like, because on the one hand, you can understand Europe wanting to do everything it can to assist Ukraine against Russia.

But on the other hand, I think the point being made that this could be detrimental to Europe's interest in the long term seems not

that unreasonable. Juliet, what do you think? I think probably on that score that that ship has

sailed or is sailing. I mean, you have basically China trying to build an entirely alternative

financial system over in Asia already and they accelerated that after the Russian sanctions.

So yeah, I think that there is a danger to, you know, the world using Europe's financial

centres as their way to shift money around. But I think that was, that has already been in

decline. And I think the notion that

money is neutral and, you know, that can be separated from politics, even in a time of war,

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