Hello and welcome to O Godwaters now, the politics podcast, which, since 2017, has been placidly failing to annex any neighboring countries. I'm Seth Tevall. Today we look at how

Trump's attack on Venezuela makes the world less safe. What does this mean for our already fragile

relationship with the US and is the Trump administration really likely to invade Greenland?

And we'll also be scouring over the shifting tectonic plates of British politics. Let's meet

today's New Year panel. First, we have Guardian columnist and leader writer Raphael Bear. Hello,

Raf. Hi there, Seth. Like every successful government, we've seen another reset and relaunch for this one,

and you've described it as being parochial, poll obsessed in its mindset.

What do you mean by that? I mean, I think probably the best way to describe it is parochial and

pole obsessed. No, I mean, that observation was triggered, and I use that word advisedly, by a story,

it's actually a briefing to the Guardian that said that Morgan McSweeney had given a presentation to the cabinet,

where he said, the quote is, we're in a fight of our lives.

He told them to ignore the polls, which I doubt very much is something Morgan McSweeney ever has ever done.

And then he outlined a strategy for

winning back voters trust with three E's. And I don't mean like three MDMA pills, which

would definitely be a better way of getting people to like the government. But that's obviously

for all sorts of reasons that's not permitted. They, he said emotion, empathy, and evidence.

And that was just my head really hit the desk when I saw that.

First of all, emotion, empathy.

They're pretty much the same thing in this context.

So there's actually two E's.

And just all of it, the PowerPoint, Guff,

the pointing out the blindingly obvious,

...