Experience: Analysing Newsmakers

Two crypto billionaires give Reform UK 72 million pounds in two days, the assisted dying bill falls by sixteen votes, and the UK bans goods from illegal West Bank settlements. The Concept of the Week is motivated reasoning.

Show Notes

The Concept of the Week is motivated reasoning: judging an argument by whether it gets you the answer you already wanted. Peter's version is unsparing. His well motivated donation is a bid to improve the life of the nation, hers is shameless self promotion. His climate pledge is aspirational, hers is a downright lie. People do it all the time, and the week's three headlines are three chances to catch yourself at it.

Two crypto billionaires have given Reform UK 72 million pounds in two days. Ben Delo gave 36 million on the Friday, and Christopher Harborne matched it to the pound on the Saturday, saying in the Telegraph that Delo had warned him it was coming and his competitive instinct did the rest. Both say they expect nothing back. Peter does not believe them, and Hilary pushes him on whether people can be rehabilitated. He says yes, absolutely, and that giving large sums to a political party is not how it is done.

That turns into the best passage in the episode, on what competitiveness is actually for. Compete with your friends over pot plants and you all end up with better pot plants. Decide that you need to beat them and the whole thing becomes a zero sum game, where your win requires my loss. Peter's argument is that a good deal of right wing politics runs on the second kind, and that people who describe themselves as wealth creators are usually moving money rather than making it.

Then the assisted dying bill, defeated in the Commons on Friday by sixteen votes, 286 to 270. Peter supports the principle and says so plainly, including for himself. He also thinks the Royal College of Psychiatrists has it about right, and that palliative care being less than perfect is a reason to be careful. The part that troubles him most is the one nobody legislates for: elderly people who say they do not want to be a burden to their children, and how much that would weigh on a decision that is supposed to be freely made.

Finally, the settlement measures. Ed Miliband banned imports from illegal West Bank settlements while talking about being a proud Jew, and the Chief Rabbi called it a dark day for British Jews. Peter's point is that the line the government drew is the right one and it should hold it: this is not a boycott of Israel, it is a ban on goods from illegally occupied land. He has a story from outside a Marks and Spencer fifteen years ago about what happens when that line gets blurred.

A note before you listen. The middle of this episode is about assisted dying, terminal illness, palliative care and bereavement. Both hosts speak about people close to them.

Mentioned in this episode

  • Ben Delo gave Reform UK 36 million pounds on 11 September and Christopher Harborne matched it on 12 September, the largest single donation to a British political party on record
  • A correction. Peter several times calls Ben Delo a convicted fraudster. He was not convicted of fraud. He pleaded guilty in February 2022 to a single US Bank Secrecy Act violation, failing to establish an anti money laundering programme at BitMEX, received 30 months' probation, and was pardoned by Donald Trump in March 2025. Hilary has it right in the very next answer
  • Delo signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, committing at least half his wealth in his lifetime, which is Hilary's point about philanthropy
  • The assisted dying bill was defeated on Friday 11 September by 286 votes to 270. Hilary says 269 and flags it as approximate at the time
  • Oregon's Death with Dignity Act took effect in 1997. Through 2025, 5,520 people have received a prescription and 3,691 have died from taking the medication, both figures as Hilary gives them. The remaining third did not all decide against it: many died of their illness first
  • Canada has postponed eligibility where mental illness is the sole underlying condition to 2027, rather than abandoning it as Hilary suggests
  • Jersey's law received Royal Assent on 9 July 2026 and lets the person choose between taking the substance themselves and having a practitioner administer it. There is an 18 month implementation period, so nobody has had an assisted death there yet
  • The Royal College of Psychiatrists, whose concerns about assessment time Peter largely shares
  • Jacob Weisberg's Profiles in Cowardice, published 15 September 2026. Hilary calls him a psychologist. He is a journalist and media executive, formerly editor of Slate and co-founder of Pushkin Industries
  • The settlement measures were announced on 8 September 2026 by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, with France and Canada following: an import ban on settlement goods, sanctions on those facilitating settlement expansion, and a ban on settlement advertising in the UK
  • Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it a dark day for British Jews. Miliband publicly rejected the claim that British Jews had been put in danger by the measures
  • The royal deathbed story is George V, 20 January 1936. Lord Dawson timed the morphine so the announcement would reach the morning edition of The Times rather than the evening papers. It only became public when his notes were published in 1986. Peter hedges between George V and George VI, and says Sunday papers
  • Andy Burnham's father Roy died on 14 September, aged 86, after Alzheimer's
  • Manchester United 0 Manchester City 1 at Old Trafford, Sunday 13 September, the 199th Manchester derby. Haaland scored on 60 minutes after a VAR check of nearly three minutes, and he is Norwegian
  • Peter's wheat figure comes with his own caveat that he may have the numbers wrong, and he is right to give it. UK yields per hectare have risen roughly three to fourfold in a century, not fourteen or fifteen

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

What is Experience: Analysing Newsmakers?

Each week, psychologist Peter Kinderman and communications expert Hilary Jeffs pick a news story and work out what's actually going on underneath it.