The Paikin Podcast - Ashley Prime: Will King Charles Push Back on Trump?

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Ashley Prime, former UK diplomat who has served all over the world, including in China, Italy, Jamaica, and Canada, joins Steve to discuss King Charles’s visit to America, if he will push back on Trump and defend Canada, PM Starmer’s plunging popularity, what Brits think of the Iran War, and why many people feel “politically homeless” in the UK. They also discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine, the “useful idiots” in Britain, why PM Starmer – after Brexit – is saying Britain needs to get closer to Europe, how Brexit killed the Tories, PM Starmer’s failure to stick up for Canada during Trump’s initial 51st state rhetoric, and if Canada can still rely on Britain.   Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] 

Hi, everybody, Steve Paken here. Later this month, King Charles III will make a state visit to the United States, and we figured that's as good a reason as any to put our focus on what's happening these days in the United Kingdom. What do they think about the war in Iran? Do they intend to deepen their involvement in that war? What about the British Prime Minister's musings that the UK needs to get closer to Europe? Didn't they just Brexit in 2020 because they wanted more distance from Europe? And what about the British PM's lack of support for Canada?

when President Trump was threatening to annex Canada. What's with that? Lots to explore with Ashley Prime, coming right up, one-on-one on the Paken podcast. We are delighted to welcome Ashley Prime to the Paken podcast. Ashley's career in the British Foreign Service has taken him all over the world, including to China, Italy, Jamaica, and Canada, where he was the Deputy Consul General in Toronto. He's currently a senior advisor to Hanover PR in London, but he joins us now from Italy.

Bonjourno, Señor Prime. How me va this matina? Good afternoon, Steve. Benissimo, thanks to see you. Nice to see you, too. I think we're going to switch to English now because I may have exhausted all my Italian. But let's start with the visit of King Charles,

which he'll take later this month to the United States, ostensibly to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. I think we can assume that President Trump is not exactly King Charles's kind of guy. So if you were advising the king on what he needs to achieve on this trip, what would you tell him? Well, actually, I'm not sure I sort of fully agree with that. The pair of them actually seemed to get on actually quite well. I mean, I think probably the king understands that, A, firstly, he's the king, and that gives him some authority.

And so he does sort of speak to President Trump in a way where the pair of them, you know, actually sort of get on. I'm sure they don't agree on everything. I'm sure that the king has his own opinions on many issues, which the president would, you know, differ from. But the pair of them do get on. And I think when that decision was taken to go or not to go, I mean, it was always going to be that you have to go anyhow, irrespective of sort of where we are at the moment. You know, some parts of the British press and the British public were saying the visit should be cancelled. But I think it was the right decision that the king is going. And there'll be so many things that they will sort of talk about, a whole range of issue.

I mean, obviously, you know, top of the pops would be, you know, where the United States is with the war in Iran. You know, Britain's support for that has been, how would I put it, sort of flip-flopping America, Trump has said, look, you know, you were very slow, we don't need you, you've got toy ships. you know, but certainly while the king is there, I think my guess is that almost certainly there will be respect for him while he was there. And that will be some, you know, leverage that we can use. Public opinion surveys in Canada show that the majority of Canadians oppose this war.

What about in the UK? What are people feeling about it over there? Yeah, absolutely. There's almost no support whatsoever the war in Iran between sort of the USA and Israel. I mean, I think the reason for that is sort of quite layered. You know, firstly, obviously the first one is sort of going into a war without any kind of clear objectives, without a clear strategy is probably not very wide. The fact that Britain particularly feels very close ally to the United States, I think we were out of the picture.

We weren't part of that planning. And suddenly we discovered that, you know, the war has started and UK involvement is called for. whether that's UK naval presence or the use, more importantly, of US bases in the UK and actually more widely in Europe. So the public opinion is very much against the war in Iran. Nobody really understands this side of the Atlantic, sort of why go in, why go in now, what are the objectives, what is the exit strategy, what is the post-governance plan look like for Iran if you're looking for regime change, which initially. was the answer but now isn't. So, I mean, you know, I think all we have seen in the UK, like Canada, is that the British public, you know, it's very much against the war. Admittedly, a bit of a hypothetical follow-up question here, but had President Trump decided to

take the British Prime Minister into his confidence before launching this war and consult him ahead of time, as, for example, George Herbert Walker Bush did when he launched his Gulf War back in 1991, I guess it was. Do you think the British Prime Minister might have made a different decision and been more on board with the war and might even have taken an offensive position in the war? Yeah, I mean, I think if I was the Prime Minister, knowing what we know, it's a hypothetical question, but also, you know, we have the benefit of hindsight. You know, I would have put all my efforts into saying, no, you know, don't do it.

You know, why do you want to go? and what is your objective? You know, my personal view is I think that President Trump kind of gets bored quite easily. He's found himself, he's four weeks into the war now. What is his exit strategy? He's alienated a lot of his allies, particularly in, you know, this side of the pond. Perhaps he thought it was going to be a little bit like Venezuela, go in, nick it and go out again.

Well, it hasn't worked out like that. The Iranian regime is there in some form. Nobody's quite sure 100% what it actually looks like or therefore who do you potentially talk to. But, you know, it's a mess. And I don't know that America understands at the moment what its potential off ramp is. Let's do a bit of a deep dive here on British politics. Kirstarmer, of course, came into office with one of the biggest labor majority governments in history. Here he is not all that far into his first term as prime minister.

How's he doing? Well, if you ask the public how he's doing, the answer to that is not great. I mean, he inherited a number of things which he can, you know, look in the rearview mirror and say, well, this is where we came into government. You know, the big inflection, of course, and I'm sure we'll talk about this at some stages, the fallout of Brexit, which is now six years old since it was actually enacted. But then, you know, Britain has recovered, if you like, from COVID, but not as much as other European nations have. and he's become prime minister in a divided country. The country is still divided. It's a country where, you know, the British public have almost given up on the two-party politics.

They're looking for answers elsewhere, and that includes Reform UK, who of course are the successes to the Brexit party. The British public have put them certainly in the most recent opinion polls way ahead, although that that has actually been falling recently. I think there's a number of really good reasons why the fall of a kind of not falling off that top spot but have lost their shine. But then look at the rise of the Green Party. They're absolutely huge now.

And a lot of people in the UK feel politically homeless. I mean, I think when I was perhaps younger, you could just divide the society into the Labour supporters or conservative supporters. And that was pretty much it, Lordly respect to, you know, the liberal parties that then want. But now it's completely different. We are still a divided country.

And I go back always to that sort of question, sort of in whose interest is it, that Britain is a divided nation? It's divided socially, it's become divided economically. And, you know, politically we're not in a great place. And that's made Starvation's journey. You know, over the last, you know, while since you've been, became primal, is really tough. He's got a huge majority, a majority of, you know, I don't know what it is actually off the top of my head, but it's massive plus 80, I think it was. He's lost one or

two MPs down the road. But, you know, it goes back to my point that the people do feel outside of politics now, homeless. Where do we go? Who do we vote for? You post a good question there, and I want you to answer it, Ashley, which is, in whose interest is it that Britain is so devour amongst so many different political ideologies right now. What's the answer? Well, if you go back to sort of pre, what I call this, the inflection point, and that's being quite kind of Brexit, if you go sort of before that, as I said, it was pretty much two-party politics. It was slightly dull. There'd been ups and downs, of course, but since Brexit, really, that two-party system has been broken. So you ask, who's interested in that? You know, what my

feeling is it's not in ours, but it is in others. So you look at why Brexit happened, why the country was divided, Britain weakened, and therefore Europe weakened. And the finger points pretty much in the direction of Russia. It's very much in their interest that Europe is weaker, the United Kingdom politically is weaker, and that's where we are now. And from that point of view, they've been successful. And we'll be back right after this. You've probably noticed something changing at your favorite restaurant, maybe it's shorter hours, a smaller menu, or longer waits. Across Canada, restaurants are struggling to find enough staff, not because they aren't hiring, but because there simply aren't enough people to fill the roles. And that matters.

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That's manyhandswork.ca and see the full story. Well, we are no strangers in this country to foreign interference into our politics. We just had a public inquiry led by a judge into it and found considerable Chinese interference in Canadian affairs. Has a similar undertaking happened in the United Kingdom to see whether Russia's fingerprints are all over this? Well, there's been two reports within Parliament, the 2021 by the Intelligence and Security Committee, looked back actually at the Scottish referendum.

And there was very, very clear evidence there that the Russians had their fingers all over it. There was one subsequent on that which actually has not been made public yet. And that really focuses much more on Russian interference in Brexit particularly. And there's three modus operandi there. One is that the Russians have been phenomenally successful with, you know, what I call sort of internet propaganda. and that is using social media, using Russian bots who influence through, you know, traditional, what we now call sort of social media. And that's been extremely powerful.

That's the first. Secondly, sort of influencing Russian people. And by that I mean wealthy Russians, connected Russians who live in London, who've, I wouldn't say infiltrated, particularly the Tory party, but suddenly put their money there, at least £12 million declans. since 2012, we've gone to the Tory party from Russians, basically. And that's the third thing is that sort of, you know, sort of the people bit. We have a member of the House of Lords, for instance, at the moment in the UK, Lord Lebedev,

who's also the owner of the evening standard paper. His father was a KGB officer who still or was very close to Putin. So you have individuals, you have money, and then you have social media. And that plays all into Russia's hand. My personal view is that Brexit and that break up away from Britain from Europe was part of one piece, one part of the jigsaw of Ukraine. I'm not 100% sure that Ukraine wouldn't have happened, had Brexit not happened. But it just gives Russia that little bit of extra, you know, headroom, if you like.

Europe weaker, therefore NATO weaker and Britain weaker. Let me do one more follow-up on this, Ashley, and that is, you well know that President Trump has often been accused of being a kind of useful idiot for Vladimir Putin. Is there somebody in British politics who plays a similar role? I think there's probably quite a few, really. I mean, you look at sort of that close relationship that Trump has with Nigel Farage, leading Reform UK, who's really since the Iran war has been extremely silent. And I think this is perhaps going on to a different subject about the popularity of Reform UK and why it's stalled.

But absolutely, you know, Boris Johnson, you know, putting Lev de Vev into part, into House of Lords. Yeah, there's, you know, a number of people, I think, whose relationship with Russians more widely than just Putin, Russian oligarchs, in particularly in London. I mean, there's a ton of Russian money in London. I mean, London had this sort of reputation of being a sort of laundromat for Russian money. That's absolutely true. So that close, and nobody kind of, well, we just sort of accepted and, you know, money, thank you very much, we'll have some of that. And it's been going on for quite a long time. So, you know, there was that incident when Boris Johnson came to, when he was foreign secretary, poor prime minister, he came to Italy.

And he just sort of got rid of his bodyguards and hopped on a train down to Tuscany and hung out with a bunch of, you know, Russian oligarchs near Florence. for a couple of days. And they sort of appeared disheveled at some airport flying back to the UK unaccompanied. And, of course, as Foreign Secretary, you should always have, you know, a mixture of his private secretary and office team plus, you know, guards provided by the UK government. All right. You mentioned Brexit in there. And I do want to follow up on that because, of course, quite famously, your country left

the European Union six years ago. And now we are hearing just the other day, the British Prime Minister suggests that Maybe the UK needs to get closer to Europe after all. What do you make of all that? Well, I think there's two things there. One is actually that was going to be inevitable, I think. When the Labour Party took power, Kiyosama was very clear.

His red lines were not going to re-enter the single market. We're not going to rejoin the customed union. But what he didn't say was pretty much anything else for the moment is on the table. So we have started getting closer to Europe, anyhow, irrespective of President Trump, irrespective of Iran. You know, there's a number of areas where we started to sort of, you know, get much closer, particularly on the trade side to try and break down some of the bureaucracy that made it much more difficult for British companies to trade. Between 2020 and now, you know, British companies lost, well, exported less to Europe than ever before. around 30 billion pounds worth less.

You know, where Britain is exporting far, far less to the European Union, which easily was our biggest market by and mile. There was no bureaucracy. You just sort of made your car in Coventry and then drove it across to France and sold it to, you know, your Jaguas is some, you know, French consumer. I mean, it was as simple as that. But now if you want to do the same, of course,

it's much, much more complicated in terms of bureaucracy. And frankly, the Europeans say, well, we can buy whatever, you know, whatever, you know, more cheaply, more competitively elsewhere. We don't have to buy British stuff. So British companies have really kind of struggle. So from that point alone, looking at the economics of it, it never really made sense. So the second point, I think, is that there, as I said, there had been movement anyhow in the last few months to start having discussions with Europe on specifications, whether it's, you know, student exchange. So young European students can come up to the age of 30 and study in the UK for a number of years and vice versa. The British students could come and study in mainland Europe as well.

So, I mean, there had been sort of, if you like, tinkering on the sign, but it was heading in that direction. I think Iran has put a new perspective on that. We've discovered actually who our real friends were. Well, Brexit, one of the big winners from Brexit was that we'd be able to open up, you know, trade deal with the United States. It would be like Europe, we could just walk in and sell our stuff without any kind of regulatory conformity, any taxes or anything like that. And of course, none of that ever happened. So I think the British public have kind of understood that that close relationship with the world to the exclusion of Europe just simply hasn't happened. There was photocopy

agreements done with the EU that we'd done with the EU when we were members. So with Canada, Australia, New Zealand one or two others where we basically said let's take that EU Canada trade relationship or EU Australia let's take that bit and just replicate it for what we have what we have and we've carried on like that so you know that I think Trump has just sort of pushed that up that along and I think it's also testing the water for the prime minister to see how far and how fast he can go so he's playing on the fact that the the Iran War is very unpopular. The President of Trump is also very unpopular himself in the UK.

And that's given him sort of a bit of extra impetus and leverage to, you know, get closer, particularly on security. You can argue that very easily, I think, that when it comes to military and security, you know, where physically in Europe, we need to be closer to Europe. You know, what we haven't really talked about is Ukraine. That's kind of obviously, nobody's talking about Ukraine. Who knows what's going on in Ukraine at the moment? No, the Middle East has taken over the discussion. hasn't it?

Absolutely. Apart from, you know, that Russia, that Ukraine's have got phenomenal drone technology, you know, happy to help out where necessary. I mean, on Ukraine and Iran, of course, you know, Russia, you know, can benefit hugely. Look at the price of oil, for instance. That helps fund the Ukraine war. So I think, you know, Stama, in a sense is one small, positive, if you like, has come out of Iran. They're not many.

is that he's being able to say for British public, yeah, we need to have closer discussions with Europe and to move that arm. And so far that, apart from the right-wing press, you'd be against who have always going to be against that, you know, I think that's probably helped Starma. Now, in the midst of that answer, you use the words real friends. And I want to follow up on that in a way that I hope you won't get mad at me, but I'm going to do it anyway. and that is, I can tell you there were a bunch of people in Canada who wondered where our real friends were in the United Kingdom, starting with your prime minister, when President Trump mused about annexing Canada as the 51st state, and the British Prime Minister not only did not go to bat for Canada during any of that, but he actually seemed to suggest to a reporter who was asking questions about it,

that, you know, shame on you for trying to find a divide between President Trump and me, that does not exist when the two of them were meeting. That put a lot of people's noses out of joint here in Canada. Do you think the British Prime Minister understood that that wasn't his finest hour in terms of how Canadians viewed him? I mean, I would say two things on that. If he was to say it now, I think you might get a response out of Starmer. But equally, I think this is where I think we're going back to the King Charles visit.

Your head of state, I think, would go into bat with President Trump on Canada. Because, of course, he is your head of state in the way that he is out. I think we're playing sort of political catch up there. At the time, of course, everybody knew it was wrong. But at the time, you know, keeping Stun was probably the only option. It wasn't the right one, but it was probably at the time the only one. But now as Europe, you know, Macron particularly, and Stama are starting to define their sort of, you know, strengths, if you like. I was going to say something else, but now that they found the oomph, you know,

and started to sort of backed back, you know, instead of rolling their eyes and sort of thinking, gosh, you know, how do we, how do we respond to something as, you know, childish and churlish? But we're used to it now, and we just ignore it, if you like. But I think he'd probably get a, should get a more robust response now. And if I was King Charles, sort of advising him when he goes to, United States for the 250th, I would just remind him who's the head of states of Canada. And we'll be back right after this. Well, this does lead us nicely to some discussion about the Davos speech that Prime Minister

Mark Carney of Canada gave, in which he declared that the relationships that we have enjoyed for many years with some of the larger powers in this world, notably Canada's with the United States, has been ruptured and that the middle powers ought to be looking to create a coalition of their own and kind of go their own way. How has that played in Britain? I can't think of a better speech a prime minister has made anywhere in the last five to ten years. I mean, you know, with all due respect to your prime minister, that was a home run. It really was. And it was one of those things when I listened to, I thought, I wish I'd have said that. You know, that's super impressive and I'm not sort of betraying it in my Canadian politics because of course I'm totally

neutral but you know you can't help but think my goodness that was impressive now when it comes to the substance I think he's right I think this idea that we're you know that Trump has of a tripolar world that sort of Russia has Europe China has Asia and we have the Americans you know we have to kick back against that the world is far more complicated than that and that there's middle powers, which the United Kingdom clearly is now, you know, I think absolutely we should, you know, go along with that. And I think you are starting to see that, you know, with your prime minister of leadership and others, that you're starting to have this, that understanding of actually the world has changed them. We're not in that sort of the Cold War era where everything

was nice and neat. We knew the, you know, where the enemy lay at how to deal with them, or we thought helped to deal with them. Well, the world is far more complicated now. I'm personally a bit more optimistic that in time America, the United States will come back, where it sees where its allies and interests are, instead of just being in this sort of transactional world that we now live in. Does Kirstarmer, though, have the political currency right now to be able to, this may be an exaggerated way of putting it, but sort of thumb his nose at Trump when he needs to, and join with other like-minded middle powers when he needs to, to advance issues of mutual interest? Well, I think sort of the two issues.

The first one with dealing with President Trump is that kind of you're walking on a tightrope all the time. And you're trying to minimize, you know, any fallout, whether that be, you know, increasing tariffs or, you know, whatever. But then seriously also knowing that sort of the middle power, you know, is probably likely to be the best future for all of us, where we can get together. We do have military, but more importantly, economic cloud. And so I think the answer to that that is a yes and yes, it is looking both ways, to be honest.

But as time goes on and perhaps the more the United States finds itself in a mire and can't get out, it makes more sense for in terms of British self-interest to be part of that, if you like, that sort of middle power group. I can tell you that when the British Prime Minister made his, I guess, first official visit during the Trump, the second Trump administration to the White House, there was much commentary in Canadian media about how sycophantic most observers thought Kier-Starmor acted in Trump's presence. How did it play over there? I think pretty well much the same, but I mean, you are walking a tight road. You don't want to end up, you know, just, you know, either public, well, privately less so, but publicly. being, you know, insulted in the way that other leaders have found themselves in the White House.

I'm thinking particularly of the Prime Minister of Ukraine. So, you know, you are trying wherever possible to be diplomatic and trying not to, you know, absent the president who can, you know, throw his toys out whenever he wants, wherever he wants. Well, I do wonder, what's everybody worried about? You know, but Mark Carney sat in the Oval Office and he said, look, you're a real estate guy. You well understand there are some things that are not for sale. And that, you know, to a great extent, shut down all of the annexation about Canada talk between the two of them, between Trump and Carney, you know, with the odd eruption every now and then. What is Sturmer worried about in terms of standing up to Trump more where he feels it would be in the British and

interest to do so. Well, I think he's starting to do that now. You're starting to hear him to say, no, I will act in the UK's interest. So we are kind of moving in the right direction. But to be fair, I think Canada has much more leverage, if you like, than we do in the UK. I mean, you know, Canada's, you're the United States as neighbor. Obviously, you are one of the world's longest, you know, board, land boards. You have oil, remember. You have U.S. bonds. You have U.S. bonds. You have control over Canadian airspace, which pretty much every United States plane that flies out of the country needs to cross over. So in the sense, you've got some more cards to play. Ashley, I don't know about that. Trump always says you have nothing we need. You know, we can make

our own cars here. We have our own natural resources here. We don't need anything from you, Canadians, not your timber, not your critical minerals, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know. Yeah, he says that, but you have still the largest trade, bilateral trading relationship on the planet. You both depend on each other. So he says that, but the reality is, of course, really different. I mean, life would be much tougher for, you know, particularly Alberta and the United States. If you stop pumping, you know, was it three million barrels a day down to the United States? No, you do have, you do have levery. In which case, where do you see Britain under this current prime minister, who, as you've pointed out, his popular currency at the moment is rather

minimal in his own country. Where do you see him making a mark on the international stage, if at all? That's quite a difficult question to answer at the moment, because there are so many unknown. I mean, I think that the UK, if you look, domestically, he's got a whole pile of problems going on. The economy is starting to flatline, and a big part of that now is called the answer of how the economy is going to be impacted by Iran. What's he going to do about energy prices? Is he going to either cap or remove government tax? is for gas so people can drive their cars or heat their homes or whatever. There's no doubt that there's going to be inflationary pressures on the UK, as are globally.

It's not only in the UK. But externally outside, of course, he's at that tight rope to walk with the United States. But then also he knows that our future ultimately does lie with Europe. So as I think as time goes on as we get closer to the next general election in the UK, we've got another three years to roll. I think that the party is going to position itself much more closely to Europe. I was talking to a member of the House of Lords, a Labour or the Labour minister who's now in the House of Lords. And she said to me, look, okay, we're elected now, we're going to govern the country the next five years,

but we're not going to start having discussions about reversing Brexit. It's far too early. The wounds are too deep. and look how much political capital the Tories had to spend on Brexit. It's destroyed the Tory party. They, in effect, don't exist any longer. Reform UK have taken five of the, I think, seven or eight MPs are ex-Tory people. So in a sense, Reform UK is like, you know, the Tories recycled.

So Brexit killed the Tory party. There's no doubt about that. And it's very difficult to see now how the Tory party can come back in. again. If we wanted to reverse Brexit, that would dominate everything. It would dominate every part of our waking hours. And, you know, the government doesn't have the broadband to deal with that or the energy. So my view is that where they're heading is, they're going to go step by step by step, small steps. And the closer you get to the election, you might then start hearing, we want to go into government and talk to Europe about joining, say, the customs union.

So you then get into the custom union where you get much more regulatory alignment with Europe. I'm not sure they're going to start talking about the single market yet, about free movement. Although, if you look at the poll, very clearly, 65% of the British public now want to be part of the EU. They've seen the economic damage. They've seen the social upheaval. and the fact that Brits now coming to Europe have to stand for hours in queues at Frankfurt, Milan, Paris Airport to gain access to the country. They don't like that. But, you know, A, would Europe want Britain back?

What would the terms be? Would we have to give up our sovereignty of currency? All those questions are to be answered. And I think any government would be kind of quite foolhardy to say, yes, we're going to have a referendum rejoining Europe. because that would take the best part of 10 years to negotiate, to get through Parliament, to get through the British public, and then deliberate. You know, just I think I'd like to finish up on something a little bit personal for you,

and that is you did spend many years in Toronto, was the Deputy Council General for the United Kingdom, and I just wonder all these years later, what sort of stays with you from your time in Canada? Well, I came to Canada, actually slightly unexpectedly. my career had pretty much, apart from Jamaica, had seen me three times in Italy and twice, well, another China job. So three China jobs in China and then three times of Italy. So going to Canada was a bit of, I suppose, sort of slightly sort of unexpected. But on a personal level,

I love the work. I really enjoyed living and working in Toronto. My takeaway from Toronto, is that people in Toronto consider that there's almost nothing of any consequence outside the GTA or GTI as it's now called. So I do understand, and I'm kidding here, of course, that Toronto is the Capus Mundi of Canada. But, no, seriously, though, I did enjoy Canada a lot. I enjoyed the work. I never fully understood that sort of the closeness of Canada in the United Kingdom. I love the breadth of the country and all it senses, the fact that you're a relatively new country

that's brought in the world to live there and brought in all of those talents and cultures and languages, which has become part of what has become the Canadian fabric. Yeah, so from that point of view, absolutely loved it. I hated your weather. I just thought winters were just too long, You know by sort of March 8th, you think, okay, show a little stiff upper lip, Ashley.

You Brits are supposed to be good at that. Come on. It was just too long. The temperatures, it wasn't the cold, but it was just, you know, it was just sort of November through to March April. You said, yeah, enough of this already. But, you know, what else can I say about Canada? What a surprise.

What an amazing country you have. If I wasn't British, you know, I'd love to have lived in Canada. What's there not to love? apart from rubbish weather. No. And, you know, understanding between the federal and sort of virtual politics, you know,

what matters in Ontario doesn't necessarily matter in Alberta, which is different from Newfoundland. You know, and then looking at a federal level. You know, when I left Canada, as you know, I ended up working for a Canadian company in London for a number of years, for navigator. So, you know, very much part of myself personally and my family, my son,

up in Canada, still has a Canadian accent, although he lives in London. Ultimately now, as you mentioned at the being I work for Hanover, PR, owned by a Canadian family, the Molesons from Quebec. So, you know, Canada, in a sense, has always stayed with me even though I left Toronto. Your son's Canadian accent is our revenge on you for that miserable comment about our weather. So there you go. Ashley, it's been great to spend some time with you here on the Paken podcast. We just want to remind everybody that if they want to join our Patreon community, it's at patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. We've got web exclusive videos there. We've got a chance for you to comment on our programs, make some story suggestions or guest suggestions, if you like as well. And all of our shows

on the Paken podcast are archived at the website, Stevepaken.com. Ashley, great to spend time with you and peace and love, everybody. Most welcome. Nice to see you, Steve.