hello, this is bbc news with me, annita mcveigh. the headlines — borisjohnson defies conservative critics of his leadership by insisting there'll be no psychological transformation of his character in the wake of two by—election defeats. abortion clinics start to close in the us after a supreme court ruling removed american women's constitutional right to abortion. norway cancels this year's oslo pride parade after a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub, which police are treating as an act of "islamist terrorism". ukrainian authorities say russia has taken control of the city of severodonetsk after weeks of fierce fighting. for the third time this week, thousands of members of the rmt

union have been taking part in a oneday strike, causing disruption to rail services across britain. now on bbc news, nick robinson in conversation with people who influence our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. hello. welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than an interrogation of someone who's shaped our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. my guest this week is better known, he's more trusted, he's arguably more influential than many politicians. chief executives and chancellors of the exchequer have good reason to fear what martin lewis says. the founder of the moneysavingexpert

website and the newsletter has many millions of followers who hang on his conclusions about how, yes, they should be saving money. the ft once dubbed him the most successfuljournalist in the world ever. he's called the current cost—of—living crisis shocking and scary and anxiety—driving. and he warned at one stage that he was running out of tips to help people to get through it. martin lewis, welcome to political thinking. i'm... can i speak straightaway? you can. of course, you can speak at any time. as a political man, i'm going to get that that very last phrase. you said what i actually said technically, and i was talking about energy bills and the poorest and i said i am virtually out of tools.

that was not an accidental phrase because in the room at the same time on the sunday morning show was rishi sunak. and i looked across at him when i said it. and it was very nuanced because obviously myjob, there are many things that many people can do, but the difficulty right now is on energy bills and the poorest in society for whom there isn't much left. and it was that was that was a baton thread that was looking at the chancellor and saying, "money—saving is out. this is yourjob, mate. this is yourjob, not myjob." so that was that was not an accidental throwaway phrase. that was a deliberate, nuanced political challenge. we spoke to a former director of communications at number 10 who said martin lewis is one of the most influential people in britain. is that a label you would relish? it makes me want to vomit. yeah, because i don't

think any time you think of yourself like that, itjust makes you scared. and i have to say, the last few years have been incredibly scary on a personal basis. first, with the pandemic, when i sort of found myself in an intermediary role between the government and the public and passing messages both ways, that was about how you designed the furlough programmes and gaps, gaps that are being missed, but also how to operate it and get it to the public. and then in the cost of living crisis, where i felt i had to call out a government which is not like i've ever wanted to do. i am not a big political player. i don't do party politics. but i felt because of the subject and my subject area, i had to do it. and ifound it generally raises my anxiety levels, makes me feel uncomfortable. it makes me question myself all the time. and so when those phrases like this, literally, i mean... you mean it actually makes you anxious in a way. i don't particularly want to go into in a public forum, but certainly i think it has been.

it has been and not i mean, so many people have i chair a mental health charity, but i think it's been a genuine challenge to my own mental health, the pressure that i've felt under the last six to nine months. this is not a plea for sympathy. this isjust a genuine understanding that when you find yourself at the centre of an important debate that you believe in and you're having to having to put yourself on the line in a more polemic way than normal. it's very scary. i was going to begin by apologising to you. you often do interviews while walking, while counting the number of steps you've done. right. here i am, forcing you to sit down this agony. and i'm doing all right. i'm on 20,000 steps so far today, and i'll be walking home after this. it should be a 30,000—step day, which is slightly above average. it's above average for most people. i mean, most people think ten is a big target, but it's 20 what you're after. so the rule is never go under 10,000, and it'll be six years in october since i last didn't do 10,000, including, you know, illness and sickness and operations, never under 10,000, try and do 20,000

in any day and try and average 25,000 over a week. wow. which is a lot. but what also fascinates me is, you know, the numbers, you count the numbers, but where did this obsession with numbers begin? i've always been i've always been a numbers person. i mean, i'm not i'm nota full on because, you know, a lot of what i have to do, you have to be quite creative as well. and i do think the two can go hand in hand, but generally i'm safer in the numbers. that's my thought process. even if i do a big speech, and i like speaking, i think i'm pretty all right on it. and you know, even an emotional speech, there's often, there's often number patterns in there about how many things i'll do. you know, we all know the rule of three, but there are other ways to do it. i had been told you sometimes dream about spreadsheets. now i wouldn't quite go that far, but i do have spreadsheets on lots of things i like. i mean, i play golf. i have every golf round goes in there and i have those widgets on my golf clubs that measure the length of every shot. and i go back and look at the statistics every time. trouble growing with

your wife every year? i miss the first shot every time and since then and yet the current ratio is i win 2.16 to one. but that's not because i'm better at making words. it's because my rack management is better if, you know, if you're a scrabble player. i do. in other words, you're not interested in actually the word being interested in the score, which is what i was. no, no. my wife is interested in the score. i will sacrifice a score to leave better letters in my rack for the next go so i'm better at preparing my my rack for the next go so that i have a better choice of letters to score and better on the next game. i still want to know where this came from. you may say you were born with it. i mean, as a toddler, were you doing your times tables ridiculously young? yeah, i think i think i did all my times tables. by the time i was four, quite comfortably, i remember all of them. i got to 12, 12. yeah. by four very comfortably. and i was pretty, i was you know

ahead at maths and this transition from the guys good at numbers to being mr and this transition from the guy's good at numbers to being mr moneysavingexpert happened in part thanks to the bbc. you reveal when we met here that this was not in fact our first meeting. but you had produced a young nick robinson. when i was first becoming an even younger martin lewis had produced a young nick robinson. correct. and the bbc had not quite seen your talents. after i left university, and i was not very involved in student politics. i was very political then and i left uni, i went to work in the city in financial pr and then i did a postgrad in broadcastjournalism. after that i came to the bbc as a producer reporter and except my contract was producer reporter. i was never allowed to report because classically the bbc put you where it wanted you to be, shall we say it like that. that delicately put about the fact that we completely missed one of the great talents

journalistically of our age. you turned yourself into an on screen figure moneysavingexpert on a new sort of digital channel. simply money. had you any idea that that would be the rest of your life? no, not a clue. although that was the first moment when, bang, you know, i was desperate to get out of bed and do myjob and excited about what i was creating. and the first time i felt i was doing something really creative. so i didn't know when i started, but within six months i knew i had something. and there's actually a story after about a year on the channel because i did, it was all on this deal of the day programme that i did where i did all my research as the moneysavingexpert. we changed my title and my bit of their website was the only bit you had to log into, but it had 96% of the channel's traffic and i had about 15,000 people on this email list that i used to email about my deals of the week. and i went to them. i said, you know, i know it's a tv channel, but i really think we've got something. and they were like, "no, no, no, we're too busy, too busy." and i said, "ok, fair enough." and then the channel went bust.

and i look back and think, thank heavens they didn't say yeah, thank heavens. because they would have had all the advantage of having your own website for a princely cost of 100 quid and selling it for well over a hundred million quid. so i'm intrigued because i don't think i knew this, that you describe yourself as very political at university. i knew you'd become a student union president, but not all of them are. so, did you then? i was. i think i was elected as an independent, yeah. i mean, i have to say, until probably the age of about my early 30s, i thought i'd go into politics at some point as a member of parliament. yeah. that, that, that was, that was the obvious thing. you know, i was a pretty decent political speaker. i really enjoyed politics. i did my degrees in government and law. you know, lse is a very political university and it's a fight to get the roles in there. and there's lots of stories involved in that which we won't have time for. so i think until my early 30s,

that was what i wanted. and who there do you know? i'm not sure. i think in the early days, it could have been one of a couple. i'm not even going to go there because it's so long ago. it doesn't matter. are you being coy? i mean, in other words, if you don't want to say, that's fine. iwas... but you don't want to say i know that. you know, i know who i would have wanted to be when i was 21. right. but that doesn't read across to now. i'm trying to think, what year was that? so, no, look, i, iwas one of the leaders of the lib dem caucus within the lse. yeah, but i gave up my party membership of the lib dems i think when i was 24. so i stopped being a party member after 2a and i genuinely since then have not always voted for the same party at elections.

i am a floating voter. what intriguing is you have this very public role. you describe yourself as a young man going on the tv, and yet you were briefly a recluse in your youth. this was a difficult, difficult few years you had after the death of your mother, unexpectedly when you were young. yeah. i found it very difficult to leave the house because i hadn't been there when my mother was killed. so i found it very... and yes, until 18, i really didn't go out. i mean, ijust didn't go out. i mean, i would go to my grandmother's, but i would stay in the house or i'd do things with family and i wouldn't go anywhere. i never went to the pub, never went to a party, never did any of that. and it was a very, very tough time. i mean, she was gone. i won't go into the details because i suspect it's something you don't want to do. but your mother was knocked off a horse by a car. what transforms you from this grief—stricken young man, this young man who stays at home and doesn't socialise? you would think that when you go to university, you'd be the nerdy kid, not the kid who becomes the student union president and a stand—up comic briefly as well. that was after uni.

but, yeah, so when school ended i took a year off, which was the best thing i've ever done because i was a very, very young 18—year—old and i did lots of, you know, i worked on camp america and i was a video operator and worked behind a bar and just learnt a bit more about life so that by the time i started university, i'd flipped like a pancake because... at that point, i was suddenly exploding with, you know, just the opportunity of things people take for normal, of having friends and going out and having a fun time and talking and meeting people were things that i had not had since the age from 12 to 18, which are the formative years for pretty much anyone. but i sense, which is why i'm not pushing you on it, it's a trauma that you live with now, and it's a trauma that you will, i suspect, always. yeah, i've spoken about it once publicly, and that was a shock. and they asked me to do an interview on mother's day with radio 5 live. and because i'm so busy and i get so many requests, i basically accidentally said yes. and so i got to the day and it still operates. now i have a list printed out by my pa of what the next day is and it's by the half hour. you know, when you go here and you do this and here's

what you're doing the next day. and i got to 2:30 in the afternoon and i saw that i had to go to 5 live and do this interview. and i suddenly got this, "oh, my god, what am i doing?" and on the walk there, i was like, "what on earth am i going to say? how am i going to back this off? that was what was in my head. "how am i how am i going to stall like a politician," if you like? and i got there and the brilliant tony livesey, who was presented, presenting, who also lost his mother young. we just started talking and i burst into tears after about 30 seconds. it still makes me want to cry now. and i spoke about it. the one and only time. and it was... one of the best things i've ever done and one of the worst things i've ever done. i had, without exaggeration, tens of thousands of messages from people in the same boat who had never spoken about it on social media, so much so that the next day, i couldn't cope with them all. it was too much to be, you know, the portal sharing

everybody�*s childhood grief. and when i was struggling and i've not spoken about my own and i have a rule now that i will never go through that again. and i'm happy i won't. but i'm happy that it's out there and it's still available if people want to go and watch it. but it took me a good few weeks to recover. so the interest is because it's fascinating to know what shapes you. yeah. and someone who talks a lot about mental health issues and how money affects people's mental health, but has also been open about your own mental health. one of the things struck me about your story before you became a big public figure being taunted for being jewish at a school where there were very fewjewish boys. i'm not sure that's quite correct. the word taunted. so... my nickname at school was jew. there were twojews in the year. and my nickname wasjew and had originally, i think, been something like jewy lewy or something, something a bit warmer. and then just in the way that it works, it was shortened. and of course, this is the 19805 and it was just something i accepted. i didn't see it as pejorative. i didn't see it as anti—semitic. i don't think it was.

i look back at it and think it was, but i don't think it was deliberately proscriptive. the only bit i remember i didn't like was there was one boy who would occasionally throw sweets in the air call mejewy and look to see if i would run to grab the sweets, which of course, i never did. but barring that, at school, i didn't feel that. i mean, i think what it was was is certainly an acceptable with my 15—year—old now and if my child went through that i would be going in to complain to the school and it would be outrageous. but this was the 19805 and we were not the same on race and religion and diversity that we are now. you don't think it's particularly shaped you now? because, let's be honest, money—saving, eing jewish, that isn't instantly something that people would feel... you're the first person.

nick, who has been brave enough to say that to me in the last 20 years. really? look, myjewish friends all do well because they know that might be because i've gotjewish blood. ok, but... but to actually be overt in a public forum and say, you're the money saving expert and you're jewish, as i always say, i'm the money saving expert and i'm jewish. i'm not the money saving expert because i'm jewish. but the two i have had over my career and i remember a well—known broadcaster making a couple of really inappropriate gags, which i then never did that programme again afterwards. i didn't call them out. this is, again, this is early on in my career. i don't think anyone would be stupid enough to try it now, but i get it on social media sometimes. no wonder you're so good with money. you'rejewish. and i come back and say, "you do realise that's anti—semitism, right?" and actually, am i the stereotype of the old—fashioned stereotype?

because should i not? you know, what i do is about how to take on companies, how to empower the consumer. it's a very difficult one. and it's actually brave of you to bring it up. and i think wejust need to separate that. i am not the moneysavingexpert because of my religion. no, god, no. i'm not suggesting. not for a moment would i suggest you were. let's talk about what being in the moneysavingexpert has meant. the campaign, i think that probably made your most famous was against bank overcharging, but i get the sense also it changed your view. you've talked about at one point being an epiphany for you. why did that campaign and that letter, famous template letter that you said people could use to say to their bank, "i'm being overcharged, stop it." why did that change your view? well, it was a great campaign. we got people £1 billion back and later went on to get people around £12 billion back on ppi, which was similar. the epiphany from bank charges

was a mental health epiphany. so when i started this, if you were interviewing me in 2003, when i set up the website, i would have said, "the company's job is to screw you, ourjob is to screw them back." we live in an adversarial consumer society. i can almost remember it's like a script. we live in an adversarial, adversarial consumer society. i'm not anti—company, butjust like when city play united, i want city to score. i don't want united to score, but i don't think they're wrong for trying to do so. that encapsulated my philosophy at the time. but that was someone who thought and hadn't really thought about how many people were not capable of that adversarial relationship. and bank charges was the thing that really opened my eyes to that. now, the percentages i'm going to give you aren't strictly accurate. but this is the bit that i learned. so i spoke to someone who had worked at the bank but later worked at citizens advice, who told me that somewhere around, i don't know, what was it, 15 or 20% of my bank charge template letter,

there were 6 million of them done. people would wear it, says your name, your address. they would not delete the your name, your address and where it says my case. so they would keep in all the bits that were the template and not delete them. just literally pick it up and send it. no, no, no. they would have to stop it. but there were 5% of people who would just print the letter and not personalise it. and, you know, you can look at it in a smiley way. but i didn't then, and i don't now. i still find it desperate and depressing. that the biggest and most profitable sector that the banks had, which was bank overdraft, charging for going beyond your overdraft limit. many people had thousands of pounds worth of charges, and it was a cross—subsidy of the poorest to the richest 5% of the people who were paying these hideous, unfair, disgraceful charges. 5% of them were not of mental capacity to realise that you had to put your details in a template letter and they still had their money deliberately ripped off them. and i found that made me angry then. and it makes me angry now. i can see, i can hear the rage.

and rage with what? because it's just not fair. it's not right. it's not a proper way to behave. the answer i can hear people shouting at the radio or the telly is get involved. now, you did want a peerage at one stage. yeah. yeah, ijust got turned down again a couple of weeks ago. actually turned down. yes. for cross—bench? yes. by who? by the house of lords appointments commission. do you know why? yes, i do. and i was much more annoyed the last time because i did this really silly thing and i was honest in the interview. i had an interview and they talked about timings. and i said, because i'm always one to be open and transparent... gosh, you've got this out of me. i haven't spoken about it before. i said we talked about most of the time that the lord sits about 3pm till 10pm on a monday, tuesday, wednesday. and i said to them, "look, i need to be straight with you in terms of

the hours i can give. i'm very busy with myjob, but most importantly, i have a nine—year—old daughter and until she's 13, my most importantjob from 6:30 until eight at night is to be with her and to put her to bed, maybe until she's 12, whatever. i don't know. she's not got to that age yet. and so i would see my role as being learning for three to five years with limited input. and then gradually over the next five to ten years, committing more and more time to the house of lords. if i became a cross—bench peer and less time to everything else. that's what you told them? that's what i told them. and they were very, you know, the interview, i think, went very well. i got very good feedback, but i think that was the stumbling block, although they have invited me to apply again in future. and they've turned you down. yes. lord lewis, you could be well. yeah, well, it's not about the title, but i spent so much time giving evidence in town. yes.

despite your expertise, despite the fact you have a kind of... because i don't think i was willing to give them the time that they felt was necessary to be in the lords. and you're being very reasonable about this, martin lewis, but is there a bit of you things? they are as idiotic as the bbc to look at you as a young producer and held you back? no, no, for a couple of reasons. 0ne, because we're not being honest. when i got the letter, i breathed a sigh of relief because there's a lot of pressure on at the moment. and i thought maybe a couple of years is probably more sensible. and two, because i don't know who they will appoint, but my hope is that they have some good people who are willing to give more time than i can give at the moment, because i think it needs to be done properly. and if i'd done it and not given the time, then i would have been slated for it everywhere. so i had my plan in my, media plan in my head, to be honest with you, was if i had got it, i would. what i've just said to you, i would have gone very, very public on very, very early and said it so that people knew i'm planning would be planning a gradual transition. now, there are friends of yours who've told me you ought to be mayor of london.

oh, no, i'm not a londoner originally. i don't think it'd be appropriate. i'm from the north west. i know mayor of manchester, andy burnham won't do it forever. i will never. gary neville, who was on this podcast, is interested in a little tilt i think. good luck to him. i will never take a polemic partyjob. i'll be straight. my mental health is not robust enough to deal with it and i wouldn't put my family through it. you've referred quite a few times to a your mental health, but also it being hard at times. it being hard at times in the last few weeks. as you said earlier, you both challenged the government and said they weren't doing enough. you were very overt in the challenge you made to the energy companies. and then when the chancellor embraced quite a few of your ideas, you praised him, too. have you been on a roller—coaster? one minute, cheered along as you attack the tories and the next minute attack for selling out to the tories. i never attacked the tories. i attacked the policies of the government.

no, i was paraphrasing what people might say to you, but it is important. i don'tjudge on party. ijudge on policy. the thing with the chancellor, i spoke to him a few days before he made his announcement. i think he was doing two things — one, checking what i wanted, and two, doing a sense check of how it would be received. because on this issue, i had been very vocal, as you say, saying that people would freeze or starve. i still think there's a danger of that. i still think we're going to have a very difficult winter. and the help that we had was not even close to what was needed. and then the chancellor made a statement that was staggeringly close to the five things i'd asked him to do. i mean, it was staggeringly close. as a campaigner, if you want to have influence, when you get a win, you have to say thank you to the other side or you don't get a win again. you don't have to do all this all over again. well, in other words, after another series of measures, the chancellor, will, you hope, listen to you again? is that all going to have to happen? i don't know. listen to me. he spoke to me. but you don't know that he listened to me and... i think the main the cost of living remedies that the chancellor came up with for most people will cover

well for the poorest, will cover the one—year hike in energy bills only not the issues with food, not the issues with petrol, not the issues with transport, not the issues with rent, not the issues with mortgages, not the issues with the national insurance rise. but it was a lot better than i was expecting. and i think we are looking for a very, very difficult winter for many people and there are lots of people in poverty. i'm worried about the summer, too. i think the lack of free school meals this year for children over the summer holidays is going to become a big, contentious issue and it's a real problem for some of the poorest. and i would really like to see us providing free school meals over the summer holidays. i think that's very important. but i think that the chancellor and the government are going to have to be open to more action if things continue to get worse, and that is plausible. why do you still do this? you're a multimillionaire. you've been incredibly successful. you've talked about the burden in a way that you face, being expected to give advice to millions of people to be the authority on how we all live our lives. isn't there a bit of you that thinks just treat myself, let's get away, do something different. yeah. and actually, at the moment, i want to go a bit slower

for the next couple of months before my tv show comes back and things like that. because i think we all need to look after ourselves. and that's an important lesson. and particularly in my case, because i'm not sure i certainly think if i stop tomorrow. i'm not sure there would be another break—out person in money or consumer finance for quite a long time. break—out. break—out is the key word. you could teach me. tile management was it? rack management. you see, you need to learn when you see i do more tabloid telly than you. rack management is a lot funnier term than talent management. just saying. here we are on the bbc. if only i got it. martin lewis, thank you very, very much forjoining me on political thinking. well, well, well... lord lewis, there's a thought. i suspect there are some currently sitting on those red benches who will quake at the idea. the sheer energy, the drive and the passion that he would bring to the business in the house of lords would be something to behold. thanks for watching. hello, there. a very blustery day today with scattered showers in the west, drier and brighter and further east. and it's looking very

similar tomorrow. those winds are likely to strengthen further. so, for sunday morning, then, we'll see some outbreaks of showery rain moving to western scotland. they'll be pushing eastwards. a wet start here for western wales. that weather front approach in the south west of england, some scattered showers here. also scattered showers, sunny spells for northern ireland, very windy for irish sea coasts. gusts of wind of up to 40—50 mph. the best of the sunshine in the dry weather again for parts of east anglia, where we could see highs of 22—23 degrees celsius. it does remain windy on monday. still a brisk southerly wind blowing. the focus of those showers moves a little further east, but there'll still be some sunny spells. it's drier and brighterfor much of wales, western scotland and northern ireland, but clouding over towards the end of the day with another weather front approaching, temperatures ranging between 19—21 degrees.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. ukrainian authorities say russia has taken control of the city of severodonetsk after weeks of intense fighting. it's the most significant city to have fallen into russian hands since mariupol. abortion clinics start to close in the us after a supreme court ruling removed american women's constitutional right to abortion. british prime minister borisjohnson defies conservative critics of his leadership by insisting there'll be no psychological transformation of his character in the wake of two by—election defeats. if you're saying you want me to undergo some sort of psychological transformation, you know, i think that our listeners would know that is not going to happen. norway cancels this year's

oslo pride parade after a deadly