Juno News - July 04, 2024


The collapse of the UK Conservative party - UK Election Preview Show


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Stephen Edgington joins us on The Faulkner Show to preview tomorrow's election in the UK between the Conservatives and the Reform Party, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. We discuss the reasons why both parties are likely to lose the election and what the UK will look like under a Labour government.

Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Now, there is perhaps no greater example of political betrayal over at least the last 20
00:00:08.120 years than what we have seen from the UK Conservative Party. For the last 14 years,
00:00:13.560 the Conservatives have been in power in the UK, and every major Conservative promise has been
00:00:19.580 broken. The UK border is wide open. Mass immigration is destroying the United Kingdom. 1.00
00:00:26.000 Radical, far-left politics has been injected into the military and to the public service.
00:00:31.580 Parts of Great Britain are completely unrecognizable, and all of that is why they
00:00:36.940 are destined for major defeat tomorrow. However, Nigel Farage and his Reform Party are back in the
00:00:43.300 mix, and they have had remarkable success at energizing disenfranchised British voters.
00:00:49.360 The Reform Party may not win many seats. They may not win any seats at all. But one thing is for
00:00:55.240 certain. They have shaken up the election in the UK, and Nigel Farage has put himself and his party
00:01:01.420 well and truly into the middle of the ongoing debate as to what happens to the UK Conservative
00:01:07.620 Party. Well, joining us now on The Faulkner Show to preview tomorrow's election in the UK is journalist,
00:01:14.140 documentary filmmaker, and the US correspondent for GB News, Stephen Edgington. Stephen,
00:01:19.260 thank you so much for joining us on the show.
00:01:21.080 Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:22.160 So by the time most of our audience see this show, it'll be a day before the English head to 0.96
00:01:28.400 the ballot box to vote in an election, which we basically already know the winner.
00:01:32.960 We know that Keir Starmer is going to form a government at this point.
00:01:36.360 But the question I have for you is this, what is the UK going to look like after five years,
00:01:41.600 or maybe even more, of a Keir Starmer-led Labour government?
00:01:45.540 I think people have to look no further than what the UK looks like after 14 years of the Conservative
00:01:52.380 government. And after 13 years of Tony Blair before that, we have had, ever since 1997,
00:02:01.140 a uniparty in the United Kingdom. The Conservatives and Labour essentially agree on all of the major
00:02:09.400 issues in the UK, particularly when it comes to immigration. They both support open borders.
00:02:15.640 The Conservatives claim they don't, but in reality, they've increased numbers to record highs.
00:02:22.800 And Labour, as we know, are very soft on immigration as well. So on that issue, they agree. 1.00
00:02:28.760 On the issue of taxes, the tax burden in the UK is the highest it's been in almost 80 years under
00:02:36.120 a Conservative government. Again, we know Labour like high taxes, particularly they say on the wealthy.
00:02:42.360 On spending, the Conservatives have spent record amounts of taxpayer money on things like COVID relief,
00:02:49.800 the NHS, welfare payments, and so on. So the UK national debt has absolutely ballooned.
00:02:57.160 And I think, and even on social issues like woke issues, again, the Conservatives say one thing,
00:03:02.920 they say, oh, we don't like this stuff. But in reality, the entire UK government civil service has
00:03:08.760 been taken over by woke ideologues. So we're going to see five years more of decline. We're going to see
00:03:17.640 a continuation and probably acceleration of what the Conservatives have done over the last 14 years.
00:03:23.320 It's going to get worse. But it won't be too much worse than what it already is like now.
00:03:31.640 So some of the fear mongering that we've heard from the Tory party in the UK that, you know,
00:03:36.440 we don't know what could possibly happen under a Labour government, you believe that ultimately
00:03:41.320 things will things will just continue this sort of managed decline. And things won't get totally out
00:03:47.400 of control. Because what we hear is that a vote for a vote for reform, for example, is going to be a
00:03:53.640 vote for Labour. And any way to stop an extremely radical Labour government should be the approach
00:03:59.960 that the English, the British people take. But you think that ultimately things will just sort of
00:04:05.320 maintain its path because you see no difference between both the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
00:04:10.040 Keir Starmer has already won this election. And the way that
00:04:12.920 the system works in the UK is that if you have a majority of let's say 20 or 30 or 40 in Parliament,
00:04:20.920 it makes no difference if your majority is 250. You can pass any law you like as long as your party
00:04:27.720 isn't split and Labour on the main issues aren't particularly split other than let's say Israel or
00:04:33.800 Palestine. But so I think literally it doesn't matter if you vote Conservative or Reform
00:04:41.400 from that perspective, Keir Starmer has already won the election. If you look at the opinion polls,
00:04:45.320 he's like 20 points ahead and has been consistently for the last year or so.
00:04:50.040 But what is important is two things, I think, for people who are considering voting reform,
00:04:56.360 which is the more populous Conservative Party in the UK. First of all, who do you think should be
00:05:01.720 leading the opposition over the next five years? Should it be the Conservatives and the rump of the party
00:05:08.280 who are left after the election, who are most likely going to be the socially liberal wing of
00:05:13.160 the party? I mean, I think almost all of the party is socially liberal, but there are a few Tory MPs who
00:05:18.280 are more Conservative. And they're likely to lose their seats anyway. Or do they think it should be
00:05:23.240 people like Nigel Farage, who's far more charismatic and Conservative than 99, well,
00:05:29.160 literally all of Conservative MPs. And the second thing they should be considering is,
00:05:34.120 do we want to continue with the current Conservative Party? Should it exist? Should does it deserve our
00:05:43.240 votes? After telling us one thing over the last 14 years and doing the exact opposite? Why should we
00:05:50.200 reward failure? Why should we reward ministers and MPs who have totally betrayed us on issues like
00:05:58.360 immigration? Should that Conservative Party simply die? And I think many people in the UK,
00:06:05.880 there's a campaign called zero seats, which is zero seats for the Conservatives. And I think it's really
00:06:12.280 important for voters to think about that. Why should the Conservative Party continue to exist if it's not
00:06:19.080 Conservative in any way? I think that they have no right to exist. And Tory ministers, I mean,
00:06:26.120 even the Conservative supposedly right wing, like part of the Conservative Party, they are just as
00:06:33.320 woke as the lefties. Look at Kemi Badnock at the other day, she's meant to be a very like socially 1.00
00:06:38.360 Conservative anti woke minister. She's, you know, and she's anti trans, blah, blah, blah. And then
00:06:44.200 recently, she put out a tweet, using the phrase white man as a kind of insult. I mean, that's literally
00:06:52.040 the language of the left. It's anti white racism is disgusting. And yet we're meant to think that
00:06:58.520 these people are the conservative wing of the Conservative Party. They're crazy.
00:07:04.040 It's unbelievable. And so what do you think would be the path to lead to the restructuring or
00:07:10.520 a sort of a demolition of the Conservative Party and then a rebuilding of that party
00:07:14.520 with some of the reform, with some reform members and some of the reform aspects because
00:07:19.240 it looks as though Nigel Farage is going to win his seat in Clacton.
00:07:22.600 It looks like reform may get some other seats as well. Once the election is over and the Conservatives
00:07:28.200 have been, you know, thoroughly defeated. How do you think that process actually starts?
00:07:35.000 I think it means that some Conservative MPs will probably try and talk with Nigel Farage,
00:07:41.240 those more on the right of the party. And I think it's a really difficult decision for Nigel because
00:07:48.280 should he get into bed with these people who have simply emitted failure for the last 14 years?
00:07:55.240 And I think then again, there are many voters in the UK who are loyal to the Conservative Party,
00:08:00.920 despite everything that I've said. So maybe I think there should be a reconciliation just to
00:08:07.080 unite those people. I think the problem with that is when you still have those MPs,
00:08:11.880 MPs, those Conservative MPs, and that Conservative brand, who are completely
00:08:19.160 ideologically opposed to literally anything that's Conservative in principle of value.
00:08:24.040 And I still think, you know, you've basically got the same problem. So I think those people have
00:08:30.440 to leave, they have to go, they have to be taken away, and they should be put in other political
00:08:36.200 parties where they belong, like the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. Those MPs have
00:08:41.800 controlled the Conservative Party ever since 2005, when David Cameron was elected. And I think it's time
00:08:47.960 for them to leave. And I don't think Nigel should accept anything else.
00:08:53.160 We've seen this situation happen in our country, when the Conservatives were so thoroughly defeated.
00:09:00.360 It was one of the worst election defeats in our country's history. And there was a reform party
00:09:05.320 that came up and formed an alliance with the Conservatives, and they put the reform leader in
00:09:10.760 charge, and he won and he governed for about nine years. Then that same party, the new Conservative Party
00:09:17.480 of Canada has drifted to the centre and drifted quite far left. We've seen incredibly woke policies
00:09:24.360 that have been either voted, that the Conservatives have voted with the Liberal government on,
00:09:28.600 they talk about all of the trans issues, they talk about diversity being Canada's strength.
00:09:34.440 So I think you touched on something important, which is, if this can actually happen, if the Tory
00:09:38.360 Party in the UK can collapse, and something new can be created, unless you get people out, not even just
00:09:44.760 the politicians, but I think one of the problems we have in Canada is that there are backroom staff
00:09:49.480 that have stuck around for all this time, that really pull the strings of the Conservative leader,
00:09:55.160 that just continue to push them to the left, continue to push them to the centre. We have one
00:10:00.200 party now in Canada called the People's Party of Canada, and they're not nearly as successful as the
00:10:06.520 Reform Party at getting people to vote for them, getting youth on their side. So I want to ask you
00:10:12.280 about this, because one of the things we've seen from the Nigel Farage campaign, the Reform Party
00:10:17.560 campaign, is not just incredible social media campaigning, but genuinely getting young voters
00:10:25.480 on their side. There was a video, I think it came out of Cheshire, if I'm not mistaken, I might have
00:10:29.880 that name wrong, but it was a video from a left-wing journalist asking young people in Britain who they
00:10:36.280 would vote for, and they all said reform. It was an incredible clip to see, but why do you think
00:10:41.480 reform has been so successful at getting young people energized and excited to vote for a completely
00:10:47.480 new party that is actually addressing their concerns? Well, it was actually in Chichester,
00:10:52.920 which is a very weird town to call. I actually grew up partly there. And yeah, as you say,
00:10:59.160 these reform, like young voters, teenagers even, were saying they're going to vote for reform. I think,
00:11:05.560 and I've interviewed Maxime Bernier, by the way, and I think that, I don't know if he's a very
00:11:10.920 alluring politician for those, for young people in Canada, I don't know. But Nigel, you know, he's,
00:11:16.360 he's got such charisma. And, you know, there's a real kind of aura around him, he seems very authentic.
00:11:23.160 And he really is the most powerful weapon that the populist right in the UK has. He's got huge name
00:11:30.120 recognition. He's one of the most well-known politicians in the country. I think there's an
00:11:33.880 opinion poll that said he was even more well-known than Keir Starmer, who's the Labour Party leader,
00:11:39.640 who's going to be prime minister next week. So, look, I think you need,
00:11:43.880 you need the right people on your campaign, campaign team. I think you're right to talk
00:11:50.520 about the backroom staffers. And let's compare those who work for the Reform Party to those who
00:11:55.400 work for the Conservatives. The Reform Party has a good dynamic young team who are great at social media.
00:12:02.680 They've been putting out some really fun and entertaining stuff. And they've had a huge reach.
00:12:08.680 The Conservatives, they are essentially staffed by young careerists. I know many of these people,
00:12:16.920 some of them are nice, some of them were and have been friends. But unfortunately, I think 90% of the
00:12:24.680 people who work behind the scenes in the Conservative Party are either ideologically sort of vacant,
00:12:31.480 they have no views whatsoever beyond wanting to further their own political careers. If you look at
00:12:36.920 what's called a, so we have SPADs in the UK, special advisors, these are kind of like advisors to
00:12:42.520 ministers and so on. If you look at how many of them become Conservative Party candidates and become
00:12:48.520 Conservative Party MPs, it's extraordinary. You get these people who come out of university,
00:12:53.320 go straight to work for the Conservative Party HQ, become a SPAD and then become an MP. They have no life
00:12:59.960 experience, they're total careers, total opportunists, and they're not Conservative anyway. So the party,
00:13:09.240 I think you're right, like the people who run the Conservative Party need to go, the people who are
00:13:14.760 Conservative MPs need to go, if there's going to be any resemblance of anything ideologically Conservative
00:13:23.720 in that party. And in terms of reaching younger voters, look, look across Western Europe, look across
00:13:28.920 Eastern Europe. Young people are voting for populist nationalist parties. Look at Poland, the Confederacy 0.77
00:13:36.040 Party, which is the populist party in Poland. It's the most popular party amongst young people. Look at France,
00:13:42.680 the National Rally. They're attracting young people in droves. Even Germany, the AFD is attracting young
00:13:48.760 people. In the UK, to an extent we've seen opinion polls where reform are doing well amongst young
00:13:54.280 voters, like 20% of young voters, 18 to 24, one opinion poll said they were voting for reform UK.
00:14:00.680 The Conservative Party were fifth amongst young voters. So I think young people are just as angry
00:14:07.640 as anyone else in terms of not being able to buy a house. I know Canada has a huge issue with that, so does
00:14:13.400 the UK. And that's particularly because of mass migration. If you increase demand, of course prices
00:14:20.200 are going to go up and you don't increase supply. So they see all sorts of issues where they'd be
00:14:25.960 completely let down by their political class. And I don't think all young people have to be
00:14:31.000 necessarily socially liberal or woke. I know that TikTok and all this, there's so many videos on there
00:14:37.240 which are more conservative leaning. Even Trump in the US seems to have a big kind of cult following
00:14:42.360 amongst young men in particular. So look, I think you have to like sell the message, right? You've got
00:14:47.880 to have the right spokesperson. Maybe Maxime Bernier isn't that. I think Pierre Polyev, again, like he's
00:14:53.960 been very woke on some issues. I know that. Like I did some reporting in Canada. I think unanimously,
00:15:00.120 the Conservative Party in Canada voted with the Liberals on the trans sort of banning trans conversion
00:15:07.240 therapy, which is just like, why are you even Conservatives? In the UK, Rishi Sunak, and this
00:15:13.160 is a huge issue where, you know, we're looking at Canada and we're like, we don't want to do this.
00:15:17.880 So most people, I think would think this, but on the euthanasia, Rishi Sunak said the other day,
00:15:22.360 he has no issue with passing the euthanasia law. Currently, it's banned in the UK. But this is meant
00:15:28.200 to be the Conservative Prime Minister saying that, saying that he would allow the state
00:15:32.280 to kill individuals, it's just extraordinary. And what we've seen in Canada has been one of
00:15:38.280 the most disgusting, morally vacuous situations I've ever reported on. The case of Christine
00:15:44.760 Gautier, the Paralympian who was offered euthanasia instead of a disabled ramp when she called the
00:15:49.480 government. I think, look, it just seems there's so many comparisons between our countries. And I'm
00:15:55.480 interested to see what happens with Pierre Polyev, because I know he looks like he may win next year.
00:15:59.320 Yeah, it's certainly looking that way. There was just a by-election in downtown Toronto that
00:16:03.880 is a Liberal stronghold seat, and it flipped to Conservatives. And that sort of
00:16:07.720 basically spells the end of the Liberal government. But I want to bring it back to immigration, because 1.00
00:16:12.920 just as it is a topic of, a major topic of debate in your country, and it is leading the election
00:16:19.720 dialogue, in Canada, we have a major problem, not with illegal immigration, but an open borders,
00:16:25.800 legal immigration scam that's really going on in our country. Is it just sheer quantity 1.00
00:16:33.880 of people that have entered the UK illegally and legally that has driven this issue to the top of
00:16:39.640 people's minds when they vote in the next election? Because in Canada, it is a major issue, but our
00:16:45.480 politicians don't want to touch it at all. They're afraid to be called racists. They're afraid to be
00:16:50.040 attacked as xenophobic, anti-immigration. What exactly has triggered this becoming the biggest
00:16:56.440 issue in the UK right now? It's the numbers and it's where the people are coming from.
00:17:02.520 We've seen millions of people arrive from Africa and Asia, from third world countries into Britain
00:17:09.560 over the last 20 years. We've seen more immigration in the last 20 years than Britain has seen in the
00:17:17.240 previous thousand years. We saw more immigration in 2022 in one year than the entirety of net migration
00:17:26.840 to the UK between 1964 and 2000. That's 46 years. In one year, how is our health system meant to cope
00:17:36.680 with that? How is the housing system or housing supply meant to cope with that? How are you meant to book
00:17:43.400 a dentist appointment or a GP surgery when you have so many people entering the country? And putting 1.00
00:17:49.800 the economics to one side, the cultural change that that brings to a nation when you're importing
00:17:57.160 millions of people from Africa and Asia, from countries which have entirely different backgrounds,
00:18:03.480 societies, religions, culture to yours. And you don't think that's going to change your own country,
00:18:09.960 your own country's culture. I don't think Britain is the same country it was 20 years ago. Britain used 0.99
00:18:16.040 to be 99.9% white British, the demographics in the 1950s. It's now 74%. We've gone down from I think in
00:18:25.640 the last 20 years, something like 83% white British or maybe 85% to 74%, 73%. This is an unprecedented 0.98
00:18:35.000 demographic shift in the entirety of British history. We've never seen such a huge change in the ethnic 0.92
00:18:44.200 makeup of our country. And I don't think many of these people share the same roots, the same culture
00:18:54.440 as native born British people do. Now look, maybe diversity is great. Maybe diversity is a strength. 0.91
00:19:01.400 Maybe multiculturalism is one of the most successful policies possible. I think that most British people
00:19:08.600 think it's been a disaster for Britain. I don't think they recognize the country they're in anymore.
00:19:14.760 They see people speaking foreign languages constantly in big cities like London.
00:19:18.920 They see crime go up. They see social cohesion evaporate. We used to have a high trust society.
00:19:26.600 The president of Singapore, Lee Kanyu, he came to the UK, I think in the 1940s,
00:19:31.400 and he was just absolutely stunned by how trusting people were. He wrote this famous passage in his
00:19:40.120 book about seeing a kind of honesty box. I think he was maybe some newspapers people were selling or
00:19:45.640 something, and people would just put the money in the box and people were just trusted to do that.
00:19:51.320 And he said, basically, wow, how can a society, how can a culture create such a high trusting environment?
00:19:59.400 And he wanted to replicate that in Singapore. If he came to the UK today, he wouldn't see any of that.
00:20:05.640 That has totally evaporated. And that's because of mass migration. So yeah, you can call us racist.
00:20:11.800 And that's what's going on in the UK media right now. Channel 4, a left wing news company.
00:20:16.680 They went undercover in a reform party campaign in Clacton where Nigel Farage is standing.
00:20:22.920 And they secretly recorded a random volunteer saying racist things about the prime minister.
00:20:29.880 And it's like, that's currently dominating all of the UK news coverage of the election right now.
00:20:35.480 One old man said some nasty racist things about Rishi Sunak, secretly recorded by a left wing journalist.
00:20:43.960 And that is the headline in the UK news. That's what they think is the most important issue of
00:20:48.760 this election. One random volunteer saying something racist when the when, as I say,
00:20:53.800 the conservatives have just flooded the country with millions of people from all around the world.
00:20:58.200 And we're meant to care about one man saying something racist. I don't care. There are so many
00:21:03.240 more important issues to focus on than some undercover journalist filming an old boomer saying something racist.
00:21:11.720 Absolutely. We have the exact same issues happening in our major cities. We have cities
00:21:16.200 that are becoming complete ethnic enclaves that are basically unrecognizable from just 10 years ago.
00:21:22.600 Toronto itself is basically unrecognizable from just three years ago. And I'm just slept with this question
00:21:28.840 about why a government would do this to such a great country and the United Kingdom.
00:21:37.800 Who came up with this idea that this would be something that needed to happen? Is it for cheap
00:21:44.120 foreign labor? Is it to try to expand your economy through GDP? Because we don't have the answers to
00:21:51.160 that. But right now it looks as though both parties in our country, just like they are in the UK,
00:21:55.080 both major parties are pushing this and they're pretending that they're not to in the case of the
00:21:59.880 Tories, but they've been the ones who have seen the largest amount of mass migration into your country.
00:22:05.240 Why do you think this is actually happening to the UK? They don't care about Britain's identity.
00:22:12.360 They don't care about Britain's culture. They just see it all as an economics game and a GDP game,
00:22:20.280 Rishi Sunak tweeted, I think today, celebrating the fact that the UK economy had grown by 0.7%,
00:22:26.920 the GDP. Oh, we beat all of our allies in the G7. How wonderful is that? What about the GDP per
00:22:33.560 capita, Rishi Sunak? That's been declining massively over the last 10 years. People's real-term wages have
00:22:41.160 been stagnating. If you look at the GDP per population, the economic story has basically been
00:22:49.880 decline and stagnation for the last 20 years. And they claim that immigration is vital, is 0.90
00:22:57.160 important for the economy to function, and it makes us richer. Well, it hasn't made anyone richer
00:23:02.360 according to the GDP per capita figures. In fact, it's probably made us poorer because we're simply
00:23:08.360 importing cheap labor, which means that companies aren't investing in capital and in research and
00:23:14.600 development. So for example, on farms, you know, or just robotic technology, instead of having to rely
00:23:22.920 on people picking fruits and so on, which is basically just cheap labor, you know, farmers should
00:23:29.960 be investing in better technology, which would improve productivity. So yeah, I think in the UK,
00:23:38.360 I think it's very much an economics game. They see it all as a sort of balance sheet. They don't care
00:23:43.800 about the social consequences of immigration. It simply doesn't impact them in their kind of
00:23:48.760 cushy lifestyles, or maybe they're used to growing up in so-called diverse places like London. So they 1.00
00:23:54.120 just don't care about that. I think they just have a complete absence of ideology. When the UK was
00:24:01.240 governed by Tony Blair and sort of the mass migration experiment was really accelerated by him.
00:24:06.200 Labour, a Labour minister was heard saying one time, we want to rub the rights noses in diversity.
00:24:13.240 So I think there was a political angle from the Labour perspective, from the left wing perspective,
00:24:18.600 of actually, we want to completely transform the demographics in Britain. There's also a political
00:24:23.640 angle there, you know, they think these people are far more likely to vote for them. The Conservatives,
00:24:28.280 on the other hand, you could, as I say, they're just obsessed with economics, they have no care about the
00:24:33.880 culture, they have no care about the history of this nation. And they're just utterly naive to
00:24:39.720 the consequences. I think there's also some, some of, you know, the political kind of, we love
00:24:45.080 diversity. You know, Rishi Sunak, he once held up a coin saying, there's a famous picture of him,
00:24:50.920 diversity built Britain. And, you know, this is the myth and the lie they have to tell themselves.
00:24:57.080 I mean, diversity did nothing to build Britain. There's these posters they put up in London,
00:25:01.400 Sadiq Khan, you've got this basically black lesbian woman, and it says something like, 1.00
00:25:05.160 I built London. No, you didn't. I mean, like, my ancestors built London, you had nothing to do
00:25:11.400 with it. You know, you've been here, kind of ethnic minorities have been in the UK earliest,
00:25:16.760 probably around the 1950s in large numbers. So yeah, this is, it's ideological and it's economic.
00:25:23.000 That's why it's happening in the UK. I don't know about Canada, probably the same thing.
00:25:26.600 Oh, absolutely. And we have conservative premiers, the people that, you know, run our provinces,
00:25:31.240 they say the exact same thing. They even, they even say, for example, that
00:25:35.160 one specific ethnic minority who hadn't come to this country until about 1910 or so, literally,
00:25:42.280 the words were literally built Alberta. My audience will know exactly who I'm talking about. When
00:25:46.840 Daniel Smith tweeted about how, you know, Sikhs built Alberta, which is just not true. It's just
00:25:53.320 a lie. And it is what we have been being fed by our leaders, by people who are running our media.
00:25:59.240 It's as if we've been sold out. Our futures have been sold out. They don't care about our future
00:26:03.720 generations, our children, even our grandkids, because it doesn't matter to them. They just want
00:26:07.560 to either win elections or get rich if they run corporations and they can have endless supplies of
00:26:13.560 cheap foreign labor. Stephen, I want to ask you what you think the seat count is going to look
00:26:18.440 like, what you, what you see the conservatives walking away with at the end of this election.
00:26:23.160 And of course, what you think reform is going to get out of this election.
00:26:27.800 I think reform will really struggle to win seats. They have been under relentless attack over the last
00:26:33.880 two weeks in the media with smears of racism allegations against volunteers, as I said,
00:26:40.680 and the headlines have really been dominated by that. Nigel also made a bit of an error in one
00:26:45.560 of his interviews with the BBC, where he started talking about Putin and Ukraine. He said that the
00:26:53.000 West was to blame for Putin's invasion for Ukraine. There may be a bit more nuance to that, but
00:27:00.760 him just talking about that issue is such a difficult topic. He may be right. He may be wrong. I don't
00:27:04.680 know, but, um, in the UK people are incredibly pro Ukraine, anti Putin, especially his kind of boomer 0.77
00:27:11.400 voter base. So I think that was a bit of an error. So do I think reform will do well? I think reform will
00:27:16.680 get a lot of votes. I think they'll get 15%. They'll get 16% of the votes and that will be an amazing
00:27:22.040 outcome for them. I think they will win. They will struggle to win very many MPs. That's just the way the
00:27:27.000 system works. Hopefully not. I think Nigel will win. And I think that's really important getting him in
00:27:31.880 parliament, getting him a voice there, um, is vital and he'll cause a lot of trouble.
00:27:37.240 I think they might win a few other seats, but probably beyond that, it's very difficult unless
00:27:41.160 they really surprised us on election day and they get 20, 19% of the vote they could win. You know,
00:27:46.840 we're looking at more like a dozen, 20 seats, maybe the conservatives, I think they'll win around a
00:27:53.400 hundred, maybe pro hopefully fewer. Um, but, but I think they'll win around a hundred. I think this message of
00:28:01.560 basically, if you don't vote for us, labor are going to get in that, that is quite strong for
00:28:05.320 many conservative voters who are just terrified of labor rightly because labor will do terrible
00:28:10.040 things. I mean, they're going to lower the voting age to 16. They're going to import many more people 1.00
00:28:14.600 into the UK. They're going to allow, probably going to allow people, uh, non, uh, UK citizens to vote in
00:28:19.720 the election. They're going to tear up the constitution. They're going to do terrible things, but as I said,
00:28:24.840 only a little bit worse than, uh, what the conservatives have done. So, and I think labor will win a big majority.
00:28:30.920 But it, as I said, it doesn't matter. Once you get, once you get beyond 50, 60 seats,
00:28:37.320 it doesn't, it really doesn't make an impact. It really doesn't. You can pass whatever law you
00:28:41.800 kind of want with that, with that kind of majority, unless you're the conservative
00:28:45.640 party, you win 80 seat majority in 2019. And then you decide basically to self implode,
00:28:52.760 um, and decide to govern like just Justin Trudeau. So if Keir Starmer decides to govern
00:28:59.800 like Donald Trump, maybe he'll lose his majority next time around. But I think that's highly unlikely.
00:29:05.160 Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but I hope that, I hope that reform can make a dent.
00:29:09.640 I hope that, I hope that something seriously, uh, seriously positive can happen. And from everyone
00:29:14.520 that I've spoken to, who is, uh, who is British, who is voting in this, they all say the same thing.
00:29:20.280 They want to see the conservative party decimated after this, because as you rightly point out,
00:29:25.240 they have sold the British people out. They have completely lied to them. Well, 0.91
00:29:30.360 we're going to see what happens. That'll be tomorrow. Pay attention, uh, to the Canadian 1.00
00:29:35.400 audience, pay attention to what happens because we may be seeing something major happen in the UK,
00:29:40.200 and maybe that can trickle down into Canada. All right, Stephen Edgington,
00:29:44.200 thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.