The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Elections Are Dangerous to Our Democracy

00:00:00.000 hi folks welcome back to the decline and fall of the labor party although this episode may reveal

00:00:18.360 that it's slightly more than just the labor party it is british politics as a whole well i was going

00:00:24.280 to say because this is the fourth of these that we've done they can't still be declining can they

00:00:28.000 i'm afraid they can i mean edward gibbon noted the decline and fall of the roman empire happened 400

00:00:33.360 years so yes we could this might be quicker we could get a lot of mileage out of it yes and we

00:00:39.360 likely will so let's begin with some local election by election local council by elections as usual

00:00:46.060 as you can see here in suffolk things went pretty south for labor and the conservatives

00:00:52.040 pretty quickly but also the lib dems interestingly enough no independent but 49.2 reform yeah from

00:01:00.560 nowhere yeah and from a previously conservative uh holding but as you'll notice the conservatives

00:01:06.620 were only on about 34 percent yes so reform have rocketed up to nearly 50 percent thing is in british

00:01:16.400 politics don't normally get anything close to 50 percent that is that is extremely rare normally

00:01:22.480 30 35 percent is considered a stonking result yes and so i mean absolutely correct and so to have what 0.98

00:01:31.180 was doubtless a control conservative stronghold collapse so heavily and then you can see the

00:01:36.060 labor party the minus 27.4 percent down to 12.5 percent even the lib dems losing nearly 10 percent

00:01:42.540 i imagine a lot of labor and lib dem went to green but i think a lot of labor also went to reform

00:01:48.680 yeah i mean that that is that is classic politics there so conservatives what they would have been

00:01:54.280 33 almost 30 no 34 percent labor would have been very slightly behind them with um you know whatever 0.56

00:02:02.040 they had didn't didn't they have more about 30 percent they had about 30 percent did they um it

00:02:07.660 well i'm not sure why that's a late a conservative game when it looks like labor was on more so it

00:02:13.720 might have been the way i guess a typo there or something yeah quite quite maybe it's 17 percent

00:02:17.960 they're down but that that is typical politics it's it's 30 percent versus 25 percent yes seen that for

00:02:24.580 decades yeah all across the country yeah i have not seen i mean apart from very exceptional cases

00:02:30.400 um i mean there was this guy called martin bell who popped up once in the 1997 election and he

00:02:36.940 he stood as an independent he got good press and he got like 50 percent but apart from that you just

00:02:41.120 don't see it yeah the only the only thing similar is rupert lowe's great yarmouth first yes 44 percent

00:02:47.120 uh polling in the constituency but as you can see um reform are just eating up the competition here so

00:02:53.080 that's interesting but again it goes it plays into our thesis that it's the center that's collapsing

00:02:57.880 yeah people are going to the extremes green party another second party in suffolk hakefield uh and

00:03:03.960 then i can't remember whether we covered this but it's very similar numbers in a blackpool by

00:03:08.320 election uh whereas you can see reform uh have just gained this from labor in the opposite way

00:03:14.020 but like you say very similar numbers in the center right conservatives down by 17 put them on 22

00:03:20.220 labor down by 22 to put them on 21 reform 44 but it also shows the breadth of the thesis because

00:03:26.060 last time we were looking at a conservative stronghold yes and historically they have not behaved the

00:03:31.860 same way that you know this presumably yeah this would be a red wall seat yes so what used to be the

00:03:37.880 the sort of uh unstoppable bulk wall that the labor party had if they're cutting through equally on both

00:03:44.860 sides that it's transcended something that didn't happen in politics before yes and as we've spoken of

00:03:53.760 previously this is just the center bottoming out it's in free fall it's it's collapsing and people are

00:04:00.740 just going elsewhere and it's happening all across country in the north and south all across the

00:04:04.860 country people are like yeah you know what i'm done uh and so let's we'll skip ahead to the aggregate

00:04:09.920 of the seats which i think shows us a lot the lib dem's been crowing that they've won the most council

00:04:16.420 by elections in 2025 they have by two seats but they are an established party that is very good in local

00:04:23.820 elections and also they probably fought all or most of them yes reform are kind of sleepwalking their

00:04:30.780 way into success because the thing is the lib dem's are going to have a very well-oiled machine when it

00:04:37.000 comes to local elections so so with political parties getting somebody for parliamentary seats is hard

00:04:42.880 enough getting people to contest every local seat is nigh on impossible yes and and the lib dem's i mean

00:04:49.480 part of the reason they do so well is because they turn up and they put candidates out yeah and they

00:04:53.120 constantly leaflet in very targeted areas and they've they've got a very like i said well well-oiled

00:04:58.600 machine that is on the ground constantly running these things now reform don't have any of that

00:05:03.720 reform have a kind of uh i don't want to be uncharitable but a kind of systemic incompetence

00:05:12.240 yeah but the the wind is in their sails yeah they're not they don't have the vast urban machinery

00:05:19.620 that's marching around knocking on doors but what they have is a popular opinion that this country

00:05:24.840 screwed and nigel farage is at least not one of the old consensus and so reform got 104 c's which is a

00:05:32.500 massive increase the largest increase and as you can see by the decrease it's labor and the tories that

00:05:37.120 are losing by a long way and this uh this we've mapped this out before but as you can see um

00:05:43.620 again just complete sea change from conservatives and labor who if you look at the beginning started

00:05:52.500 with the lion's share between them and now are 21 and 14 after these elections these are not the

00:05:59.140 number of councillors that they have these are the number of seats that have changed over the uh the

00:06:03.620 course of the year but that's still a bellwether to show you where people are going and a lot of

00:06:10.200 them are going to reform and lib dems it's just nature of the beast and the old parties are in trouble

00:06:17.180 so let's have a look at the national polling now there's a lot of swing in the national polling

00:06:23.080 this came out on the 17th uh after the week of them berating nigel farage for being a racist

00:06:29.260 and he went up plus three in the polls yeah uh i mean i i guess i guess he better hope that they

00:06:37.060 keep calling him racist yeah well well he better actually because things aren't exactly smooth sailing

00:06:42.660 for reform you wonder how much of a poll boost he would get if he just came out and just said yeah

00:06:46.560 i'm racist probably like plus 10 or something i do wonder but he's not going to do it um so this

00:06:53.700 as you can see is a good result for reform labor on 14 cent conservatives on 8 cent although it's

00:07:01.100 worth pointing out and we'll get to this in a minute this is definitely going to be undercounting a lot

00:07:05.940 of things i mean this is what it would look like if mapped i assume the white areas are uh these are

00:07:12.160 parliamentary seats yeah uh there's no way there's no way it's going to look like this i mean that's too

00:07:20.060 much that's way too much yeah i mean so on on the main image of the uk the bigger constituencies

00:07:27.360 they're they're always far more likely to go for the right wing option i mean even in 1997 if you

00:07:32.880 looked at the map the map was basically blue because they're the big bits that you can see

00:07:37.400 and it's really you have to pull out those those other bits but yeah even those other bits look at

00:07:41.780 look at like greater manchester and west but no way no way that does look like it's ridiculous beyond

00:07:49.140 what you could hope for but maybe i mean i i'm not going to say i'm not going to say never i'm not

00:07:55.420 going to say it couldn't happen time and we're entirely apart from maybe an independent but honestly

00:08:01.260 that's possible merseyside south yorkshire going reform i can completely believe but i i don't just

00:08:08.780 because i don't put much stock in this right i mean i don't know why the outer hebrides are going for

00:08:13.540 garage i mean if this did happen where are they all going to sit i mean

00:08:19.620 parliament there'll be lots of half of parliament is nowhere near big enough for this many mps

00:08:26.660 yeah but there will be lots of empty seats and that's nice those will be spilling well yes

00:08:30.040 uh but i i don't i don't buy that one um there are other polling uh establishments such as the

00:08:36.620 varying group who have come out with reform on a respectable 27 but conservatives only on 21

00:08:42.800 labor 18 lib dems 15 green 13 now this i feel is more accurate uh variant doesn't do that much

00:08:51.280 polling but what they do is deep polling um they are as in they spend a lot i think the last poll they

00:08:58.960 produced was in fact yeah it tells us at the bottom the last one they produced was in april for this

00:09:04.180 right okay so they they they have um a much more thorough uh way of polling um and it was the

00:09:14.540 most accurate of the 20 final polls published by the british polling council members uh in the 2024

00:09:21.380 general election okay that is interesting yes so very in uh they've got um you know they they do uh

00:09:28.500 i think it's in person and telephone rather than doing internet selected uh self-selected internet

00:09:34.460 ones based on like the slate of the database that they have access to right like you gov

00:09:38.700 so it it is um i mean this looks to me more like normal politics i've become accustomed to over the

00:09:45.820 last 20 years yeah it's still really strong for reform though oh yeah yeah absolutely i mean it's

00:09:50.620 it's terrible for conservatives and labor uh but this this i feel is a more accurate representation

00:09:56.740 of what will actually come out um because i think in many of these polls conservative voters are

00:10:03.000 actually being undercounted because of the way that the polls work because a lot of polls these

00:10:07.860 days are online polls yep and a lot of conservative voters have yet to hear about the telephone so

00:10:13.360 let alone by faxing them yeah exactly let alone the internet uh did you know the fax was invented in

00:10:21.160 like the 19th century no there was a period of time when abraham lincoln could have sent a fax to a

00:10:27.300 samurai i'm not did he no he didn't right but he could have that would have been a nice twist

00:10:33.620 technologically and you know socially that would have actually been possible uh so fyi isn't that

00:10:40.320 interesting yeah uh anyway so uh i think this is more likely i think the conservatives are going to

00:10:45.500 poll higher and better than is otherwise expected in other polls uh just because there'll be lots of

00:10:51.060 old people who view the conservatives as the party of pensions frankly yeah um uh here's another

00:10:57.440 one from yougov which as you can see there's quite quite a substantive difference you know the

00:11:01.780 concern well 21 to 19 it's not that substantive actually but you go of being self-selected online

00:11:07.040 polling reform 25 minus three uh this uh labor on 20 percent except is 19 but otherwise a fairly

00:11:14.420 reliable and predictable split for the rest of them yeah i don't i don't trust yougov never have

00:11:20.380 no um but they're not terrible actually at predicting results uh the next one is lord ashcroft polls

00:11:27.820 again reform on 25 percent conservatives on 22 percent uh greens on 19 labor 18 lib dems 10

00:11:33.680 uh interestingly uh for the lord ashcroft polls they are conducted online but lord ashcroft is of course a

00:11:40.060 conservative lord and so maybe he is pulling more heavily from conservative demographics

00:11:46.500 but as with the variant polls i think that actually might be more accurate so i think the

00:11:52.400 conservative the the older conservative voters are not being accurately represented here i mean the

00:11:57.180 yougov guys were um tory councillors in wandsworth or richmond i think it was so that's their background

00:12:03.700 but but i mean they just go along whatever is fashionable that week so if ukraine is in the

00:12:08.040 headlines or vaccines are in the headlines that that is it's basically whatever the government

00:12:11.940 narrative is they they back it that is correct um so the the lord ashcroft ones have uh various

00:12:18.720 panels of polls which are conducted online again for all that's worth um but then i thought we'd look

00:12:24.960 at the pollster ratings right because actually we can uh compare and variant have the best score

00:12:31.220 based on their predictiveness um uh yougov are also pretty good all things considered is this based

00:12:37.420 on the last election yes and and um um um yeah so recent uh their accuracy in predicting the most

00:12:45.420 recent three general elections okay that's better yeah it's not just the last election uh based on

00:12:50.480 national share of votes and fighter polling and things like that right and so variant uh like i said

00:12:56.640 they do deep polling and it means they don't do them very much in the way of polling their polls can be

00:13:02.340 quite spaced out but they do tend to have the best scores you go there not bad uh they're 81

00:13:07.920 percent score uh and then but if you go down to find out now they're on 44 and lord ashcroft is the

00:13:14.820 bottom at 30 oh really yeah okay so and more in common's only at 56 there that's a shame because i like

00:13:22.000 the people's polling one because it just shows labor and tories getting utterly annihilated

00:13:27.340 and it being this farcical situation where zach goldsmith is the leader of the opposition well

00:13:33.260 this and i think that's funny well this is what i wanted to uh address really because uh i this is

00:13:40.060 why i think that not only uh was it the variant one is probably most likely uh and actually in reality

00:13:46.760 it feels like it's probably going to be most likely this uh a shame though isn't it i mean the

00:13:52.320 tories still as the official opposition i mean i know it's embarrassing what the liddem's got i kind

00:13:58.460 of hope that you know the the stake had been wedged into the heart at this point they'd burst into flames

00:14:03.700 but they do just keep ticking over labor 18 is interesting and we'll come back to that number in a

00:14:10.040 bit so in wales in particular labor follow the same pattern and what this is the thing i want to pay

00:14:18.540 attention to really is you'll notice that labor 18 percent labor uh 20 percent was great but you

00:14:24.680 know labor 18 all these sorts of things where uh massive massive drops i mean as you can see here

00:14:30.980 from april in 2025 labor have lost 17 percent of their vote share right basically half yeah it's

00:14:38.360 literally halved uh and a similar sort of thing has happened in wales uh wales uh labor are just

00:14:44.560 actually getting slashed and this is for the general election 2029 based on yougov uh reform

00:14:49.940 hammering it good for them to be honest uh the reform were above the bloody welsh nationalist party

00:14:56.660 uh my twice of labors more than twice of the conservatives but the conservatives have never

00:15:02.080 been particularly strong yeah more than you know so reform and all while offering the most

00:15:06.760 milquetoast nationalism possible i mean what what would happen i mean obviously plad cum

00:15:12.980 right are not nationalist in the slightest they they just put it in the name because they couldn't

00:15:17.080 think of a better name and they can't field enough candidates to get outside of wales but what what if

00:15:21.260 somebody came along and just offered an actual nationalist option well um i can't only i can only

00:15:28.820 imagine frankly because i don't think such a thing is actually going to happen uh but yeah as you can

00:15:33.940 see uh wales has decided you know what we're sick of this because i mean things are things are not good

00:15:38.500 in wales obviously same as everywhere else but worse frankly uh you know they got that ridiculous

00:15:43.600 what is it what are they down to is it like 10 miles an hour speed limit across the whole of wales

00:15:47.500 i think it's 20 i yeah i know it's 20 but i i heard that they decided reduced again i i heard no way

00:15:53.940 they definitely wanted to reduce it even lower lower than 20 miles an hour yeah i just just sod it just

00:16:01.560 make it reverse yeah that god that would be embarrassing wouldn't it yeah uh anyway so uh that's the

00:16:07.520 welsh you go uh poll and then you've got the uh the way that pans out to the seats which again is

00:16:14.600 remarkable like this was all labor played cymru in the western sort of southwest northwest of wales

00:16:23.680 the more welsh parts of wales the less anglicized parts uh but then the rest of it is basically just

00:16:29.680 reform i mean those those little ones that that that should be industrial sort of welsh heartland

00:16:36.320 coal mining yeah classic that should be classic labor yeah they're like they all know no we we're

00:16:41.660 and they were they were classic labor in fact um let's let's have a quick look at the you know this

00:16:47.480 the 2021 sneth seneth election i can't pronounce it but uh as you can see you know it's labor

00:16:53.400 storming with 30 seats you know and the closest conservatives on 16 uh it was this one plague

00:17:00.940 cymru on 13 lib dems on one you know so only one uh one area of wales actually has big gardens

00:17:07.640 uh yeah so that that map that's what i'm talking about yeah that bottom bit should be glowing bright

00:17:14.880 red yes and it always has been yes you know uh and so for it to just flip so comprehensively yeah

00:17:22.860 i mean that's that's terrible it's almost like our thesis is correct

00:17:26.600 what the labor party don't represent no the the the center is just imploding

00:17:32.340 classic politics is the swingometer and it should be these people are moving this way and these people

00:17:40.160 are moving that way but all the categories and all the boundaries are just imploding it's it's no it's

00:17:45.560 just it's more like an immune response at this point people are coughing up something that they

00:17:49.780 shouldn't have eaten and that and that's something you're exactly right normally you've the categories

00:17:53.360 are essentially fixed and immutable oh you know we're going from you know the labor to the tories

00:17:58.640 the labor to the tories maybe a bit to the lib dams the labor to the tories and now it's just like no

00:18:03.360 all of this doesn't matter so if if in the 90s or 2000s or even 2000s then you you had watched the

00:18:09.400 election night stream for any of the you know the sky or bbc or itv or whatever it was it would be

00:18:15.280 here's our profiles this is the family this is the you know guy earning this much living in london this

00:18:21.940 is this is and and then they do these little swingometers back on forth on each of them

00:18:25.920 and but but it's none of that this time they're all just coughing up something vile and what i love

00:18:31.660 about this as well is if you go back and watch old uh election uh street night they're great

00:18:37.540 they're great it's not it's not they're great the presenters are all confident right there's a kind

00:18:43.440 of smugness in the process isn't they deal with politics all day every day they've been following

00:18:47.040 the polls the polls are generally fairly accurate and so they you know they can't it's like they

00:18:52.120 kind of know in advance oh yeah this is going to be like when um what's his name after blair one

00:18:57.600 and cameron not cameron uh the the conservatives uh was it heseltine or who's that it'll be i can't

00:19:05.720 remember but there was this one particular like channel four in view with no the the guy he's a

00:19:11.640 decent enough guy as well you'll need to give me a clue of some 2007 i think it was who is the

00:19:17.000 conservative leader um oh howard george duncan smith um might have been smith but there was there

00:19:24.140 was this one particular interview with a conservative chap i can't remember his bloody name now and it's

00:19:28.760 right on the top of my tongue uh to my tongue um but you you could see that there's this kind of

00:19:33.760 like yeah we got crushed by labor again and uh you know the conservatives are like licking their wounds

00:19:38.400 and the journalists are all kind of like smug about it um but that that is going now right

00:19:44.020 because you're about 97 michael patillo are you oh yeah yeah it was patillo okay that was 97 yeah

00:19:48.520 he lost his seat 97 yeah and the you know he he was doing interviews and things like that and they

00:19:52.960 were all kind of smug about it yes and i felt really bad for him actually because he seemed like a decent

00:19:56.620 chap um but they had this kind of security they said no we're in predictable politics you know

00:20:01.880 we've just come off of however many decades of conservative rule yes you've got a labor landslide you got

00:20:06.840 smashed you know you're going to go lick your wounds and figure out what you did wrong and we are 0.51

00:20:11.440 basically the ringmasters of the spectacle uh but now well and also even back then the conservatives

00:20:19.280 weren't that worried no because it was like okay tony blair's won a big victory and he's probably going

00:20:24.240 to win another one after this as well and very possibly a third one but then the pendulum will come

00:20:30.520 back and it'll be normal service nobody is going away here we know how this game is played we've

00:20:36.480 played it for a hundred years right yes uh we know how this works and so the the the sort of

00:20:42.380 the the parties involved in the conflict okay yeah we took a few knocks but that's fine we'll come back

00:20:47.480 and i'll tell you there's a point about the media class as well whenever you watch those things

00:20:50.880 you get these panels where they'd all sit down and you get these wise heads oh this is this is the guy

00:20:56.000 that was leader of the lib dems 10 years ago paddy ash down and he's coming and this guy used to do

00:21:01.900 this and he's going to come and this guy's an ex-journalist and he you know and they all sit

00:21:05.740 down and they just smugly tell you what's going to happen over the next eight hours i'm glad you

00:21:10.520 brought that up yes we put a pin in this because we are going to come back okay to the ex-party

00:21:15.620 leaders giving their yes august opinions on what's going to happen in the future of politics right

00:21:21.200 because the as i said the the ringmasters are realizing that the lions are all loose from the

00:21:27.020 cages right the categories no longer exist the cages aren't even there like what's going on

00:21:31.280 they don't know they don't know what's going to happen in this new era of politics because as you

00:21:36.060 say something is being coughed up here something is dramatically changing we can just uh like i said

00:21:41.500 look at um other ones here's for the uh local elections in wales uh the labor party won 468 seats

00:21:48.680 with 30 of the votes by far the largest uh share with 300 independents 200 plague cymru blah blah blah

00:21:56.640 you know 184 conservatives and it looks like uh um reform are just gonna just completely consume

00:22:04.280 all of this none of this is going to matter so again going going back to the prediction okay where

00:22:10.200 are you now how do you explain this and i'm sorry i just spotted not a single labor seat in wales

00:22:19.880 no no no yeah yeah sorry i was that not clear from this no it wasn't clear from this yeah there won't

00:22:25.740 be a single labor seat in wales they'll they'll go to the i know it's right in front of me but but

00:22:30.860 when he's like bloody hell i mean they're not even listed at the top the conservatives get one seat in

00:22:36.540 wales the lib dems get one seat plug come right are getting you know the the sheepy bits by the coast

00:22:43.660 yeah it's just it's just reform winning everything yeah play come where we'll get like eight or nine

00:22:48.080 seats something like that uh but it's just reform it's just reform sweeping a lot uh and again this

00:22:54.020 this is a you gov poll you know this is not this is not an unpredictable unreliable uh pollster or

00:22:59.760 anything like this you know it's not lord ashcroft polls or something right uh and even then i think

00:23:04.340 the lord ashcroft polls nationally is actually going to be relatively reflective of what's going to happen

00:23:09.360 uh but i guess we'll see right i mean who knows we're in a strange era where strange things happen

00:23:14.900 anyway still fundamentally none of these polls are telling us something wildly different it's just

00:23:19.500 it's just the measure of the trouncing it's the scope yeah are you going to spend five years in

00:23:24.300 a coma or seven i mean that's that's what it's telling you the scale of the beating yeah basically

00:23:28.620 um so anyway let's let's talk about um the labor party because i think actually when you look at the

00:23:33.100 things the labor party is doing it's pretty explainable why this is all happening because

00:23:37.960 the labor party under kia starmer and his um managerial bureaucratic cabinet uh are the worst thing

00:23:45.160 that anyone has ever seen uh you've got 38 labor mps uh signing an open letter to as the prime minister

00:23:51.840 to drop david alami's plan to do away with jury trials in some cases no kidding i can't believe

00:23:58.860 it's only 38 in this backbench revolt but i like the way this guy's framed it he says don't march us up

00:24:04.600 the hill only to be marched down again he knows that when this gets serious this is not going to stand

00:24:10.560 this cannot stand i mean if you get rid of jury trials i would actually rather that you got rid

00:24:15.740 of voting before you got rid of jury trials god yeah i'd rather at least know i'm going to get a

00:24:20.500 trial when i'm accused of something yeah not be able to vote for the next boring administration

00:24:25.040 yeah precisely so so this mp he knows that this is ultimately not going to be viable and he's just

00:24:33.280 saying you know rather than do all of this and then have to u-turn just just scrap it now and he is a

00:24:39.900 labor mp like for east hull again someone who's staring down the barrel of reform victory right

00:24:47.940 and he says you know many mps not in this letter have said they will rebel if necessary they know

00:24:53.060 what like i don't even know i don't even know why they think this was a good idea it's like yeah but

00:24:57.500 administrative reasons as david lammy argued uh we need to clear the back i think it is that simple

00:25:02.400 it's just they realized oh we got a backlog oh how can we speed up the backlog oh we just do this

00:25:07.520 it's just an admin fix and in their mind they can't understand the issue yes guilty people will

00:25:12.780 get put away faster what's what's what's the issue we literally did this at southport yeah like we

00:25:17.860 literally just go just tell them to plead guilty so we can do away the jury i mean it and it is our

00:25:22.600 courts and it is as vile as cps all of whom have a dot gov email will recommend a case um and it will go

00:25:29.980 before a judge who has a dot gov email because somebody said something that offended somebody

00:25:35.700 with a dot gov email yes i mean it's a total stitch up i mean there's there's literally no

00:25:42.860 pretense that we're a serious country if this goes through and but notice what you're saying that

00:25:46.780 we're going to cut the public out of their own jury trial system like the legal system like you 0.99

00:25:52.300 don't we are reducing everything to mere administration yeah and people are furious and even the labor

00:25:58.900 backbenchers like you know we're gonna we can't have this because our own constituents will

00:26:03.940 democratically lynch us at the ballot box for this like we will never be forgiven for this and

00:26:10.620 you'll notice that there's a bunch of things that they said they're going to do that are kind of

00:26:13.940 sitting in abeyance at the moment like what happened to the digital ids care

00:26:17.700 yeah that's disappeared hasn't it because it turned out everyone hated that the polling came out and it

00:26:22.880 was like people were about a third of the people were okay with it and now it's like you know

00:26:25.660 five percent or something i mean and the weird thing about that is for the first few months it

00:26:29.560 wasn't even funded no and nobody in the civil service knew what they were doing and then the

00:26:34.000 last disastrous budget they finally found some money they took some money off border patrol and

00:26:38.500 basically gave it to the digital ids um and yeah like you say at the point where it's a non-starter

00:26:44.680 yeah and it's like okay you don't you don't have the authority within your own party to get this

00:26:49.800 stuff pushed through uh and it's not just the backbench mps either they're losing the unions

00:26:56.220 to the left as lewis goodall tells us union ally christina mckneya however it's pronounced has lost

00:27:03.780 the unison general secretary election replaced by a leftist uh who is in promising to review the

00:27:09.700 labor unions relationship with the labor party themselves so if the labor party lose the bloody

00:27:15.020 unions too like what power bases do they even have left in the country i mean if they've lost

00:27:20.840 if they've lost voters and the markets and the unions

00:27:26.100 how are they getting elected again well i mean i guess they're not but i mean how are they getting

00:27:32.880 any votes at all is the that's a great question right well yes yes just do we even need the

00:27:40.760 elections so i said i said earlier i'd rather i'd rather lose the right to vote than the right to

00:27:45.740 a jury trial keir starman's like hold my beer dad why not both yeah yeah why not both yeah so uh this

00:27:54.580 for anyone who's not aware um labor are trying to rearrange the nature of the country and essentially

00:28:02.580 centralize local councils into much larger constituencies uh drawing you further away from

00:28:10.560 local government for some reason this is somehow devolution uh and this means that in the process

00:28:18.140 of doing that they have decided they're going to suspend the local elections for about 10 million

00:28:23.120 people who would have voted in these or could have voted in these elections significant portion of the

00:28:28.720 country now a lot of people are pointing out that that kind of looks bad not only have you been

00:28:36.500 getting absolutely waxed in these local elections but it looks like you're doing everything you can

00:28:44.620 to essentially subvert democracy to prevent nigel farage and reform from taking over which they 0.99

00:28:51.280 clearly are uh from absorbing significant portions of the labor vote which they clearly are in order to

00:28:59.000 continue a managerial regime that nobody agrees with not even the labor party nor the unions nor the

00:29:04.680 general public not anyone and so being like yeah we're just going to delay a bunch of elections

00:29:10.020 back the last time labor were in serious risk of losing power under gordon brown there was a lot of

00:29:16.740 talk like this yes about um you know perhaps we we perhaps we need to re-evaluate elections or change

00:29:23.580 the terms you know maybe we need to lower it to 16 we need all these things they were talking about

00:29:29.280 rigging the election but remember they changed the age of the general election down well no not not

00:29:34.240 not when it was gordon brown no no but they've done it yeah um but but because they knew they were

00:29:39.980 going to be replaced by the tories they never actually went ahead with it but the tendency remains

00:29:44.020 now it's now keir starmer and his fabians obviously feel it's a bit more existential

00:29:48.880 and so they're not just talking this time they're actually just doing the whole litany of things

00:29:53.880 to try and subvert democracy the elections are dangerous to our democracy yeah it's where they

00:29:59.480 have arrived at as their literal ruling what is the administrative value of an election it's just

00:30:06.240 it's just bureaucratic energy precisely no output what why would we want this and and also an election

00:30:12.740 can deliver the wrong result if it is all just i mean a jury can deliver the wrong result exactly all of

00:30:20.040 these things go against the managerial regime and so the managerial regime is like well no we don't

00:30:24.900 need to have elections in fact elections will be bad for us implementing this agenda and things even

00:30:29.360 the electoral commission is like what are you doing what are you thinking you know no these should go

00:30:35.020 ahead as planned you know issues linked to local government reform are not a valid reason for

00:30:40.700 postponement yeah pull staff off writing strategy papers and put them on dishing out ballots yeah i mean

00:30:48.080 their own quangos yes like this is too much all i literally all i want is the bins emptied and an

00:30:54.700 election yeah i don't care about all the other stuff that you do in fact i don't want you to do any of

00:30:59.720 the other stuff yes right so that's that's bad enough 63 council elections 10 million people who

00:31:04.520 would have voted in may because everyone knows come the may elections everyone knows the numbers are

00:31:10.560 already in from like the we we have all of these bellwether polls uh sorry we've got all these polls

00:31:16.780 catastrophic for labor we've got the bellwether by-elections that are just oh yeah they're all

00:31:21.860 labor down labor down labor down we've got everything pointing in the one direction that labor are going to

00:31:28.740 get thrashed well and the narrative behind that that the labor mps are having is yes this guy is a

00:31:35.320 disaster but why don't we wait until the may elections and then that will give us the momentum

00:31:40.280 needed to get rid of him as if he is starmer big brain that he is well we just get rid of the may 0.97

00:31:45.020 elections then yeah checkmate yeah i get to rule forever and the thing is this like you said this um

00:31:52.160 contempt for the concept of the election is quite deeply ingrained in the managerial order

00:31:56.800 they they pay lip service to it while they're winning and when they're losing well we need to start

00:32:02.320 thinking about ruling them out because in an interview with uh sky us the other day uh the

00:32:08.780 labor party chair refused three times to rule out delaying the next general election the general

00:32:14.620 election i mean how could you rule that out i refuse to rule you can kind of get away with local

00:32:20.200 election because actually really nobody cares that much yeah but but just scrapping the next general

00:32:25.980 election i mean you know if the electoral commission is like you can't just delay all the

00:32:31.980 local elections and i mean that is a i mean this is proper mask or fabianism now right but you can

00:32:38.000 see where their minds are right because i mean there's no other party in the country would be

00:32:43.100 like of course we're not going to delay the general election yeah right you know the conservatives had

00:32:47.240 election after election in the last like five years you know like bloody liz trust boris theresa may

00:32:54.020 you know the the conservatives are doing democracy properly you know i hate to say it you know and

00:32:59.300 and the labor party like know we're in power now so elections are actually a secondary issue because

00:33:05.080 we have another another agenda we're trying to implement and so the the question is on everyone's

00:33:10.080 minds is well why why hasn't kistama been told to resign by his own party right oh because they're

00:33:16.700 waiting for the may election to give them momentum that's why but why do we need to wait that long

00:33:21.240 you know what's happening to your party so dan hodges in the mail here wrote this article about uh

00:33:25.600 despairing because he he speaks to a lot of uh labor mps and uh the labor mps tell me this party

00:33:31.760 is forming a circular firing squad with kistama right at the center yeah and everything's falling 0.99

00:33:35.780 apart and he says he's got this great line in here right he says leaving through my notebooks for the

00:33:40.120 year conversations with his ministers contain a litany of identical phrases quote he is not present

00:33:45.460 kira's strangely detached he's literally never here i just can't get him to focus the same goes for

00:33:50.560 backbench mps he's cut us loose he has no interest in what any of us think i feel like i'm

00:33:55.060 invisible to him right so i mean it's at least it's nice to know that labor backbench is getting

00:34:00.380 the exactly same treatment as the rest of us yeah i guess so yeah i guess i but that's it really

00:34:05.900 interesting because you assume the labor party like any any political party you'd assume takes care of

00:34:13.380 its own constituents first right so you would think kiss i'm like right the unions are a core part of the

00:34:18.320 labor block i will take care of the unions you know i will make sure the unions are well on side

00:34:23.480 oh the the working class areas in the north uh of the country or the south of wales i will take them 1.00

00:34:29.940 in you know yeah okay i don't care about the southwest of england they never vote labor you

00:34:34.140 know i don't care about any of the you know like particular areas where the conservatives in the

00:34:38.600 southeast of england they never vote labor not my problem we're going to make sure we huddle

00:34:42.380 together you know draw to my bosom all of those reliable labor voters and show them that i'm their man

00:34:48.080 and that we are going to get their vote so we are not going to get absolutely wiped out with the

00:34:52.480 next election it's kind of bold because i mean it's classic elite theory isn't it it's the smithian

00:34:57.220 friend enemy distinction yeah and then and then keir starmer has come along and said

00:35:02.140 yeah i don't need the friend bit i'm i'm just i'm simply going to have enemies

00:35:06.860 i'm just everybody in the country including the including the bloody trade unions and my own

00:35:13.160 backbenchers everybody's an enemy and that is really what this is boiling down to

00:35:17.220 like the starmer bunker yeah is a very narrow thing at the very at the top of a very high tower

00:35:23.120 with a very with a very small number of people in it which is literally just the labor front bench

00:35:29.100 as far as i can tell and everyone else apparently kiss someone just go hang he's just a little wizard

00:35:34.840 in his tower yeah he doesn't care about anyone else it's like that is wild uh so anyway dan says

00:35:42.920 among ministers there's a growing belief that sometime next year starmer will formalize his withdrawal

00:35:48.520 from the premiership but i'm not seeing uh any evidence of this frankly i'm seeing evidence

00:35:54.000 that starmer intends to delay the elections that will be the cause of him having to give up power i mean

00:36:01.740 the more i learn about keir starmer as we go along in in a way i'm grateful that he's prime minister

00:36:07.320 because if he wasn't he would he would i bet there's another timeline where he is the most

00:36:12.780 prolific serial killer this country's ever had

00:36:15.660 and and when and when they start traveling dimensions people are going to be coming to

00:36:22.060 this one it's like what seriously he's the prime minister well he never dreamt he never had a feeling

00:36:27.520 he never lived like a human yeah uh so anyway the the point being the a bunch of uh the ministers

00:36:35.320 uh think he's got to go next year but so far i think what we've seen is him making moves that

00:36:42.060 kind of signal he doesn't intend to go next year no we're not going to have may elections we might

00:36:46.020 not even have another general election according to keir starmer which is insane and very sort of

00:36:51.560 bureaucrat right yeah this feels like the kind of behavior from the top of the european union like

00:36:56.400 who voted for ursula von der leyen and the answer is about like 12 bureaucrats you know they're the 0.87

00:37:01.660 actual ones who voted like the general public do not get any say in any of this

00:37:04.860 and keir starmer has taken that same kind of approach now remember he is a davos man

00:37:08.520 yeah you know he not a westminster guy he hates westminster so the the way that british politics

00:37:13.360 works he has been against and seems to be just revealing this so the the labor ministers who are

00:37:19.120 kind of operating in the previous paradigms thought process which is well okay this guy's failing he's

00:37:25.360 creating our party he's got to step down soon because there'll be an election and keir starmer's like

00:37:29.220 will there be you know and it's like right that's mad but don't rule anything out yeah i mean this guy

00:37:37.140 like he is well off the rails on almost everything right like nobody thought trial by jury was in doubt

00:37:45.320 nobody thought for a second digital id was coming in yeah like nobody thought any of like i mean what

00:37:51.940 are the mad things he done i mean when you frame it as the bureaucrat thing it suddenly makes perfect

00:37:55.920 sense to me because everybody is looking at this and thinking this is an aberration yes but if his

00:38:01.500 mind is working on bureaucrat rails yes what everybody else thinks is the aberration yes of course you just

00:38:08.780 have a managed bureaucracy and no elections exactly why are you thinking of a traditional british democracy

00:38:13.920 in which the people actually have because people can complain about democracy all they like

00:38:17.380 but while we have elections and our elections have been pretty good secure you know no nobody really

00:38:23.260 doubts this the the integrity i trust them far more than say american elections because i know

00:38:28.780 you go to the polling booths these little old dears who are actually conducting yeah they go in a 0.98

00:38:33.940 box box the lock box has got a wax seal on it um there's eyes on them at all time they're then taken

00:38:40.140 by a van to a big sports center a counting station yep and you as the candidate i did this at the ukip one

00:38:46.580 you can watch them counting yep you watch the you watch the wax seal being broken they're tipped out

00:38:51.840 into a desk in front of people including your representatives everybody's representatives and you

00:38:56.760 see everything i i trust the british electoral system apart from in tower hamlets sure yes and

00:39:02.140 maybe in leicester and a few places like that but the point is when when the british themselves are

00:39:07.100 conducting their elections completely trustworthy in my opinion uh and so and i think keir starmer

00:39:12.980 agrees with that which is why i think he wants to stop the elections um anyway so a bunch of people

00:39:18.720 uh here's a lord ashley poll that shows that uh about half the country think that just someone

00:39:23.600 else will be the leader of the labor party next year uh you know will who will still be in their

00:39:28.620 jobs by next christmas uh 48 of people think it's not going to be keir starmer uh because again they're

00:39:34.360 still operating in the previous paradigm uh it looks like genuinely he's are they asking everybody

00:39:39.180 in general or labor party members uh these are just general polls okay uh and so 21 of people think

00:39:46.780 it'll be keir starmer those people on the inside presumably who know what's happening uh but again

00:39:52.200 like okay fair enough you know it seems that people think that the conservatives and labor

00:39:58.220 are kind of done right so eight percent of people think zach polanski will leave the greens and he

00:40:03.420 tempted 10 of people think farage won't be the leader only eight percent of people think uh ed

00:40:09.380 davy but 26 of people and 48 of people in labor and conservatives again speaks to a remarkable

00:40:16.200 discontent oh it's it's well it's the thesis isn't it the the center's being hollowed out yes i mean

00:40:21.940 first blush i'm surprised about the kenny thing because conservatives are quite fratricidal yes 0.74

00:40:28.940 i mean they're change leaders just because they're bored let alone anything else

00:40:34.120 but people might be like the conservatives do love their yoruba mammies well maybe yeah

00:40:39.500 but the point is 26 of people saying that kemi won't be there it's still quite high it's pretty

00:40:46.200 bad yeah right you know the other the other the other parties at least seem to have representative

00:40:50.740 leaders they represent what the party is and the the people who vote for them are authentically that

00:40:56.460 thing labor and conservatives people like no i don't think they'll be there because their

00:41:00.560 parties are attacking everyone can feel it it's in the air right um and so people have been

00:41:07.280 complaining well hang on a second the government's asking tory control councils if they want to delay

00:41:11.840 and i saw um who was that woman from the apprentice i don't watch tv oh like dragon's den sorry right

00:41:19.280 there's some woman on dragon's oh deborah yeah yeah yeah she was like well why i saw her on twitter 0.91

00:41:24.960 the other day i tagged her in it actually because it was like she was like well why would why would

00:41:28.760 the conservatives agree to not having these elections when labor want to delay the elections

00:41:34.140 it doesn't make sense it's like well are they asking the leader of the council or as in the elected

00:41:40.620 politician yes or the chief executive of the council which is a government appointed position but either

00:41:47.880 way if you're the conservatives and you're also getting wiped out of the local elections

00:41:52.840 yeah maybe we can delay them well yes actually because okay it's bad for the labor party be worse

00:41:59.700 for the labor party but it's still really bad for us because we've seen the tallies as well where we've

00:42:04.740 had this and we've collapsed to this you've had that you've collapsed to that and reform and the

00:42:09.300 lib dems are taking everything yeah maybe we are okay with them it's the cockroach having a

00:42:14.400 conversation with the weevil about whether they should their house should be fumigated yeah yeah they're not

00:42:19.220 they're not happy with it and the labor party themselves are aware that if the if one of them

00:42:26.800 dies the other one dies right as we go back to neil kinnick former labor leader as you said

00:42:32.820 earlier in the podcast uh they're aware that it used to be business as usual right yeah yeah listen to this

00:42:40.500 but i would say that uh so much of our system and the integrity of our democracy depends upon there

00:42:53.740 being a rational forward-looking right of center party to contest the ideas of democratic socialist labor

00:43:06.120 that uh we'd all be losers if that option disappears

00:43:12.560 isn't that fascinating that is very revealing yeah i mean actually there was a there was um

00:43:18.540 after the 1997 general election tony blair was watching the results come in yeah and and and

00:43:25.080 maybe hadn't paid attention to many elections basically all you get for the first four hours is labor gains

00:43:30.500 because those are the constituents they're in a city so they so they're faster and he was looking

00:43:35.800 at this and it was nothing but but labor gains everywhere even into the bit where you should

00:43:40.220 have started to see some tory and and everyone around him was celebrating and he was bricking it

00:43:45.040 because he thought oh shit i've ever done this i need i need because the labor and the tory parties

00:43:50.180 they're two corpses that lean against each other yeah and he knew that and he was really worried that

00:43:55.560 you'd overdone it so when you're at the top level of this politics you understand the mechanism and

00:44:01.180 he's just explained it here it doesn't it doesn't work one without the other because because it's

00:44:07.060 because it's the illusion the containment yes the containment it's the containment that he's talking

00:44:11.720 about and again neil neil kinnick uh famous labor uh tory hater i mean he says at the beginning you

00:44:17.260 know far bit from me to make an appeal to the tories but if the tory party dies the labor party dies

00:44:22.800 it's the yin yang and so if the labor party dies the tory party dies

00:44:27.200 and so we're i mean i like that yeah it's great it's the end of containment right it's the end of

00:44:33.440 the system of making sure the british public never get what they bloody well want that's what he's

00:44:38.640 complaining about yes and look at him you know old old old chap now being like oh god you know

00:44:44.320 things have gone off the rails like yeah maybe you shouldn't have been a bunch of bloody traitors

00:44:47.720 uh for you for the duration when you were formerly the labor leader um they know that this is they're

00:44:55.580 in it together right they know and they're they're polling about as much as farage combined

00:45:00.900 but uh in in some of the polls as you we saw earlier the conservatives were not so deeply getting

00:45:10.260 trounced if i can just get back to that one second that one actually uh see so here we go um this

00:45:16.200 particular one from the variant group is the one that made a lot of waves so reform on 27 which is

00:45:20.940 good very good but not dominating in the same way that 33 is but the conservatives only on 21

00:45:27.500 now yeah that should be a total tragedy 50 when boris was in charge for example right yeah so total

00:45:36.000 tragedy but the concern still in the game exactly they're taking like oh no no actually this is not

00:45:41.980 the end of the world actually you know we're above the labor party somehow and so it's like well hang

00:45:48.580 on a second is this the badenock bounce is kemi badenock bringing the tories back from the brink

00:45:55.380 uh i i mean it's not a theory that i would advance myself no me either but it's not the end of the

00:46:04.860 world for the conservatives no well it's not great it's absolutely not great but the conservative vote

00:46:13.100 does seem to have stabilized around 20 so fifth of the country are inveterate conservatives no matter

00:46:21.180 who they put in charge yes no matter what nonsense they have done to us well maybe that maybe that's

00:46:25.240 why keir star wants to delay the next election until the rest of the toy vote dies off i mean maybe

00:46:30.860 but as neil kinnick pointed out that's the other party dead anyway so this has been a narrative

00:46:37.340 they've gone around oh the the tories are surging the surge is they didn't collapse as much as labor

00:46:43.040 that's the surge uh and they you know is kemi badenock bring us back from the brink whisper it says the

00:46:49.700 telegraph but the big knock is dragging them back it's like well the telegraph is just a tory

00:46:54.960 mouthpiece so you know the point is there's a kind of desperation in it because okay

00:47:00.700 they've had a couple of okay polls yeah in the last couple of polls but that's still not great

00:47:07.080 if you actually look at the aggregate polling so in the aggregate polling reformer on 29 percent

00:47:12.940 labor on 18 percent conservatives on 17 percent the greens are on 15 like is that you know a couple

00:47:19.760 of outlier polls which is what they're appealing to so what are they describing as a good result is it

00:47:25.800 getting official opposition i guess so they can't believe that they're going to win no obviously

00:47:31.540 they don't think right so it's official opposition yes not and not just just not being completely

00:47:36.440 crushed i'm not sure i'm gonna have to think through over christmas what that what happens in that

00:47:42.160 situation because if you've got reform as the main party and the conservatives as the opposition

00:47:47.700 what what does that make reform do do they shift to the right of the conservatives or to the left of

00:47:54.500 them i would hope what this does is create a kind of bidding war for who could be my most right wing

00:47:59.620 right now that i would like well yeah of course that'd be wonderful i that was that's what i'd hope

00:48:04.500 for yes um the interesting thing is without the sort of bully pulpit of being the opposition who cares

00:48:12.600 what labor and the green say you know like they'll be like oh but what about the climate change but what

00:48:17.440 about minority rights what about who cares like if it's between the tories and reform how about we

00:48:23.420 just deport all the illegals mate you've both pledged to do it yeah the way that is interesting 1.00

00:48:28.820 how about we cut the taxes i was kind of pledged to do it i was kind of getting warmed up to the idea

00:48:33.820 reform with the greens as the opposition because greens are such fantasies it'd be amazing it'd be

00:48:38.360 hilarious no you're you're selling me on because the conservatives when the conservatives are the most

00:48:43.500 based in opposition yeah in power they're arch liberals correct if they're the opposition and

00:48:51.080 they're doing their whole baster than thou thing i mean if jenrich ends up leading them yeah like again

00:48:58.260 i'm not a huge fan of jenrich but he's not terrible at all and he at least does say some base things

00:49:03.080 he says them yeah katie lamb you know there there are a few base tories and so actually a right-wing

00:49:11.200 bidding war would be nice and would at least push farage yes into a more hardline position which

00:49:16.500 okay great and they're all liking this they're all in fairly hardline positions as it is but to be

00:49:22.160 honest with you i would prefer the lib dems being the second party which they might be i know they're

00:49:26.100 only polling on 13 but like we've covered previously the lib dems concentrate in certain areas and so they

00:49:32.080 always punch well above their polling the national polling average yeah so this is deceptive it could

00:49:37.700 well they've got they've got a lot of vectors for attack if if you've got a really big garden you

00:49:41.980 might vote conservative if you correct if you really care about immigrants you might vote labor and if

00:49:46.340 you if you really sort of cloud in the head in the skies thing you might vote green so that so there's

00:49:52.300 lots of ways for them to shed voters there are and reform have got there because there is

00:49:57.440 well because they're not establishment exactly but the the lib dems i i think don't rule them out

00:50:03.320 um it's entirely possible they're the second party uh but it it's likely to be conservatives

00:50:08.580 or lib dems basically uh i don't think it's gonna be the labor party i mean what you get from this is

00:50:13.400 we don't know and it's it's fascinating yeah we don't know like that thing earlier you used to be

00:50:19.360 to sit down on election night and basically explain how the next eight to ten hours we're going to go

00:50:23.700 and okay we got a bit it's a bit longer out to the next election but who the hell knows what's going

00:50:28.880 on for second place no but the the thing i think for us because i mean this is up to the 15th of

00:50:33.740 december so we've got you know 10 days well ish uh of um polling that has come in and this is where

00:50:41.440 the sort of like the conservatives polling at 21 is bucking the trend a bit and reform getting down

00:50:48.020 to like 27 in some 25 in one you know nigel does want to make sure he pays attention to this right 0.87

00:50:55.340 because like we said last time i think that he probably is keeping his powder dry right like i

00:51:01.540 know a lot of people are not hopeful for base nigel uh coming out but i i do think he moderates 0.94

00:51:06.900 himself on purpose he'd definitely get more base in a run-up to an election i agree right and but this

00:51:12.540 is this is a thing that he wants to pay attention to and actually having a couple of um aces up his

00:51:18.200 sleeve that he can pull up which blindside them uh like for example you know i don't know something

00:51:23.620 on nuclear power something on um just an unusual political football that isn't usually being kicked

00:51:29.840 right well i mean we only got deportation of foreign criminals in the weeks leading up to the last

00:51:35.580 general election because he suddenly said yeah this this manifesto isn't strong enough yeah right let's

00:51:40.060 put in deporting foreign migrants and stuff so maybe next time it will just be remigration program 0.85

00:51:45.120 yeah and you know abolishing inheritance tax i don't know stuff that the the other guys are just

00:51:50.160 essentially not going to agree with uh that he can distinguish himself on maybe maybe you'll do

00:51:53.940 that but the the question that we i have been raising over and over is sorry who who votes for

00:52:00.680 the labor party who is that 18 right you know no but look at look at look at what kiss armor put out

00:52:09.580 uh yesterday in fact this christmas a lot of people working hard to keep our country safe often away

00:52:14.880 from their families we invited public sector workers to downing street for an early christmas dinner to say

00:52:19.580 thank you

00:52:20.100 if i can get the sound up on that we'll watch it you must be the delivery

00:52:26.480 fantastic thank you very much

00:52:29.600 it's got a bit of garlic in very nice i think i did that that's what you thought i was in a cabinet

00:52:46.340 meeting did you do that yeah i was up here

00:52:48.520 right that's not quite the right angle love

00:53:01.340 we wanted to invite you in to downing street to say a big thank you to you because in here we've got

00:53:18.760 lots and lots of people who are working on christmas day um helping to keep us safe and sound many of

00:53:25.620 your families won't necessarily see you on christmas day and we really really want to say a big thank you we wanted to get you to come in for lunch to say thank you for that give you your christmas lunch a little bit early and through you all the people that are working on christmas day we want to say thank you to you how's your food

00:53:41.520 oh fantastic toast good gravy good i was stirring the gravy earlier on oh well done one two oh so enjoy it um and have a really good afternoon and you're very welcome to our house thank you very much indeed

00:53:56.040 now no expense spared you know he's personally doing the gravy and the potatoes and things like that

00:54:04.260 for the public sector workers yes well you put out a tweet the other day which was something along the

00:54:09.720 lines of you've received um whatever it is a nine percent pay rise this year and he he didn't even

00:54:16.340 mention oh yeah but that's just the public sector workers yes because remember we covered it last time

00:54:21.260 they were the ones who were twice inflation in their pay rises yes uh we can see keir starmer's

00:54:28.760 constituency coming into view he didn't get the unions in didn't get you know he didn't go down to you

00:54:35.540 know somewhere in wales or in the door he didn't do this for labor mps didn't do it for the mps like

00:54:40.700 no no you're all out in the cold yeah he gives you nothing he cares about you not a wit yes because you

00:54:47.700 are all essentially connected to the concept of democracy but these people have nothing

00:54:54.520 exactly they are they are the the the sinews of the bureaucratic structure and then he the system

00:55:03.940 itself he brings closest to his chair in his weird soulless way he he loves the system the system over

00:55:12.140 everything the people who run the system are the heroes of the country as far as he's concerned

00:55:17.100 nothing to do with electoral politics nothing to do with uh and he's just going around cancelling

00:55:23.020 elections ending election uh ending uh jury trial and none of it's legal but he he's just like the

00:55:29.340 emperor palpatine he was like i will make it legal and i don't care because the people who actually run

00:55:35.480 the system will all support me yes they are my true support base if i cancel elections you'll be angry

00:55:42.720 but these people who push papers and make sure that you know the the various sort of organs you know

00:55:48.220 the the mechanics of governance they will all continue because they're my people and they

00:55:53.380 understand them it's saddam hussein and the bathists all over again yeah it might only be 26 of the

00:55:58.740 country but that's all i need well what percentage of the country do you think are civil servants uh is it

00:56:05.300 about 26 the same as the bathists what were they polling um oh yeah good point like 13 wasn't it 1.00

00:56:11.800 18 18 precisely 18 and they just so happen to be averaging 18 in the polls and there's only one

00:56:21.880 constituency that keir starmer even attempts to court isn't that interesting well that is that the the

00:56:28.640 the big scooby-doo reveal at the end and it was worth it right yeah the whole thing it suddenly

00:56:34.640 comes into view doesn't it like this is why he doesn't care about anyone because it takes 6.2 million

00:56:40.580 people to apparently run this country and he's capturing them onto his side that's what i think is

00:56:48.560 fascinating

00:56:49.400 fascinating

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 24, 2025

Elections Are Dangerous to Our Democracy

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